Home

The Great Escape - Right at Home Home theaters have become practically de rigueur for successful but harried professionals and their families	Business New Haven 1/24/2005
By: Lisa Micali

As the square footage in new home construction has climbed to unprecedented heights over the most recent decade, so has the desire for specialty rooms catering to leisure activities or hobbies - even though the number of people living in them has declined.

Many home-owners of means now favor homes outfitted with luxurious details and amenities such as copper roofs or state-of-the-art home cinemas, sometimes referred to as a media room. Indeed, they've become the latest "must-have" space ever since home entertainment evolved into a fundamental part of Americans' daily lives.

A media room can represent many things, as Ralph Cortigiano, proprietor of Take 5 Audio on Whitney Avenue in New Haven explains. "The term 'media room' [reflects] a room where most of the family gathers to watch TV, films and sports. It can be casual, semi-formal or a very formal space.

"For instance," he continues, "it can mean any room with a surround-sound system. We define it as a dedicated room for that purpose [video and music] only. It can be a family room off the kitchen, a room in the basement, a home theater or a screening room with full theater décor like columns, proscenium, lighting and theater seating arrangements. But they are usually distinguished by a large screen TV. That's what most of us think of these days when the term 'media room' is used."

Hollywood moguls in their palatial mansions have always had private projection rooms to view 35-millimeter film. It was part of the industry and an expected status symbol. As the technology evolved, the luxury become increasingly available to non-Hollywood types who could afford the substantial cost of building a screening room.
But it was about a dozen years ago, Cortigiano says, when the hardware became consumer-friendly enough that you didn't need a film projector anymore, but a TV and an input source like a VCR or DVD player, that home theaters became affordable for the average consumer.

Beyond the West Coast movie industry, the convergence of the suburban McMansion with high-tech audio-video wiring sparked the home entertainment revolution. With oodles of space to fill with something besides another guest bedroom, homeowners with ample disposable income eagerly adopted cinema-style entertainment and hooked up with AV gurus like Cortigiano to create big, comfy, windowless spaces to prominently feature the latest releases in games, movies, music and sports.
However, the appellation "media room" didn't originate in Hollywood or in 4,000-square-foot suburban McMansions, but in the boardrooms of the art and entertainment industries, explains Cortigiano.
"The term was established in the 1980s when advertising and architectural firms began powering AV equipment [particularly projectors] to input media [like mainframes] to pitch clients," he says. The next thing you know, the boardroom turned into the media room - and it soon leapt to the consumer market and into the home.

Along the Connecticut shoreline as in other well-heeled communities in the Northeast, media rooms have become de rigueur in spec construction. Still, their popularity is nowhere near as big as on the West Coast, according to Karen Stephens, a broker with Page Taft Real Estate in Guilford.

"Many new luxury homes now feature the latest flat screen high-definition big screen TVs with surround sound systems," Stephens says. "It's become part of their lifestyle but many put them in after the house is complete."

It only makes sense. "When you have a 3,800- to 4,500-square-foot home, the lower level is huge," explains Stephens. "You have to create additional rooms, or common living spaces. The advent of wanting more common space and using that space as entertainment coincides with the increase in personal disposable income. A bonus room - typically over a three- to four-car garage - affords you the space to have a media room."

But not necessarily. "A lower-level room is perfect, because you really don't need windows," Stephens continues. "You need a big space to accommodate the entertainment system, which typically is a big screen TV and the sound system. A lot of people are using cinema seating like loungers or rockers. Sometimes they use a big sectional as a way to furnish a media room. A lot of times, they're collectors of wine and they'll build an adjacent wine cellar. It's a way to further enhance the space."

Stephens says a home theater doesn't necessarily enhance a home's future resale price - but it probably doesn't hurt, either. While no specific statistics exist for media rooms, remodeled basements transformed into an entertainment area in Hartford will receive, on average, a 76 percent ROI. That's according to Realtor magazine's annual "2004 Cost vs. Value Report" which calculates the cost of remodeling projects and the expected resale value of those improvements in 53 cities. It'll cost about $53,000 and includes creating a 20- by 30-foot entertainment area with a wet bar, a five-by-eight-foot full bath and a 12-by-12-foot auxiliary room. (By comparison, an average major kitchen remodel would cost around $45,000 with a 79 percent recoup on ROI.)

Some of the reasons behind the home theater's newfound ascendance can be traced to economics, of course. But it's more than that. Faith Popcorn, the future trend forecaster and best-selling author, created the term "cocooning" in the 1990s which (correctly) predicted that Americans were increasingly desperate to retreat from an encroaching world. So we retreated to the privacy of our homes, where we renovated, added space or upgraded houses and rented movies (two or three at a time) and ordered take-out. Then we "armored" our cocoons - homes and lives - erecting a barrier to protect us from external threats (e.g., screening the outside world through answering machines or creating an online persona). Eventually the "wandering" cocoon materialized, where we now travel with a technological barrier like a cell phone or PDA that insulates us from the environment.

All the while the outside world, once so violent and vilified, became kinder, gentler: Crime rates dropped; downtowns reemerged with trendy shops and restaurants. Yet our focus on hearth and home continue to blossom, essentially shaping the rise of high-tech home leisure activities.

Cortigiano views the cocooning phenomenon as a direct result of what he calls "people's daily grind. Between work, traffic, kids, families, houses, parents - there's just a heck of a lot of stress today," he says.

"Our home entertainment is our diversion, it's our stress relief. That's where we can forget about what happened today and what has to happen tomorrow. We watch a ballgame, we watch a film or a TV program with our kids. We don't have as much time as our parents did, so we entertain ourselves at home. It affords quality family time together."

A well-furnished and well-designed media room can be the best seat in the house. Some of these rooms integrate recreational games like pool tables or arcade-style games, but most don't need or want competition to the main attraction: what's on the big screen.

When planning a space, it's crucial to look at practical seating requirements versus room aesthetics, advises Cortigiano. "Analyze how the space works versus how it looks, and integrate the two. Look at optimal speaker placement so the speakers work well along with some kind of discrete integration of those six speakers. If you have decent seating and sight lines, and your speakers are in the right place and the system is easy to use, you are generally going to have a good home theater or media room."

He should know. In the business since 1971, Cortigiano's home-theater projects range from retrofitting a basement to building a media room from scratch. Rooms can be as small as 12 by 12 up to just about any size. But for better home theaters, he says, expect to spend anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, plus furnishings. Add popcorn, and enjoy the show.


Planning the Perfect Media Room

Take 5 Audio's Ralph Cortigiano offers five essential elements to creating a home theater you and your family will enjoy for years to come.

1. Create a comfortable seating plan with good sight lines. Make sure most of your audience can see with their head straight ahead - not looking down or to the left or right.
2. Determine system use - and keep it simple. Allow the people who will use it most often determine how sophisticated the system should be. Your lifestyle should be a key determinant, too. Remember - you don't need complicated components, but easy-to-use ones. 
3. TV screen size should be large, but clear. The distance from the seat to the TV screen should determine the size of the TV to buy. Picture quality will enhance enjoyment.
4. Select a trusted dealer. Make sure the dealer installs and calibrates as well as program your system. A good dealer will always answer your questions even (or especially) after the install, and provide quality service.
5. Do the leg work - or get the dealer to do it for you. A good system doesn't necessarily cost more than a mediocre system, so look for products that provide balance, ease of use, good performance, good acoustics and serviceability.

— L.M.