CEDIA 2017

Five home-AV companies from five NATO member countries entered into an ad hoc multinational alliance at CEDIA 2007 to demonstrate a 10,000-watt 7.4.6-channel $106,000+ home theater featuring premier products from each company.

The five companies are U.S.-based dARTS Theater by MSE audio, France’s StormAudio, Italy’s SIM2, Ineva Design of the Netherlands, and DT Screens of Scotland in the U.K. The five came together in MSE Audio’s sound room to deliver an immersive AV experience through a $49,450 fourth-generation dARTS DSP amplifier/speaker system; $11,500 MSRP 16-channel StormAudio ISP 3D.16 Elite surround/preamp processor with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Auro-3D; SIM2 Multimedia’s $30,000 Nero 4 UHD projector with HDR, 8.3-million-pixel TI DLP chipset and up to 5,000 ANSI lumens of light output; DT Screens’ $4,868 DT-FRNT-300 acoustically transparent wall-mount projection screen with aluminum frame; and several Ineva Design home-theater seats priced at $3,550 and up.

The companies staged their joint demo in MSE Audio’s sound room, where the SIM2 projector upscaled 1080p Blu-ray content that included clips from war movie Unbroken and Game of Thrones. The soundtracks were delivered through Dolby Atmos sound tracks with explosive impact and fluid movement of sound around and above listeners. World War II Japanese fighter planes and shrapnel zipped around and over spectators sitting comfortably in Ineva’s home theater seats. Rain poured down on their heads, and thunder made the room rumble.

Yet the exhibiting companies didn’t come close to cranking it up. The system could fill 18,000 cubic feet of space at 105dB, said MSE Audio R&D VP Ken Hecht. The demo room was but a 3,000-cubic-foot space.