Now that Spring has finally sprung, it's time to go out and marvel at the superbloom of wildflowers—or not. For now, let's marvel at a fantastic Home Theater of the Month! As always, thanks to Anthem AV for sponsoring these articles. We encourage you to show some love and check out their amazing products at www.anthemav.com.
As a commercial airline pilot of 28 years, Bruce Norman (@boxpilot) spends a lot of time away from home. When he finally gets some time off, he enjoys indulging his passion for movies. "One of the first movies I remember seeing was 2001: A Space Odyssey. I saw it with my dad in a classic movie theater. I had no clue what the plot was about, but I was mesmerized by the spectacle. To this day, I am fascinated with every aspect of movie making—cinematography, film formats, cameras, lighting, sound, editing, you name it."
![Couch Wood Interior design Building Living room]()
This is the theater that came with the house. Notice the projector hanging from the middle of the ceiling and the 16:9 screen.
"My interest in having a theater experience at home started back in 2011 when I joined AVS Forum. I wanted to gain as much knowledge as I could about all aspects of home-theater design. I started with the purchase of a Sharp 65" TV. I quickly discovered that the picture out of the box was flawed. So, I learned everything I could about display calibration and set off to make it better. I bought CalMan, a meter, an early Lumagen processor, and a PC laptop. I was off to the races and soon had a fantastic picture."
![Schematic Rectangle Parallel Engineering Font]()
Dennis Erskine's plan is a thing of beauty.
"Next up was improving the sound. Our family room originally had ceiling-mounted LCR speakers installed by the builder. It was awful! I hired a company to rewire the room and installed a seven-speaker surround system with B&W Reference Series in-wall speakers and an SVS PB12 Plus sub. My AV receiver was a Yamaha RX-V3900. Again, using AVS as my guide, I bought the equipment needed to use REW to calibrate my sound. At long last, I had a great theater. Then we moved, and I had to start all over again!"
![Wood Building Wall Composite material Room]()
Demolition generated load after load of concrete that had to be carried out by hand.
In 2016, Bruce and his family bought a house in Park City, UT. "When we bought our house, I was super excited because it had an actual dedicated home theater. But the room had some serious problems. It had terrible acoustics, the projector was mounted in the middle of the room, and the ceiling was quite low. I immediately switched out the projector and replaced it with a JVC DLA-RS620. It was projecting onto a 133-inch diagonal, 16:9 screen. I calibrated both the projector and sound to make the best of what we had."
![Wood Floor Flooring Hardwood Plank]()
Here you can see the framing, insulation, clip rails, and rubber matting in the floor before the second layer of OSB is laid down.
"But of course, I wanted to make our theater better. I contacted a local Salt Lake City AV company, Real AV, and they set me up with Jared Walth. I made an appointment for him to come out and inspect the current theater, and he asked if he could bring along someone who was an expert in theater design, Dennis Erskine (@Dennis Erskine). I knew of Dennis' legendary designs through AVS, but I had no idea he was living in Salt Lake City at the time. And never in a million years would I have ever expected to have a theater designed by him."
![Property Building Wood Lighting Interior design]()
The drywall includes two layers sandwiching Green Glue and attached to the framing with sound-isolation clips.
"After Dennis told me what he could design, I knew I had to go down that rabbit hole! I was soon going to have the best of the best involved in my theater build—Dennis Erskine doing the design, Jared sourcing all the AV equipment and building the racks, Steve Kujala (@SteveKujala) doing the demolition and build, and Adam Pelz (@appelz) doing the audio calibration."
![Building Door Interior design Fixture Floor]()
As in many home theaters, the surround speakers are mounted in columns.
After about four months of planning, the build started by completely gutting the old theater. "The room is a concrete bunker—top, bottom, and all four walls—below the garage. The original construction had an opening in the rear concrete wall that originally held the AV gear, and that opening led into an equipment room behind the theater. We were lucky in that the opening was almost perfectly centered in the theater, which let us mount the projector in the equipment room.
![Window Building Light Wood Building material]()
The overhead speakers are nestled in copious insulation.
"We found that the flooring had been built up 12 inches above the concrete floor. By removing it, we lowered the floor and gained extra head room. There was a radiant heating system in the floor, which would not be needed, but it was buried in three inches of concrete. Steve and his crew had to break up the concrete and carry it out by hand using five-gallon buckets. It took many trips!"
![Property Building Door Interior design Wood]()
Here you can see some of the acoustic panels from QuestAI.
"Another surprise came when we took out the ceiling. Originally, we thought there were concrete beams across the ceiling supporting the garage floor, but there were no beams. The garage floor consists of precast, reinforced, hollow-core concrete floor panels that sit on top of the basement concrete-wall structure. By removing the ceiling joists, which were used solely to lower the ceiling height in the original theater, we gained another 12 inches. In total, we gained two feet of extra ceiling height, which greatly improved the Atmos experience."
![Wood Building Refrigerator Gas Flooring]()
The original double door was replaced with a single concrete door that weighs in at 300 pounds!
"Once the room was gutted, Steve started the buildout. This part of the project went very smoothly with only the occasional interruption from a nearby wildfire and having to commute to the site in blizzard conditions."
![Automotive tire Wood Gas Machine Tints and shades]()
The projector sits in this box with dual cooling fans and a Palladin DCR anamorphic lens.
"The demo, framing, wiring and drywall took about two months. Then Steve took a break to start another project. During that time, his crew back in Georgia fabricated all the wood trim. The craftsmanship of Steve's team was amazing. He took measurements and sent them back to his fabrication shop in Georgia, where they cut all the finished wood panels. When they were brought to the house and installed, they fit like a glove! Not even a hairs width gap in any of the joints. Amazing work!"
![Computer hardware Electrical wiring Audio equipment Electronic device Machine]()
L-R: The equipment room is located behind the theater. Two racks of gear support a superb cinema experience. The cabling is dressed quite nicely behind the racks.
Bruce's project is a textbook example of how to build a home theater. "The floors include two layers of 3/4-inch OSB sandwiching 3/8-inch rubber matting with Green Glue. The walls consist of two layers of 5/8-inch drywall with Green Glue between the layers, all attached to the framing with isolation clips and hat channels. The original theater had a double door entry, and Dennis reduced that to a single door so that Steve could install a 300-pound concrete door that is totally soundproof. The projection port is custom made with Edmund optical glass that also effectively blocks noise from the equipment room."
![Fixture Door Font Wood Home door]()
The entrance is beautifully designed and includes a flat-screen dynamic movie-poster display.
"Because the theater is built within a concrete bunker and then completely sound insulated, there is no sound transmission in either direction. When you're in the room, you can't hear any sound from outside, and if you're more than foot outside the theater door, you can't hear a thing. So, you can crank up the sound to ear-piercing levels inside and not bother anyone in the house. And of course, there is no light from outside the room. With lights off, you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face."
![Living room Wood Couch Flooring Floor]()
The only leftovers from the original theater are the Palliser theater seats.
"Another advantage to having the theater below ground is that it stays a constant 58 degrees all year round. The need for cooling is non-existent, but heating is required most of the time. It has its own HVAC zone, and the design has airflow from in-floor registers channeled through the walls and into the lighting soffit that rings the ceiling. The airflow is then directed to the front of the theater were the air exits from two registers in the soffit above the screen. It is 100-percent silent in operation."
![Building Comfort Flooring Floor Wood]()
The larger 2.40:1 screen makes for a far better movie-watching experience.
"Aside from removing all that concrete by hand, one of the biggest challenges was choosing a projector. Due to the size of the screen, I needed a projector with a lot of light, and I quickly learned that the cost of a projector is exponentially related to its light output! So my choices were somewhat limited."
![Building Floor Chair Entertainment Flooring]()
The color scheme is wonderfully coordinated throughout the room.
"Initially, we looked at the Barco Balder CinemaScope and the Sony VPL-VW5000ES. I didn't go with the Barco because I really don't like the rainbow effect of single-chip DLP. I liked the 5000, but it was very expensive and it was very long into its lifecycle. CEDIA was coming up, so we decided to see if anything new would be announced. Then came Covid, and everything stopped! So, I lived with my existing JVC DLA-RS620 for a year and a half. Finally, Sony announced a new projector, but it was also very expensive, and reviews seemed mixed. About that time, I was offered a new Sony VW5000ES through Jared and Show & Tell AV at a price I couldn't refuse, so I jumped on it. I've now had the Sony for a year and a half, and I love it."
![Audio equipment Grey Wood Gas Circle]()
Bruce recently installed LED rope lights behind the screen so he could show off the front LCR speakers and four Seaton subwoofers.
Unlike many Home Theaters of the Month, this one was completely contracted out. "I watched! Actually, I did just complete a DYI project in the theater. I installed an LED lighting system behind the acoustically transparent screen that illuminates the speakers. It consists of ProLuxe RGB+TW channeled tape lights on all four sides of the screen. They are controlled by two DMX 5 CH controllers and integrated into my Control4 system via an ART-NET DMX gateway."
![Building Chair Hall Wood Event]()
The new room is a masterpiece of understated elegance.
Interestingly, the theater has gone by two names. "Since Covid hit shortly after completing the theater, we called it the Park City Covid Cave. It was a place for us to retreat and enjoy movies during that tough time. Now it's called the Promontory Theater after the community we live in."
As you might expect, this build did not come cheap. "I'd estimate the cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000. Thankfully, my wife and I have had successful careers, which allowed us to even consider a project of this magnitude." Bruce clearly knows how fortunate he is to have such an outstanding theater, which provides an exceptional sanctuary after those long-haul flights around the world. Well done!
For much more detail about how Bruce's home theater came together, check out the build thread here.
Thanks to Joanna Cazden for her work on the photos in this article.
If you'd like your home theater considered for HT of the Month, send an email to HToftheMonth@avsforum.com with a few photos, a brief description, and a link to your build thread if available.
EQUIPMENT LIST
Sources
Oppo UDP-203 UHD Blu-ray player
Apple TV 4K streamer
Zidoo Z9X media player
QNAP TS-463XU 40 TB NAS with Roon Core
Mac Mini M1 Plex server
AV Electronics
Trinnov Altitude 16 preamp/processor
QSC Q-Sys Core 110F audio processor
madVR Envy Extreme video processor
Procella DA05-DSP 2-channel power amps (3, LCR, biamped)
QSC DCA 1644 4-channel power amps (3, surrounds & overheads)
QSC DCA 3022 2-channel power amp (1, Procella subs)
Seaton SEA-DSA-4000.1 power amp (1, Seaton subs)
Projector
Sony VPL-VW5000ES
Panamorph Paladin DCR anamorphic lens
Screen
Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 130 G3 (156" diagonal, 2.4:1, 1.3 gain, microperf acoustically transparent, 2-way vertical masking)
Speakers
Procella P610 (3, LCR)
Procella P6V (12, surrounds & overheads)
Procella P10Si subwoofers (2, behind screen)
Seaton DS18-12 subwoofers (4)
Cables
Tributaries UHDM Maximum 48G HDMI cable
Control
Control4
Power Conditioning
Equi=Tech 10WQ wall-mount balanced-power system
Intermatic Smart Guard IG2240-IMSK whole-home surge protector
Acoustic Treatments
Pliteq GenieClip RST isolation clips
Pliteq GenieMat RST underlayment
QuestAI Q-Perf & Q-Factor acoustic panels
Green Glue
Seating
Palliser 41454-46454 Stereo theater seats (9, left over from previous owner)
Room Dimensions
23' x 21' x 10' (LxWxH)
Seating Distances (from the center of each row to the screen)
10' (first row)
15' (second row)
As a commercial airline pilot of 28 years, Bruce Norman (@boxpilot) spends a lot of time away from home. When he finally gets some time off, he enjoys indulging his passion for movies. "One of the first movies I remember seeing was 2001: A Space Odyssey. I saw it with my dad in a classic movie theater. I had no clue what the plot was about, but I was mesmerized by the spectacle. To this day, I am fascinated with every aspect of movie making—cinematography, film formats, cameras, lighting, sound, editing, you name it."
This is the theater that came with the house. Notice the projector hanging from the middle of the ceiling and the 16:9 screen.
"My interest in having a theater experience at home started back in 2011 when I joined AVS Forum. I wanted to gain as much knowledge as I could about all aspects of home-theater design. I started with the purchase of a Sharp 65" TV. I quickly discovered that the picture out of the box was flawed. So, I learned everything I could about display calibration and set off to make it better. I bought CalMan, a meter, an early Lumagen processor, and a PC laptop. I was off to the races and soon had a fantastic picture."
Dennis Erskine's plan is a thing of beauty.
"Next up was improving the sound. Our family room originally had ceiling-mounted LCR speakers installed by the builder. It was awful! I hired a company to rewire the room and installed a seven-speaker surround system with B&W Reference Series in-wall speakers and an SVS PB12 Plus sub. My AV receiver was a Yamaha RX-V3900. Again, using AVS as my guide, I bought the equipment needed to use REW to calibrate my sound. At long last, I had a great theater. Then we moved, and I had to start all over again!"
Demolition generated load after load of concrete that had to be carried out by hand.
In 2016, Bruce and his family bought a house in Park City, UT. "When we bought our house, I was super excited because it had an actual dedicated home theater. But the room had some serious problems. It had terrible acoustics, the projector was mounted in the middle of the room, and the ceiling was quite low. I immediately switched out the projector and replaced it with a JVC DLA-RS620. It was projecting onto a 133-inch diagonal, 16:9 screen. I calibrated both the projector and sound to make the best of what we had."
Here you can see the framing, insulation, clip rails, and rubber matting in the floor before the second layer of OSB is laid down.
"But of course, I wanted to make our theater better. I contacted a local Salt Lake City AV company, Real AV, and they set me up with Jared Walth. I made an appointment for him to come out and inspect the current theater, and he asked if he could bring along someone who was an expert in theater design, Dennis Erskine (@Dennis Erskine). I knew of Dennis' legendary designs through AVS, but I had no idea he was living in Salt Lake City at the time. And never in a million years would I have ever expected to have a theater designed by him."
The drywall includes two layers sandwiching Green Glue and attached to the framing with sound-isolation clips.
"After Dennis told me what he could design, I knew I had to go down that rabbit hole! I was soon going to have the best of the best involved in my theater build—Dennis Erskine doing the design, Jared sourcing all the AV equipment and building the racks, Steve Kujala (@SteveKujala) doing the demolition and build, and Adam Pelz (@appelz) doing the audio calibration."
As in many home theaters, the surround speakers are mounted in columns.
After about four months of planning, the build started by completely gutting the old theater. "The room is a concrete bunker—top, bottom, and all four walls—below the garage. The original construction had an opening in the rear concrete wall that originally held the AV gear, and that opening led into an equipment room behind the theater. We were lucky in that the opening was almost perfectly centered in the theater, which let us mount the projector in the equipment room.
The overhead speakers are nestled in copious insulation.
"We found that the flooring had been built up 12 inches above the concrete floor. By removing it, we lowered the floor and gained extra head room. There was a radiant heating system in the floor, which would not be needed, but it was buried in three inches of concrete. Steve and his crew had to break up the concrete and carry it out by hand using five-gallon buckets. It took many trips!"
Here you can see some of the acoustic panels from QuestAI.
"Another surprise came when we took out the ceiling. Originally, we thought there were concrete beams across the ceiling supporting the garage floor, but there were no beams. The garage floor consists of precast, reinforced, hollow-core concrete floor panels that sit on top of the basement concrete-wall structure. By removing the ceiling joists, which were used solely to lower the ceiling height in the original theater, we gained another 12 inches. In total, we gained two feet of extra ceiling height, which greatly improved the Atmos experience."
The original double door was replaced with a single concrete door that weighs in at 300 pounds!
"Once the room was gutted, Steve started the buildout. This part of the project went very smoothly with only the occasional interruption from a nearby wildfire and having to commute to the site in blizzard conditions."
The projector sits in this box with dual cooling fans and a Palladin DCR anamorphic lens.
"The demo, framing, wiring and drywall took about two months. Then Steve took a break to start another project. During that time, his crew back in Georgia fabricated all the wood trim. The craftsmanship of Steve's team was amazing. He took measurements and sent them back to his fabrication shop in Georgia, where they cut all the finished wood panels. When they were brought to the house and installed, they fit like a glove! Not even a hairs width gap in any of the joints. Amazing work!"
L-R: The equipment room is located behind the theater. Two racks of gear support a superb cinema experience. The cabling is dressed quite nicely behind the racks.
Bruce's project is a textbook example of how to build a home theater. "The floors include two layers of 3/4-inch OSB sandwiching 3/8-inch rubber matting with Green Glue. The walls consist of two layers of 5/8-inch drywall with Green Glue between the layers, all attached to the framing with isolation clips and hat channels. The original theater had a double door entry, and Dennis reduced that to a single door so that Steve could install a 300-pound concrete door that is totally soundproof. The projection port is custom made with Edmund optical glass that also effectively blocks noise from the equipment room."
The entrance is beautifully designed and includes a flat-screen dynamic movie-poster display.
"Because the theater is built within a concrete bunker and then completely sound insulated, there is no sound transmission in either direction. When you're in the room, you can't hear any sound from outside, and if you're more than foot outside the theater door, you can't hear a thing. So, you can crank up the sound to ear-piercing levels inside and not bother anyone in the house. And of course, there is no light from outside the room. With lights off, you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face."
The only leftovers from the original theater are the Palliser theater seats.
"Another advantage to having the theater below ground is that it stays a constant 58 degrees all year round. The need for cooling is non-existent, but heating is required most of the time. It has its own HVAC zone, and the design has airflow from in-floor registers channeled through the walls and into the lighting soffit that rings the ceiling. The airflow is then directed to the front of the theater were the air exits from two registers in the soffit above the screen. It is 100-percent silent in operation."
The larger 2.40:1 screen makes for a far better movie-watching experience.
"Aside from removing all that concrete by hand, one of the biggest challenges was choosing a projector. Due to the size of the screen, I needed a projector with a lot of light, and I quickly learned that the cost of a projector is exponentially related to its light output! So my choices were somewhat limited."
The color scheme is wonderfully coordinated throughout the room.
"Initially, we looked at the Barco Balder CinemaScope and the Sony VPL-VW5000ES. I didn't go with the Barco because I really don't like the rainbow effect of single-chip DLP. I liked the 5000, but it was very expensive and it was very long into its lifecycle. CEDIA was coming up, so we decided to see if anything new would be announced. Then came Covid, and everything stopped! So, I lived with my existing JVC DLA-RS620 for a year and a half. Finally, Sony announced a new projector, but it was also very expensive, and reviews seemed mixed. About that time, I was offered a new Sony VW5000ES through Jared and Show & Tell AV at a price I couldn't refuse, so I jumped on it. I've now had the Sony for a year and a half, and I love it."
Bruce recently installed LED rope lights behind the screen so he could show off the front LCR speakers and four Seaton subwoofers.
Unlike many Home Theaters of the Month, this one was completely contracted out. "I watched! Actually, I did just complete a DYI project in the theater. I installed an LED lighting system behind the acoustically transparent screen that illuminates the speakers. It consists of ProLuxe RGB+TW channeled tape lights on all four sides of the screen. They are controlled by two DMX 5 CH controllers and integrated into my Control4 system via an ART-NET DMX gateway."
The new room is a masterpiece of understated elegance.
Interestingly, the theater has gone by two names. "Since Covid hit shortly after completing the theater, we called it the Park City Covid Cave. It was a place for us to retreat and enjoy movies during that tough time. Now it's called the Promontory Theater after the community we live in."
As you might expect, this build did not come cheap. "I'd estimate the cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000. Thankfully, my wife and I have had successful careers, which allowed us to even consider a project of this magnitude." Bruce clearly knows how fortunate he is to have such an outstanding theater, which provides an exceptional sanctuary after those long-haul flights around the world. Well done!
For much more detail about how Bruce's home theater came together, check out the build thread here.
Thanks to Joanna Cazden for her work on the photos in this article.
If you'd like your home theater considered for HT of the Month, send an email to HToftheMonth@avsforum.com with a few photos, a brief description, and a link to your build thread if available.
EQUIPMENT LIST
Sources
Oppo UDP-203 UHD Blu-ray player
Apple TV 4K streamer
Zidoo Z9X media player
QNAP TS-463XU 40 TB NAS with Roon Core
Mac Mini M1 Plex server
AV Electronics
Trinnov Altitude 16 preamp/processor
QSC Q-Sys Core 110F audio processor
madVR Envy Extreme video processor
Procella DA05-DSP 2-channel power amps (3, LCR, biamped)
QSC DCA 1644 4-channel power amps (3, surrounds & overheads)
QSC DCA 3022 2-channel power amp (1, Procella subs)
Seaton SEA-DSA-4000.1 power amp (1, Seaton subs)
Projector
Sony VPL-VW5000ES
Panamorph Paladin DCR anamorphic lens
Screen
Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 130 G3 (156" diagonal, 2.4:1, 1.3 gain, microperf acoustically transparent, 2-way vertical masking)
Speakers
Procella P610 (3, LCR)
Procella P6V (12, surrounds & overheads)
Procella P10Si subwoofers (2, behind screen)
Seaton DS18-12 subwoofers (4)
Cables
Tributaries UHDM Maximum 48G HDMI cable
Control
Control4
Power Conditioning
Equi=Tech 10WQ wall-mount balanced-power system
Intermatic Smart Guard IG2240-IMSK whole-home surge protector
Acoustic Treatments
Pliteq GenieClip RST isolation clips
Pliteq GenieMat RST underlayment
QuestAI Q-Perf & Q-Factor acoustic panels
Green Glue
Seating
Palliser 41454-46454 Stereo theater seats (9, left over from previous owner)
Room Dimensions
23' x 21' x 10' (LxWxH)
Seating Distances (from the center of each row to the screen)
10' (first row)
15' (second row)
