Tiered Private Theater

This project began as a system replacement: the homeowners wanted the aging electronics throughout the house brought current, and a proper theater at the heart of it. The theater is a dedicated room with two tiers of RowOne recliners, four seats to a row plus two more on the back row, for ten in all, with wall sconces, step lighting, and a dark palette that keeps light off the screen.

The picture comes from a Sony 4K laser projector on a 120-inch acoustically transparent screen, which lets the front speakers sit behind the image where they belong. Audio is a KEF 5.1 system, floor-standing towers and a center up front, in-ceiling rears, and a KEF KC92 subwoofer, driven by a Sony ES receiver. An Apple TV and 4K Blu-ray player live in the rack, a Sonos Port brings streaming music into the room, and a Control4 remote runs everything, including two adaptive-phase dimmers for the room lights and a separate switch for the step lights.

Behind the walls, the house got a new backbone: a Control4 CORE5 controller with an I/O extender, an IP power conditioner for remote reboots, a Ubiquiti gateway and 48-port PoE switch, five ceiling-mounted Wi-Fi 7 access points, and an outdoor access point for the yard. A DSC security system with keypads, contacts, glass-break and motion detectors, and a smoke listener was integrated into Control4 so it shows up in the same app as everything else.

The rest of the house was fitted out as well: a 65-inch Samsung Frame TV in the living room with an in-wall box for the One Connect unit, a 65-inch Samsung in the game room, a 65-inch SunBrite outdoor TV on the patio, and Sonos 5.1 systems in the living room and game room built around the Arc Ultra, a Sonos Sub, and a pair of Era 100s each.