High end home screening rooms

[Leo Enticknap]

How many people who spend the time and money to build their own screening room actually use them?

You are right in that the ones in the residences of movie industry people tend to be used quite intensively, but some others are little used status symbols.

When the covid lockdowns first happened I did several service calls to high end residence theaters, the owners of which tried to use them for the first time in years and discovered that things didn't work. We found a lot of early SDI media blocks and Series 1 projectors with lost certificates. In particular, I remember one NC800 in a residence theater that was installed in 2011, and which I found in 2020 had 27 hours of card cage time on the clock. It was in the residence of a venture capitalist who, from what I could find out online, had no significant connections to the entertainment industry.

[Dave Macaulay]

We are about to renovate a home theatre with a new SP4K and a lot more. Yes, all speakers are hidden. New Stewart screen going in. Nice setup. It was 35mm changeover with a weird video projector, that was all taken out years ago. CP2020 and DSS200 coming out.

[Allan Barnes]

Oh boy... a DOLBY DSS 200 we should talk.

[Scott Jentsch]

How many people who spend the time and money to build their own screening room actually use them?

Of course, people in show biz would. A director or producer would, definitely use his home screening room. It's part of their job. Actors and others would, too. However, unless you are in the biz, what would you really do with all that equipment and furniture? Are they the kind of people who have parties and invite people over to watch movies, all the time? Great! I'd love to do something like that!

To be honest, I think the great majority of home theaters, like this, end up sitting dark most of the time. If anything, they might get used as a glorified (and expensive) family room.

I love movies. I love projectors and computers. I love using machines to make and show movies but the point is in the doing, not in the having. I want to show movies for other people to enjoy. I want to be that guy who works, upstairs, in that dark room, behind the window, so that other people can have two hours out of their busy days to just sit back, relax, watch a movie, eat some popcorn and forget about their troubles for just a little while.

It makes me feel very sad to think that so many people build theaters in their houses, spend all that time, and waste all that money just for everything to sit there and collect dust.

A dark, empty theater is a sad and lonely place!

The same argument could be used for people who own boats, motorcycles, snowmobiles, etc. Heck, even patio furniture and outdoor grills. You could go out to eat quite a bit for the money that a decent patio set and a gas grill costs. Snowmobiles are only good for the winter months, and even then these days, not much usable snow falls in many areas that used to get more.

Media rooms like this are an extremely extreme example, of course. They are to home theater as a boat is to a super-yacht.

That said, home theaters are great things to have! (no soundbars please) I know people that use them weekly, sometimes more. It often goes in streaks, but it's always there ready to go. It's no worse than having a rec room that has arcade machines, a bar, pool tables, foosball tables, et al. You don't use it every day, but as long as you're happy with your investment of time and money, that's all that really matters.

Want to know where your teenagers are and who they spend time with? Whether it's playing movies or video games, there's no match for a large screen and impressive sound system to make an impression on otherwise hard-to-impress teens.

For the most part, my home theater setup can (relatively) outperform the average movie theater auditorium, and the best feature of all is that I'm in charge. I pick the showtime, the title, and the volume level. I always get my favorite seat and the concessions are cheaper. If something needs improvement, I know the management.

Now, give me a high level movie theater experience and I'll be there! Unfortunately, such experiences are few and far between for many people, so they can't be blamed for doing it themselves.

If anything, home theaters can increase the enjoyment of the movie-watching hobby. The hard part for many movie theaters is that people who take the time to have a home theater often are difficult people to attract to mediocre presentations. Just like my favorite restaurant can make a filet mignon that melts in my mouth and offers an experience I could never get at home, a good movie theater should be able to exceed the experience of any home theater (that doesn't reach into extremes like the OP showed).

[Randy Stankey]

I'd love to build my own theater at home but, even if I had the money, I'd still have to think about it.

I don't know... Maybe I'd build a small, single screen theater and run it as a business. I wouldn't show movies every day. Maybe only on weekends. The goal wouldn't, necessarily, be to make money but more just to cover the cost of operating and maintaining.

It would be an expensive proposition and it would take a lot of work but my goal of having a theater isn't just for myself. I get my psychological supply from working for other people to watch movies and enjoy themselves. In my mind, building a theater at home would be a waste and it would be a shame to see all that expensive equipment just moldering and collecting dust.

[Dave Macaulay]

@allan barnes "Oh boy... a DOLBY DSS 200 we should talk" not sure what will happen to it.

[Leo Enticknap]

Until about a couple of years ago, any used DSS200 that we acquired would be resold almost immediately. Sometimes I was even called into the shop as a high priority calendar entry to check them out (internal clean, replace CMOS battery and internal cat862 Ethernet cable, check that the drives and cat862 were OK, reinstall a clean software image, etc.), such was the waiting list that we had. I suspect that a lot of customers either didn't want the disruption of rewiring their rack and pedestal for an IMS, and/or were using a Dolby DSL TMS, and wanted a replacement server that would work with it. It's like the aviation industry cliche that the only viable replacement for a DC-3 is another DC-3: there were many who believed that the only viable replacement for a DSS200 was another DSS200.

That seems to have stopped in the last 1-2 years. The last used but OK DSS200 we acquired was around this time last year, and it sat in our test room unsold (but powered up monthly to charge the battery) until just after Christmas.

[Steve Guttag]

For DSS200s (or DSS220s)...we only even try to get them for those that are using either a DSL or are using the Mini-plex TMS feature (3 screens or less). Truthfully, it is only the CAT862 or the CAT 745 (the mediablocks) that really end their life. Most every other part can be had, including the motherboard.

The other realities are, some content just doesn't seem to be as compatible with captions dependent on the ICP (Cine Canvas) for rendering...we get the occasional caption problems.

Another piece that is missed by our clients are the full-speed transfers, even while the show is running. The GDC SR-1000s with Cine-Cache can do that and, I hear, if one has the NEW SSD based PSD can also do it. Another thing, related, that is missed with the "box servers" is that the projector can be on or off and the content can be moved about.

A growing problem I'm seeing on the DSS200 with CAT862s is how often the CAT862 has to be purged of KDMs...while it should be automatic and via the UI, it appears that way...but it won't take any more in until one deletes them all and tries again.

[Brad Miller]

A growing problem I'm seeing on the DSS200 with CAT862s is how often the CAT862 has to be purged of KDMs...while it should be automatic and via the UI, it appears that way...but it won't take any more in until one deletes them all and tries again.

If I recall correctly, the cat862 can only hold 200 KDMs. Yes that seems ridiculous, but the argument I got was back when it was designed, why would anyone ever need more than that?

I seem to remember the old KDMs do purge on their own, but not until they have time-expired. These days it's easy to have more than 200 active KDMs in a media block.

[Steve Guttag]

The new Avatar alone will hit 200 KDMs.

I think it is more than the limit. You can have less than 200 KDMs showing and it will still get a point where it can't ingest anymore and gets stuck that way (the ingest bar that goes back and forth does so, forever) and the Delete All button remains greyed. You have to reboot the thing and catch it right before it starts to try again.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'd love to build my own theater at home but, even if I had the money, I'd still have to think about it.

I don't know... Maybe I'd build a small, single screen theater and run it as a business. I wouldn't show movies every day. Maybe only on weekends. The goal wouldn't, necessarily, be to make money but more just to cover the cost of operating and maintaining.

It would be an expensive proposition and it would take a lot of work but my goal of having a theater isn't just for myself. I get my psychological supply from working for other people to watch movies and enjoy themselves. In my mind, building a theater at home would be a waste and it would be a shame to see all that expensive equipment just moldering and collecting dust.

Building a professional screening room is an expensive proposition, but you can go along in stages and improve it piece by piece. I think building something like that on your own is different than a rich guy buying a yacht or said screening room for himself. For those people, those things are just a checkbox item, for you, it's a passion project. Even if it ends up being an expensive thing, I think it matters more than the screening room the ultra rich guy had built for himself, which he then barely uses.

We've built a "flexible screening room" for commercial purposes, that can be reconfigured for all kinds of content production too. But we don't just use it for that, outside of business hours we use it to show movies to friends, family and employees. We also regularly organize video game nights. I found myself watching a movie in there, that nobody else wanted to watch a few times. But to be honest, it's simply not the same. Going to a movie theater is more than just watching a movie, it's sharing that experience with others that makes it special. So, I rarely find myself watching anything on my own in that room, unless it's strictly work related. I still watch movies in the theater... actually, when I'm on the road, I try to find excuses to watch movies in a theater I've not visited yet, even if I know the movie is bad... I'm probably a weird case, but I simply love movie theaters. I guess I could have worse defects...

[Philip Jones]

The new Avatar alone will hit 200 KDMs.

I think it is more than the limit. You can have less than 200 KDMs showing and it will still get a point where it can't ingest anymore and gets stuck that way (the ingest bar that goes back and forth does so, forever) and the Delete All button remains greyed. You have to reboot the thing and catch it right before it starts to try again.

We haven't had this problem with ours, but we do get it where it says "insufficient space" when trying to ingest KDMs (even when there's loads of space) and we then have to manually delete them and re-ingest everything we need. Always a bit of a worrying moment after you've deleted perfectly good KDMs and the brief panic about whether they'll re-ingest OK.

I did have it once where after deleting them it still said "insufficient space", but a reboot of the server solved that.

It happens about every 4 or 5 months for us.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I'd love to build my own theater at home but, even if I had the money, I'd still have to think about it.

I don't know... Maybe I'd build a small, single screen theater and run it as a business. I wouldn't show movies every day. Maybe only on weekends. The goal wouldn't, necessarily, be to make money but more just to cover the cost of operating and maintaining.

It would be an expensive proposition and it would take a lot of work but my goal of having a theater isn't just for myself. I get my psychological supply from working for other people to watch movies and enjoy themselves. In my mind, building a theater at home would be a waste and it would be a shame to see all that expensive equipment just moldering and collecting dust.

Certainly more expensive than a home setup, but I feel like a cinema tech doing it is a different cost proposition than your average "I want to run a cinema" business person. Having a tech background means you know how to get the most out of previous generation/used equipment etc. You won't be building an HDR ATMOS or Dolby Vision room... but you would get to show movies for people "how they were meant to be experienced" up to the technology generation limits, whether that's on film or digital.... which is pretty rare these days even in fully functioning theatres. Maybe to scratch that itch, instead of doing it on your own, perhaps there is a local film club that has been trying to scrape together a screening room, and help from someone like you could really turn their game up several notches, and give you an excuse to help operate a room that the public visits?