Patti Deni wanted to surprise her teenage son by giving him his own big-screen TV, so while their new home was being built, she contacted Williamsville, NY–based Stereo Advantage with an idea: Instead of mounting the set to the wall, like everyone else does, she suggested having the TV laid flush across the ceiling.
“It was definitely a first for us,” says systems designer Kevin Bohner.
A 98-inch StarGlas60 display from Stewart Filmscreen was chosen for the unusual project.
“Because it’s so big and has such a wide viewing angle, Patty’s son wouldn’t have to lay flat on his back necessary to see the screen,” Bohner explains.
“He and his friends can prop themselves just about anywhere and get a good view,” adds Patty.
In order to support the weight of the display, plus the NEC video projector and the specialty Draper projection mirrors positioned behind it (a total weight of more than 300 pounds), the ceiling had to be reframed and reinforced.
Also, wiring had to be installed to tie the teen’s gaming consoles, laptop computer and cable box to the rear-projection assembly.
Although her son spends plenty of time gaming, Patty says that viewing and editing his own videos is probably her son’s favorite big-screen application—about the only thing that’s typical in this totally unconventional viewing environment.


Systems Design & Installation
Stereo Advantage
Williamsville, NY
www.stereoadvantage.com
Equipment List
NEC NP4001 projector with NP4000-06FL short throw lens
Draper custom RPX projector cradle and first surface mirror
Stewart Filmscreen 98” diagonal 16:9 StarGlas60,
Polk Audio RC80i in-ceiling speakers
Crestron Adagio AES amplified zone
Crestron APAD controller
Monster Cable HTFS500 power center
Niles Audio C5HDDA video and C5A2 audio baluns
I like green cheese… and 20 year old girls
Oh please….I love women to death, married 3 so far, lived with a few others. I have 3 daughters, one at 20 is already a professional production manager at a live theater. My present wife makes a flippin fortune, but needs a GPS to drive out of our 25’ driveway. In contrast my daughter got the BofA award for shop in high school. So what? We all make the occasional random decision.
But there is a reason the Newlywed game asked this classic question for decades…ONLY to the women: “In your neighborhood, does the sun come up in the east, west, north or south”.
So we hit on the woman. If (a) dad had made this decision, he’d have been flayed even worse!
You think this is a civil community….mostly. But try stepping into something with real controversy. I did with TV and potential power guidlines. The freekin vicious lunatics came out for that one. (Same one’s I suppose who believer Obama isn’t a citizen, his health plan spec’s death squads, and thinks the Sun turns off at night, and the moon is made of green cheese.)
And I completely agree with you on the installation. I personally would not prefer a screen mounted in my ceiling for my primary viewing. If I was looking to do a custom installation like this, I would have mounted a TV in the wall behind a Media Decor unit, and still had the screen mounted in the ceiling. This will give much more flexibility with viewing and would hide the TV when not in use. This should appeal to aesthetics as well.
My point was some people are very quick to type a comment without thinking about what they are actually saying. Agreed these are not comments people would be saying face to face with someone, but they can still read your comments and when nothing useful is said it takes away from the community we are striving to achieve.
Come on, John. You have to realize there’s a difference in the sexes, especially when it comes to A/V equipment. The AV guys or whatever that podcast is, did a bit on schemes to justify or hide home theater purchases from wives (not spouses). 98% (guessing) of the AVS forum members are men. Like I said, I’m using my experience to assume that the mom was more interested in the aesthetics of the TV than the utility of it.
I don’t think more than a quarter of the comments were attacks on the kid. The criticism is nearly unanimous: ceiling mounted TVs are a bad idea if they are the primary TV being watched by any one individual. There’s your constructive criticism.
I’m done defending myself. You can have the last word. I don’t want monopolize the comment section.
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She’s steady with a software tech guy….doesn’t know spokes from sprockets. That’s bycicle - or motorcycle - talk for all you that are hardware impared.