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TECH TALK:
A TUSCAN VILLA IN CENTRAL FLORIDA
By: Brent Butterworth Many high-end custom homes include a dedicated theater for movie-watching and a more casual room for everyday TV viewing. The owner of this home wanted both options combined in one space. Absolute Sound, a custom-installation firm based in Winter Park, FL, gave the homeowner exactly what he wanted. "He didn't want a theater, but wanted to have the impact of a theater," Absolute Sound co-owner Ted Hollander explains. "He wanted to watch TV on a normal-sized screen, but demanded something beyond that for watching movies. I steer a lot of our clients in that direction." For many, watching television 24-7 on a big-screen TV waters down the experience, desensitizing the viewer to the impact of the large screen. "However, the home's other rooms are too formal to make good TV rooms, so we had to get both experiences from the same space," he adds. Absolute Sound employed several techniques to bring the homeowner's dream to life. First, he mounted the Runco DTV-992 video projector on a motorized lift so it tucks into the ceiling automatically when the screen is not in use. The Hollander specified a trapdoor-style mount for the Stewart Luxus 110-inch screen so it, too, retires into the ceiling when the movie ends. All of the equipment, including the 450-series loudspeakers by Atlantic Technology, hide in custom-made cabinetry that also holds the Mitsubishi rear-projection TV on which the homeowner watches daily fare. The custom cabinetry presented a challenge for Hollander, who preferred a different design. "The two doors below the Mitsubishi TV meet right where the center speaker should be," he says, adding that he proposed putting three doors across the front instead of two. The doors that conceal the Mitsubishi TV meet in the center, but the seam looked strange with three doors below it. "We were able to make everything work by returning the horizontal center speaker that came with the Atlantic system and purchasing a vertical one instead, which is identical to the front left and right speakers," Hollander says. "That way, we only had to move the center speaker over a few inches: the subwoofer sits behind the other door. In the end, I lost that battle, but it didn't turn out to be that big a deal." |