CES 2014

A consortium of flagship audio/video companies have once again teamed up to provide the most immersive, over-the-top home theater demo at CES 2014.

Using detailed engineering schematics from Antony Grimani’s firm, Performance Media Industries (PMI) they rebuilt a meeting room in the Venetian into the ultimate movie listening and viewing space. Grimani told me that his company reengineered the room omitting all of the “wrong” hotel dimensions, and coming up with the layout and design for the room’s seating, riser heath, screen size, acoustic treatments and more.

The results were stunning, as the images from the Digital Projection Titan 3-chip LED projector on the 150-inch diagonal Seymour by Screen Excellence screen popped, making 1080p video look as good as possible. DPI’s Michael Bridwell told me the projector had been calibrated to the Rec 709 standard, so colors were punchy yet accurate and with deep black levels.

Audio was provided by Triad’s new Cinema Reference speakers in a 7.4 configuration. The Cinema Reference are designed for large theater spaces where high – in excess of 120 dB SPL – output is needed. The processing allowed the flying fish and ambient ocean sounds from Life of Pi to swirl effortless around the room, surrounding you in the ocean isolated ocean environment. Unfortunately, neighboring booths had complained about the awesomeness of the volume, and the speakers had to be dialed back from their full, massive potential.

The HD content was provided by Kaleidescape’s new Cinema One movie server, which rapidly cued up demo content and jumped to the film's iconic scenes. Audio processing and amplification was handled by ADA’s Suite 7.1, TEQ 12 with Trinnov processing and the PTM8150 multi-channel amplifier. Rounding out the experience was D-Box motion seating, which delivered an extra level of immersion during the Star Trek Heart of Darkness clip where Kirk and Khan must travel from the Enterprise to the other ship.

While an exact price for the room was unavailable, I was told that it “exceeds $1 million.”