Keeping It Clean and Contemporary
By Steven Castle
This media room uses a 65-inch display with speakers mounted on the sides for an uncluttered look.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to design and install a new home entertainment system in this family room, incorporating a contemporary look with clean, sharp lines. No cables will show, and no bulky equipment will be exposed. There will be no clutter on the wall or ventilation issues. You will also use the best audio/video equipment available.

If you were custom electronics contractor Boca Theater & Automation (BTA) of Boca Raton, Fla., you might self-destruct at the end of this message. However, BTA persevered, and the result is a clean, contemporary look with all the equipment, sans the flat-panel TV, completely hidden (and keep in mind that this installation is a couple of years old, so imagine what they could have tried today).



“[The homeowners] were hot for a big, native 1080p display as soon [as that] hit the market,” says Jeff Galea, CEO of BTA. “And if they were spending the money, they wanted high-quality, reputable equipment that would last.” So BTA chose a 65-inch 1080p Runco plasma. An LCD was considered, but the biggest at that time was a 70-inch Sony going for $32,000, well out of this couple’s price range.

The custom-made Leon two-way LCR speakers on each side of the plasma were selected to convey the look of just a plasma with speakers hanging on the wall, instead of cluttering the space with in-wall left, center, and right speakers. These two speakers also do the job of a center channel, as Galea explains.

“Each speaker is two speakers in one. The left speaker is ‘left’ with an isolated center, and the right is made the same. The centers of the left and right speakers are paralleled together to create a phantom, yet present and pronounced center channel. We’re fond of this speaker configuration in cases such as this because they eliminate problems associated with locating the third speaker, yet they provide a real center channel.”

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