The Teschko family didn’t set out to create a home theater.
But when they learned they could have one in their finished basement in South Jersey for the cost of hanging a plasma TV and speakers upstairs, they jumped at the chance.
Now, with a ceiling-mounted projector shining onto a screen twice as big as the plasma’s, a red velvet curtain framing the screen and tiered theater seating, they have a special place to relax together — all for about $16,000.
“It’s a nice family experience when we watch movies together,” said Mark Teschko of Lumberton, N.J., as his wife, Michele, and children Kyle, 12, and Nicole, 9, settled in for “Finding Nemo.”
Home theaters are becoming more and more the rage, and some folks are spending far more than the Teschkos, said Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis with the Consumer Electronics Association.
At its most mainstream, the trend is reflected in the popularity of “home theater-in-a-box” packages that offer surround sound, which, when teamed with a 27-inch or larger TV, create the first taste of the experience. Packages start at less than $100 at Best Buy and Circuit City, and generally include a receiver and DVD player (often combined), five speakers and a subwoofer.
This off-the-shelf sector alone has become almost a billion-dollar industry, Wargo said.
Fun rooms
At the top end — starting anywhere from $45,000 to $70,000, according to audio/video dealers in the Philadelphia area — the sky’s the limit on high-style dedicated rooms with audiophile components and carefully controlled light and sound.
“We’ve done theaters as high as $300,000 for the complete experience,” said Jon Robbins, chief operating officer of Hifi House in Philadelphia. “These are fun rooms,” places to indulge your fantasies. So anything’s possible, “from putting stars in the ceiling, to building a proscenium to make it look like a movie theater from the 1920s.”
Home-theater seating, meanwhile, has become commonplace in furniture stores, with products by La-Z-Boy, Flexsteel, Berkline and Action Lane leading the pack.
The category “has mushroomed in the past two years,” said Jackie Hirschhaut, spokeswoman for the American Furniture Manufacturers Association. Such seating consists of the sophisticated “ganging” of reclining furniture into various configurations that may include chairs, tables or wedges, love seats and even seating with a sleeper option, she said.
Wargo traces the boom to the popularization of DVDs, which “raised the bar on audio and video quality,” and to the rise of HDTV, now in 7 to 8 percent of households, “about double what it was last year.”
“And that’s not just movies and sporting events,” said Chuck Flamini, sales and design manager at Frankentek Inc. in Philadelphia, “but concert DVDs and HD channels with concerts on them.”
“I don’t see [home theater] as much TV-driven as people getting DVD movies and high-definition feeds from cable or satellite . . . so if you want to watch Dan Rather on a 119-inch screen, that’s fine, but it’s usually not the way the room is used.”
The Teschkos watch day-to-day stuff upstairs on their old 52-inch rear-projection TV. Downstairs, they watch lots of sports, cheering on all the Philly pro teams.
To demonstrate what their subwoofer could do with crashing waves, the family showed the surfing DVD “Blue Crush.” They also have high-definition premium cable.
Michele Teschko makes popcorn in the microwave near the bar and puts out concession-stand candies such as Milk Duds, Starbursts and M&Ms.
“With this,” she said, “we don’t go out to the movies much anymore.”
At the high end
In Yardley, Pa., the Shah family enjoys watching DVDs and TV channels from India in their basement home theater. Its cost: about $76,000.
Perry Shah pulled in sitcoms, soap operas and movies from his satellite TV network as he stood recently in the theater, whose ceiling was imaginatively painted to evoke a galaxy.
“English is our third language,” said daughter Kruti, 19, noting that the family also speaks Hindi and Gujarati. (Both she and her parents hail from the western Indian state of Gujarat; her younger sister, Kristie, 16, is American-born.)
The ceiling painting — with a Milky Way swirling around a variety of craggy planets and crater-filled moons — was done by Faux by Design in Philadelphia. The company’s Shimon Suissa was recently working at the house to create a bar, pool room, exercise room, bedroom, bathroom and storage area out of the rest of the expansive basement.
Perry Shah turned up the lighting in the theater’s sconces to point to the walls, where diamond-shaped panels were covered in sound-absorbent material. “Four-by-four straight panels were available,” Shah said, but he didn’t care for them. “Shimon had these custom-made.”
Soon to arrive will be theater seating in black leather with power controls, but Shah was more interested in chatting up the sophisticated electronics installed by Hifi House.
When he was about to buy a new home three years ago, his builder directed him there to get the house wired, Shah said, and working with custom sales designer/engineer Mark Sandquist, “I got an education on what they can do.”
“That’s how all the TVs in the house are high-definition,” Shah said, adding that prewiring made the theater’s installation easier.
The Teschko home theater was a retrofit, and while that can be problematic, theirs was not, said Pat Mattucci of Hi-Fi Sales in Cherry Hill, N.J., who designed their system.
“The structure of the basement, with the ceiling floating off the joists, provided us with the ability to run wire above the finished ceiling,” he said.
A half-wall dividing the basement was removed, and Mattucci made the most of the space by posting speakers in walls and behind the acoustically transparent screen. The wall behind the screen and the speakers there were painted black so as not to reflect light, attract attention, or wash out the image from the projector.
Components were placed in a closet and are activated with an infrared repeater, which relays signals to them when you point a universal remote at a sensor. That not only saved space but eliminated the need for extra racks or custom cabinetry.
Keeping costs low
Mattucci said declining prices for some audiovisual components also helped keep costs down. The projector, for instance, was about $3,500. “Three years ago, it would have cost between $12,000 to $15,000, and then it wasn’t as bright.”
At almost $12,000 for the electronics end of the installation, the Teschkos were “able to get into the game,” Mattucci said. He pegged entry level for this key aspect of a heightened home-theater experience at $10,000.
It’s the beginning of a middle range “that holds a number of options for the consumer,” Wargo said. “It doesn’t have to be a fully dedicated home theater, and it doesn’t need to break the budget.”
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How deep are your pockets?
Sean Wargo of the Consumer Electronics Association breaks down home theaters into three spending tiers:
$500 to $10,000. From “home theater-in-a-box” to buying your own components for surround sound and installing them yourself. Uses existing furniture; may include the price of a TV.
$10,000 to $75,000. Better audio and video, sound control, some lighting design, fits in with the home decor. You don’t see wires all over the place. Involves an installer.
$75,000 to plus. Dedicated room, definitely involves an installer. Often, an interior designer works with the audio/video designer and plans color palettes so that seating, electronics, and the walls are integrated. Lighting is controlled. There’s soundproofing.
Prices vary with what you want, tradeoffs you’re willing to make, and what you have to work with, area dealer/installers said.
Hi-Fi Sales’ Pat Mattucci, who has worked with dedicated rooms starting at $45,000, said cost depends not only on the structure of the house, but the construction needed, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning issues and how much acoustical remediation and electrician time is needed.
Hifi House’s Jon Robbins says he can deliver a good middle-tier experience for a small family room starting at $5,000. The video display is key, says Robbins, who might suggest a 50-inch rear projection TV ($2,000) to go with surround sound components ($1,500), instead of the components with a 50-inch plasma TV (popularly sold at $8,500).
“But some people need to do plasma for space reasons, or want the wow factor of a flat screen.”
— Diane Goldsmith
