Attractive Basement Theater

For this home theater, we were brought in to make some upgrades and enhancements for the home's new owner. The theater needed a new projector, a new screen, a new surround sound system, a new control system to run the theater, and finally, a new lighting system that included a custom fiber optic ceiling and LED lighting in the crown molding.

For the new projection system, we replaced the existing projector with a new 4K HDR projector, but we had to relocate it to the rear of the theater to have extra distance due to the increase in projection screen size. We replaced the existing screen with a new 133" acoustically transparent projection screen.

We then installed a Roku, a cable box, a Blu-Ray player, and a new 4K AppleTV to be dedicated sources for the theater, apart from the rest of the house. A powerful 4K A/V receiver was installed to handle the video source switching and drive the new sound system.

To achieve the desired 7.2 surround sound, we placed 7 speakers around the perimeter of the room, plus two subwoofers. Three of the speakers were placed behind the projection screen since it is acoustically transparent and designed for the sound to be able to carry through the screen.

One thing that made this theater unique was the custom lighting touches the customer wanted. We installed an 8x12 fiber optic "starry sky" ceiling and then ran LED lighting strips in the newly installed crown molding. The strips are highly customizable. As you can see in the pictures at left, the brightness and colors can be easily changed to whatever color the customer wants.

To control the audio, video, and lighting, we went with a Control4 automation system. The customer was already using Control4 to control the rest of the house, so it was already familiar, thus easy to implement in the theater. We placed a Control4 remote control in the theater to interface with the system. In addition, there are two 6-button panels where the original light switches were, making it easy to walk into the theater and have 12 buttons preset to preferred settings. The customizable buttons can control volume, lighting scenes, video sources, really anything the customer wants to have as a shortcut. The benefit to these shortcut buttons, too, is that they can be reconfigured remotely at any time.

Finally, to house everything required to run the theater, we placed an equipment rack in a nearby mechanical room so everything could be out of sight and housed neatly in a single, easily serviceable location.