Home cinema versus Media room

Here at Sound+Image we get to visit some pretty stonking home cinema builds, often created by professional installers, sometimes by the home owners. Some rooms stand alone, others sit within an entire smart home of connected video and audio zones under the control of an integrated technology platform. In the best of such dedicated home cinemas, the lights dim at the touch of a button and the projector illuminates a huge screen as you settle into the front row of comfy cinema-style leather seating, put the worries of the world to the back of your mind, and let the movie begin.

As we address in our series of questions that follow, if you want a home cinema that achieves the maximum possible effect from the equipment installed, there really is no substitute for professional guidance and skills to guide you through the need for carefully calculated room design, room acoustics, projector throw and screen size, and the many other micro-decisions that are involved in the very best of dedicate home entertainment.

But before you even make that call, and especially if you’re planning to create such a space yourself, there are a number of key questions you should examine to decide what you want to achieve, and thereby establish the best path along which to proceed. Is it just for movies or for music too? Will it be a dedicated home cinema room where you view in total darkness, or will it be a room where the family is divided between multple activities?

Think things through, and the endless joys of high-quality home entertainment can be yours.

Q1: Media room or home cinema?

This is your fundamental choice from the get-go, and it comes down to exactly what you want to achieve in your space. Is the room to be a living area for multiple people doing different things? Does it need to be multipurpose, able to be used as a computer-based workspace or an entertainment space or a reading area, as your day dictate? Is it part of the traffic area in your home, between the main living space and bedrooms, say?

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then you’re looking at a multipurpose media room. But if your room is separate from the rest of the house, and is to be dedicated to the joys of movies and music, then you can choose to go the path of a dedicated home cinema and/or music listening room.

Once that’s decided, it helps sort your other priorities. In a