November 2004

Jim Hill, Editor of Home Cinema Choice magazine, explores a $120,000 waterfront picture palace.

A strip of land in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was the plot chosen by a top US doctor to build his $20million high-tech dream home. Outside the mansion overlooks water on both sides: perfect positioning to satisfy his passion for sailing and of course, for parking the yacht.

Inside, his proud boast is a dedicated home cinema, featuring Genelec speakers and state-of-the-art electronics, designed and installed by Scott Adams of Magical Media Installations. Magic Media has only been established for just over a year and has already installed over 20 home theatres

The sumptuous $120,000 room has seven luxurious leather chairs facing a 123in screen. It measures 20ft by 25 ft and the back wall is 10 inches wider than the front to deliberately offset the symmetry of the room to prevent the build-up of standing sound waves, where sound is bounced directly back and forth. The sound is deadened by the spongy Dynamats that have been built into the floor and walls to reduce harsh reflection. No less than nine Genelec speakers are cleverly concealed in the beautiful wood panelling that lines the room.

Scott says: 'To get the balance of precision, realism and power needed to drive a room like this convincingly, Genelec was the only option. We needed something that would deliver while sounding stunning. Day in, day out the Genelec's earn their living in professional environments like post production houses and recording studios where there cannot be any doubt about performance and reliability.'

The 7.1 system features 1038s in front, matching 1038BCM in the middle and HT210Bs at the sides and rear. A hefty HTS4 subwoofer under the raised stage at the front of the room supplies the '1' channel.

The sound processing is handled by a Lexicon MC-8 and the sources include a Lexicon RT10 DVD player, Mitsubishi VCR and Voom HDTV receiver. (America has been enjoying the benefits of high definition broadcasts for three years now.) The projector is a Dwin TV3plus, a DLP model with a native resolution of 1024 x 768, which beams a massive 6ft 16:9 image on to the Stewart Firehawk screen.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers DVD seemed like a suitably epic production to show off the room. The panoramic shots of rolling New Zealand mountains looked breathtaking on the big Stewart screen. Sonically, the system is flawless. With all seven of the big Genelec speakers firing, the disc's Dolby Digital EX soundtrack really grabs you by the lapels and pulls you into the movie. I was utterly convinced....when it comes to home theatre, the Americans really know their stuff.

Our thanks to Home Cinema Choice for letting us adapt this story.
Photography– Louis Austin