By Lisa Montgomery
Homeowner spends more than a decade dreaming and planning for his home theater.

We’ve all done it: strolled through a car lot looking at luxury rides we’ll never afford, or visited million-dollar show homes for a glimpse of how the better half lives. For Jim Hollingsworth of The Woodlands, Texas, a home theater was his pie-in-the-sky ambition—and one that had occupied his thoughts for well over a decade.

He can blame his obsession on Audio Concepts. A friend took him to the high-end Houston-based A/V boutique in 2001 to find a new big-screen TV. It was there, in a dark, private demo room, that Hollingsworth experienced home cinema for the first time.



He recalls: “The owner of the shop dimmed the lights and played Gladiator with Russell Crowe slaying the tiger in the Colosseum on a 65-inch TV. It was great … then he hit a button and down came a 100-inch screen and he asked me, ‘Do you want a TV or do you want a home theater?’ It was like asking a computer nerd, do you want dial-up or DSL? I was hooked, and all I could think about was how to get this kind of system into my house.”

Soon after, Hollingsworth contacted a contractor to discuss tearing off the roof of his master bedroom to build out a new space for a dedicated theater. Then 9/11 happened, the economy bottomed out, and Hollingsworth had to put his home theater plans on hold.

Fast-forward to 2009. Hollingsworth and his wife, Stacie, built a new house—and of course, included a room for a home theater. The 23-by-18-foot space sat vacant for about a year, though, as the couple put funds together for equipment and finished decorating the rest of their house.

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