Now showing ... downstairs

Cost of a home theater has come down to earth, but the sky's still the limit

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 3, 2006 at midnight

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Allen Stevens likes to unwind from a grueling day at the office with the sound of bullets whizzing past his ears.

The Evergreen resident's home theater features a 62-inch plasma TV and surround-sound speakers that bring the sniper's gunfire and thumping soundtracks of his favorite video games to life.

"One of the primary reasons I bought the big screen was for those games, even though I told my wife it was for movies," Stevens said.

The 40-year-old financial planner's $55,000 home theater project might be at the higher end of such rooms, but he's part of the larger trend of -homeowners dedicating a room to the entertainment experience.

A home theater can be as simple as a couple of thousand dollars for a large-screen TV with five surround speakers, to hundreds of thousands of dollars for theaters designed by the renowned -Keith Yates, which feature details such as separate cooling systems for the projector, 14 lighting zones and speakers mounted behind the screen so sounds align exactly with the picture.

"Home theaters have become the front-loading washer (and) dryers," said Patrick Condon, president and founder of Finished Basements, a design and building firm. "People don't ask, 'Do we really need this?' because everyone else already has one."

Plummeting prices for HDTVs spurred the demand for customers to trick out their entertainment systems. HDTV buyers often realize once they flip on their sets that the sound isn't as cinematic as they imagined, so they buy a 5.1 (Five is for two front and two rear speakers, plus a center channel that primarily handles dialogue. The ".1" is the subwoofer.) surround system so they can hear a stadium full of fans cheering during football games.

On a modest budget, customers can pick up a $1,500 five-speaker audio system, or about $1,000 for a two-speaker and one-subwoofer Dolby system, at places like Denver-based audio video retailer ListenUp.

"A home theater system 15 years ago was fairly expensive, and the average person assumed they'd spend $25,000," said Roger Koehler, founder and co-owner of The Big Picture, a home theater specialty store with three locations in the metro area. But these days, the average bill for his customer - including a big-screen TV, projector, DVD player, speakers and installation - is around $7,500.

The least-expensive solution is a home theater in a box, which sells for around $1,000 and is typically easy to assemble. But sometimes that convenience comes at a price, retailers say, because individually sold components tend to have higher quality.

Even Consumer Reports says it can be smart to hire an installer, who can mount the speakers on a wall, hide the wires, and - perhaps most important - consolidate the jumble of DVD, VCR, cable box, TiVo and HDTV remotes into one.

"That was the best thing," said Stuart Davis, a Greenwood Village resident who turned his basement into a home theater in 2004. "The one remote is idiot-proof."

Davis said he and his wife, Charlotte, who have three children ages 16, 13 and 7, decided to convert their unused basement to a home theater mostly so they could have a place "for the kids to have their friends over."

The room, which features leather seats and a wet bar, also turned out to be a great room for hosting friends for the Super Bowl, Davis said.

A lot of home theater buyers like Davis are increasingly moving away from the idea of a dedicated home theater room and instead are making it into more of a general purpose entertainment room, said Furnished Basement's Condon.

If you buy a newly built house these days, odds are it will come equipped with a home theater. Thornton-based Ultimate Electronics has a division dedicated to working with home builders such as Lennar Homes, KB Homes and Vantage Homes to install big-screen TVs, speakers and other equipment during the construction phase.

"Homeowners purchasing their second home recognize that they want these features in their home," said Marc Hoffmann, vice president of Ultimate's builder division. He estimates that Ultimate will install about 25,000 theaters in new homes this year.

ListenUp's custom showroom is home to perhaps the most enviable home theater setup in the region: the only retail display of a Keith Yates design, whose work can usually only be seen if you have entry to the home of one of his exclusive clients.

The showroom features a 14-foot screen, a Kaleidescape VD movie server that holds hundreds of titles and a Blu-Ray DVD player. But the truly technical aspects are largely unseen, like the 10 speakers hidden behind acoustic fabric.

"You could write a technical white paper on all of the details in this room," said Steven Weiner, ListenUp's senior vice president.

The room is really meant as a showcase of possibilities of cutting edge, and not for a customer to walk in and order the room. Weiner said it contains more than $300,000 worth of equipment, programming and labor from floor to ceiling.

$300,000

A Creston touch panel remote controls this home theater system, which includes a 16-foot screen at ListenUp, a retail home theater/audio system store. The control cabinet for the system includes:

• Direct TV satellite receiver

• Classé surround sound processor

• Kaleidescape DVD movie server

• Samsung Blu-ray high definition DVD player

• Runco processor for the projector

• APC UPC/AC line enhancer

$3,000

About 15 years ago, an entry-level home theater cost about $25,000, according to Roger Kohler, founder and co-owner of The Big Picture, a retail store for home theater. This system includes:

• A Sony KLV-32U100 32-inch LCDTV($1,599)

• DenonS-301 Virtual Dolby2.1 surround system ($1,399)

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