These homeowners had an odd shaped room, one that wasn’t built to be a dedicated theater like a basement ... but an old entertainment system that really needed an upgrade.

After finding custom electronics pro Union Place, of Excelsior, Minn., they turned it into a gem of a theater, complete with constant image height screen setup for really immersing in CinemaScope aspect ratio films.

“The homeowner was interested in the latest technology – constant height cinema. He had a large family and wanted to be able to seat eight at a minimum,” says Union Place’s Brian Duggan. “The challenge was to create a room that functioned as a cohesive theater, without giving up space and in needed to blend with the other rooms of the home it was open to.”

Because it wasn’t a dedicated room closed off to the rest of the house, Union Place also had to control the lighting from both the interior spaces and the exterior window.

“We found the best orientation that we liked and found inspiration from a public indoor theater in the area,” Duggan says. “We decided that we would have a large wood cornice as the defining proscenium feature and then use a smaller wood cornice around the perimeter of the room to unify the space.”

The installers incorporated a Marantz projector with a Panamorph lens system, and built a projector housing to conceal the large projector and screen apparatus. With a couple rows of seating in there and little floor space, there wasn’t much room left over for speakers, so an SmX acoustically transparent screen was the ideal solution—hiding the There wasn’t much space left in the room space for speakers, hiding the Triad left/center/right speakers, while surrounds are in the ceiling.

Click here to view some before and after slideshow photos of this theater room.

About the Author:
Arlen Schweiger - Managing editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen contributes product news items to electronichouse.com along with his role on the print publication. Got a tip? Send it along!