This year Mario Williams signed a $100-million megadeal with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, so it makes sense that the star defensive end would go all out when it came to designing his home theater. The custom electronics (CE) pros at Audio Advice in Raleigh, N.C., had the luxury of incorporating the equipment into a partially finished space in the basement of Williams’ 11,000-square-foot Raleigh home.

The drywall was already up in the room that would serve as the theater, but areas behind those walls were unfinished. These open spaces allowed Audio Advice to fish Transparent Audio HDMI cabling and other wiring to the high-grade equipment chosen to suit both the room design and Williams’ entertainment tastes.

The DPI Titan was the ideal choice of projector for this 24-foot-long room, says Audio Advice’s Randy Cribb, due to its ability to “throw” images long distances. To maintain the clean aesthetic of the room design, Audio Advice mounted the projector on the other side of the back wall, which meant images would need to travel even farther than 24 feet. That was no problem for the Titan 1080p-250, which is engineered to transmit images onto a screen as far away as 65 feet. And thanks to the incorporation of an anamorphic lens, the projector is able to reproduce images in a superwide CinemaScope format—which would fit perfectly on the 138-inch Stewart Filmscreen chosen for the space. The projector was placed on a 7-foot-high wooden platform built specifically for the project; images shine through specialty projection glass, which was fitted into a window in the back wall of the theater.

The Cine-W from Stewart Filmscreen curves slightly to wrap the audience in the movie. “It provides a more immersive viewing experience,” says Cribb. Audio Advice recessed the screen into custom-built cabinetry, which also houses the center speakers and subwoofers of a JBL Synthesis system. Each speaker cavity was lined with foam so no matter how loudly Williams cranks the audio, the speakers sound natural. The remaining surround-sound speakers of this 7.2 setup were built into the side and rear walls.

Audio Advice finished off the theater with a Kaleidescape media server, which holds close to 500 Blu-ray discs; a high-def satellite receiver and a Crestron control system, which lets Williams fire up his theater from an iPad or from a TC-2 remote from Remote Technologies Inc. (RTI).

Equipment
❚ Stewart Filmscreen 138-inch Cine-W screen
❚ DPI Titan 1080p-250 video projector with anamorphic lens
❚ JBL Synthesis surround-sound system
❚ Lexicon MC-12HD processor
❚ Crestron control system
❚ RTI TC-2 remote
❚ Panamax surge protectors
❚ Transparent Audio HDMI cabling

Check out the theater in the slideshow here.

Lisa Montgomery - Contributing Writer

Lisa Montgomery has been writing about home technology for 15 years, with a focus on the impact of electronics on a modern lifestyle.