Just as Trekkies are passionate about everything Star Trek, readers of ElectronicHouse.com are passionate about home theater installations. Lately we’ve been seeing many comments, on both our website and others, questioning the authenticity of this Star Trek-themed home theater installation in Florida. Even though it earned honors from the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) earlier this year. We had the opportunity to talk to Acoustic Innovations president Jay Miller, whose company was in charge of the physical design, fabrication and installation, and let him respond. He’s also given us some photos taken during construction.

The photo of the theater room looks fake or digitally enhanced. Were the pictures touched up in any way? - View Photo
As far as I know, the only thing the photographer did was color balancing and put a movie image photo-shopped onto the screen (which is standard practice for magazines). This just happens to be a really good photographer who shoots for a lot of the glossy magazines here in Florida, and that’s why I use him all the time.

Don’t the ceiling and walls look too smooth, though, so what are they made from?
The ceiling is acoustical panels with fiber-optic stars. It has a scrim, which is loosely woven fabric. The beige material that’s the spider-looking structure is about 2 feet from the scrim. We use conventional materials like plywood, flake board and wood construction where possible for studs, a neoprene barrier under the walls so sound would be tightly sealed, multiple layers of drywall, and our sound barrier material we call SoundCore.

That projection screen doesn’t look nearly wide enough to be 135 inches diagonal; is it really?
The screen is 118 inches wide by 66 inches tall, so the diagonal viewing is about 135 inches.

But it looks so small compared to where the seats are. They must be really far away from the screen?
The distance from the screen to the back row is 21.5 feet; to the middle row it’s 15.5 feet; and to the front row it’s 9 feet—that’s where the kids sit.

Arlen Schweiger - Editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen writes about home technology installations and product news and reviews for electronichouse.com and Electronic House magazine.