[cpw]

Just spent a few days at a very high end custom home in Scottsdale, AZ in the Desert Mountain development. Played some golf at some great courses. Also enjoyed a beautiful home w/ all one would expect in such an exclusive venue. I'm usually kind of a snob when it comes to HT (even though I have a Marantz/B&W HT setup that ain't bad), especially when it comes to rich-guy, "I dunno what it is" kinda setups, but I was totally blown away by this rig.
It was a dedicated room with 6 seats (all electronically controlled, leather recliners), Crestron control of several hundred DVDs and a fantastic projection setup.
I don't even know what all there was but the speakers were all in-wall or in -ceiling and I just couldn't believe how good the audio was, even on DVDs I've seen dozens of times on my own system. Somebody charged this guy a ton-o-dough but whatever they gave him, he got a very nice theatre.
I guess my biggest thing has always been that there is no reason that a good audio system can't do good theater as well but now I'm beginning to rethink the HT as HT logic. Very impressive stuff, even if it would have been a losy place to listen to music.
Hmmm
CPW

 

[mjg]

did he have the thing where the popcorn machine goes on, and like it says welcome dave, like hal 5000 style.


Just wait until we got some serious voice recogition capabilities in about 5-10 years, jetson type homes for serious rich people will be around the corner, i know a few linguistics/cse double majors and they seem to have a really bright horizon with that kind of medium.

 

[Tuberoller]

While I still hate and refuse to do residential electrical work,I am doing another down/crossdraft smoking room in a new home in Chicago's Lincoln Park area. The HT in this place is utterly insane. The guy doing the sub work on the HT install says he bid the job at $380,000 and it will likely be a 12% cost bleed(meaning it will cost another $45,000 or so to get the job done). My work is costing more than $155,000 and there is also a game room being done at another $80,000( minus the games,etc) by another subcontractor. The homeowner bought two homes costing more than a million each and tore them both down to build this house. I was told total build cost on the new house will be around 9 million. The HT is not done yet but I have to say,I'm really not that impressed with the sound. I've seen and heard $25,000 systems that blew me away but I admit to not being a huge HT fan.