Media room furniture: comfort and beyond

When one mentions media room furniture the fist thing that comes to mind is chairs. Big cushy, comfortable chairs that any reasonable human being would love to spend a couple of hours in. And certainly, everyone seems to be an expert on what is comfortable: it just feels right! I will leave it to the masses to decide what particular chairs, sofas, recliners etc. are comfortable. There are, however, additional things to consider when purchasing furniture for the media room.

1. It is essential that no piece of furniture in the media room creates unwanted glare that will interfere with the viewing experience. Just because something looks good and feels comfortable it does not mean that it's the right thing for a home theater! Leather chairs, for instance, should be banned from such environments (unless you only have one row of seats). Microfiber will look just as good, but the light will not be bouncing all over the room, causing fatigue and disturbing the sense of vision in a manner not intended by film directors. This principle goes across the board. If you are buying tables, trays, media storage units avoid polished surfaces or cover them whenever possible.
2. Avoid furniture that causes noise pollution. You may not notice this in a crowded show room of a furniture store, but many recliners can really disturb home theater audiences. Consider ottomans or oversized chairs that provide plenty of space for someone to stretch out comfortably. Naturally, you should avoid swiveling and rocking chairs.
3. Even the heaviest of home theater furniture pieces can slide across the room over time, changing the configuration of the seating area that you have originally created. Unless you have plans to use your media room for purposes other than watching movies, consider properly installing the chairs. This may limit you to only certain choices of models and types of furniture, but if you are going for a recognizable "theater" look, it is essential.

See also:

• Media rooms pictures
• Media room lighting
• Media rooms - how to justify having one in your house
• Home theater - choosing the best room for your system

House Library Design

Home theater power conditioner and battery backup

Home theater power conditioner is probably something you have to worry about only if you have a very serious system in place. Also known as AC regenerators, these devices take AC wall power converts it to DC power, and then reconverts it back to "clean" AC power. The idea behind this is to protect your equipment and possibly improve the quality of image/sound. A backup battery is something that you should think about if you live in an area with frequent blackouts and generally unstable electric power. Not a bad thing to have if you want to make sure that your devices do not have to be reinitialized every time there is a power outage. Both these features (power conditioning and battery backup), along with voltage regulation are combined (rather inexpensively!) in APC AV H15 Home Theater 1500VA Power Filter and Power Conditioner:

From APC's power engineering labs comes the H Type Power Conditioner, a single unit that delivers pure, stable power for high performance AV. The preferred choice of power protection for high performance home entertainment systems, the H Type Power Conditioner combines surge protection, isolated noise filtering, and voltage regulation. Finally, there's a solution that eliminates stress on component power supplies, eradicates EMI/RFI and voltage fluctuation as a source of AV signal degradation, and protects equipment from damaging surges, spikes, voltages fluctuations, and lightning.

Hip and chic TVs - home theater meets fashion

This may be one of the most overlooked aspects of media room design: the actual TVs! It is usually taken for granted that the TV you are picking for your home media room is the right size, preferably 1080p, has a nice viewable angle and so on. Modern TVs are simply indistinguishable from each other: big black rectangles. Very rarely a little bit of silver or white is introduced. This, however, is only the impression you will get when visit the show rooms. Some manufacturers have limited edition TVs that can easily become true centerpieces of your design.

A very simple route to achieve an ultra modern and almost futuristic view is to make a very thin TV, and many companies have just such sets. Such is the Hitachi's 1.5 series:



JVC has a similar series named Procision. Slim TVs are also available from Sharp, LG and Panasonic.

Samsung has a line called Touch of Color. Here is the description:
While the crystal-like bezel frame catches light beautifully, it actually reduces reflection of light off the bezel. And since the rich red color is injection molded for a blown glass effect, instead of spray painted, there is less environmental impact. It's easy on your eyes as well as on the environment.



Sharp Aquos SE94 is said to have a "cornerstone design." This involves " textured finish with eye-catching corner accents and detachable bottom speakers to match modern home décors."

Swappable bezels (similar to software skins and cell phone panels that were popular not too long ago) are also used in Sony's XBR series.

In most cases, these hip TV sets are just as attractive in terms of tech features as their black rectangle counterparts. If you want to make your TV stand out, check out what's available! You may be surprised by the ever expanding options.

Home theater speakers in stereo mode: design perspective

Most owners of surround systems know that they can play music CDs or enjoy great quality from other sources of stereo sound, such as satellite radio or even turn-tables. The surround home theater system can attempt to use all the speakers you have installed, or you can disable the surround mode. The second option probably produces better sound that is more true to the original recording, because the center speaker is disabled. One problem, however, remains. Your home theater system is calibrated and focused with the big screen as its main feature. Now, do you really want to sit in front of a blank screen listening to your favorite music? Probably not. In fact, there is something very unsettling about this. And yet, this is what you would have to do, if you want to hear the music at its best. There is a solution, however. You can set up a mode in which the home theater system will use the rear and the side (left or right speakers), thus focusing the audio on a different corner of the room. Add comfortable seating in that corner and you have a whole new way of enjoying music in your home.

Home media room - how to justify having one in your house

It is quite obvious that anyone who has doubts about their immediate financial situation should stay away from major home improvement projects, whatever they might be. For the rest of us, here are a few ideas that should help justify upgrading to a better movie/sports watching experience at home.

1. A lot of people would like to have a larger TV screen. I believe it is a mistake to get the biggest set you can afford and plop it in the focal center of whatever room you use to watch TV all the time. Here is why. At this point in time we have a great discrepancy in the quality of television signals that we feed into our TVs. There is Blu-ray, HD broadcasts, regular DVDs, SD digital broadcasts, regular cable channels, VCR tapes etc. The problem is that although Blu-ray discs will look good on pretty much any size TV screen you have, blowing up the picture of a regular SD cable broadcast would reveal extremely low quality (compared to Blu-ray). The simplest way to deal with that is to avoid watching such sources of the screen that is too large. This, in my opinion, justifies creating a separate media room where you will only watch high-quality content.

2. Human psychology is such that we get used to everything. It is a very simple fact that once you start watching everything on the biggest TV screen you can get very soon this will not feel special to you at all. Imagine if you spent several hours at the movie theater every night watching everything from movies, to nightly news. This would get old very soon. I believe that home movie experience is something that must be cherished and kept as something special. Using a huge TV or a projection screen for all your viewing needs will quickly cheapen this experience. So, the solution is to have a home media room and (also important!) not to use it too much.

3. This is perhaps a minor point, but things like that do add up on the scale of the entire countly. The bigger the screen, the more energy it consumes. If you are watching a news report about energy crises and global warming on a "65 plasma TV you are not a credit to humanity (unless you are strangely interested in Katy Curic's dental work). Limit the use of a bigger screen for special occasions. You will be happy you did (see above).