What is important to consider when designing a Home Theater?

What is important to consider when designing a Home Theater?

The performance of a Home Theatre is to be judged on one criterion only: 
Does the spectator believe the movie they are watching is reality? In other terms, does it achieve a suspension of disbelief?

Now, how does this work?

The spectator has 5 senses working, like in any situation. In real life, they feel, the sense of smell and the taste are only stimulated occasionally (mainly because humans have a, relatively, poor sense of smell), whereas the sight and hearing are in permanent activity.

Because of this, we are used to apprehend our environment by relying hugely on these two senses, sight and sound.

Now, let’s sit in a comfortable armchair in a Home Theater, and dim the light. What do we actually perceive?

Well, what we see is a screen. 

What we hear is a sound, which is also coming from the screen.

Let’s note here that if the sound we hear is not coherent with the image we see, like if it is coming from outside the image whereas it should obviously come from inside, then there is no suspension of disbelief. The discrepancy immediately underlines that we are not in the real life

So, this is so important that I want to repeat it: What we see is only the screen, and what we hear comes from the screen.

Do you really think the screen is to be a cheap accessory?  

Actually, it is the most important part of the whole installation, and it deserves a lot of attention. In fact, the screen will determine whether you have a great Home Theater that delivers the true cinematic experience…or fail.

The best practice to design a great Home Theater is to start from the screen. Its specifications have to be:

1. Acoustic transparency: the sound needs to be totally coherent with the image
2. Total immunity to moiré effect: Any trace of moiré will immediately reveal that you are not living the action, but watching a lousy video
3. Total absence of artifacts, like hotspotting for instance
4. Resolution: The texture of the screen has to me smaller than the smallest pixel. This is particularly stringent with Ultra HD, aka 4K
5. Colour neutrality
6. Size adapted to a proper viewing angle (35°  per side, typically), according to the distance of the preferred seating

Now, once these conditions are met, you can go a little further with curved screens (more immersive) and with screens fitted with masks to adapt various aspect ratios.

Once you have the right screen, you can select the projector accordingly (it has to be bright enough once calibrated to provide over 15 ft.Lbt), the sound system (it has to be loud enough without distortion to match the size of the image. Please note that the larger the image, the louder it needs to be until you reach the limit set by unpleasantness)

Finally, you will end up with the decoration, which eventually you will not appreciate whilst watching a movie…

In conclusion, I feel the most important part of a Home Theater is the screen, because it is where it all happens. This is the very reason why I have become a screen manufacturer