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A butt-kicking home theater for a 3D diehard

For this edition of CNET's Show Us Yours we visit Alex from Worcester, Massachusetts, who describes himself as one of the last 3D enthusiasts.

David Carnoy
Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers. He's also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks.
David Carnoy
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Behind this door lies...

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...a guy named Alex, along with his home theater. He hails from Worcester, Massachusetts, and considers himself one of the few remaining 3D enthusiasts.

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Here's the room today, complete with two tiers of seating, a ceiling-mounted 3D projector and blacked-out walls. 

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This is what it looked like before he painted everything black. The room is 13 feet wide by 22 feet long. 

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He set up his front speakers on wire shelving units. The speakers are sitting on a piece of plywood cut to the exact size of the shelf. A 12-inch-by-12-inch sheet of black foam is on the floor underneath the shelf.

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The left and right speakers are Snell LCR7-XL, which have beryllium tweeters.  The center channel is the standard Snell LCR7.

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His projector is a BenQ TK800. It's an affordable 4K projector that has 3D. He says he chose this model because he's "one of the few remaining 3D enthusiasts."

"When I was building the room, it was very difficult to find a projector that did both 4K and 3D," he says. "There were only a few, and this one had great reviews and was fairly inexpensive. I could have gone with other manufacturers, or even other BenQ models that did a better job at 4K, but I wanted my 3D."  

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The room started as a bright room with light gray paint, white trim and a shiny marble floor. His system is based on a 9.2.4 Dolby Atmos setup.  He says he tweaked it a bit by doubling up the side surrounds and ceiling speakers. 

Those satellite speakers are Definitive Technology Pro Monitor 800s.

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This is what it now looks like with the speakers hidden. That's a 120-inch acoustically transparent screen. 

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Behind the curtain.

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The disc collection. "Now no one buys 3D anymore," Alex says, "It's only Imax major releases.  But I went crazy on eBay and bought all the 3D movies everyone was selling for cheap because they didn't want them anymore. I also went crazy buying 4K movies whenever they were on sale."

He says he has so many discs (almost 500) that he had to take them out of their thick cases and put them into sleeves I got from DiscSox. "You could call me a hoarder, but I'd say I'm a collector," he counters. 

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He has two rows of seating, each on a platform.  The first row is on a 4-inch platform with two mini Buttkickers mounted beneath the seating.  The second row is on a 20-inch platform. That row doesn't have Buttkickers yet, but Alex plans to add them in the future.

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He put the effort in and painted everything, the ceiling and the walls a dark black, with the trim a nice accent gray. He also put down a black foam floor.

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Some of the 16 surround speakers.

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Another view of the seating. For his subwoofer, he has a Sunfire TSEQ-10, "which pressurizes the room beyond compare with an impressive 2,500 watts of wall-shaking, house-crumbling power."

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His equipment room is located behind the movie room.  In there he has a Denon X6200W A/V receiver.  This is a 9.2 channel receiver, but he mostly uses it as a pre-pro.  Most of his channels are driven with external amplifiers -- four B&K AV5000 Series ii 5-channel amplifiers capable of outputting 185 watts or 125 watts. 

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He has a Sony UBP X700 Blu-ray player. "I originally had the 800," he says, "but I upgraded to the lower number after it got released." He also says he upgraded from an XBox One to an XBox One X when he got into 4K.

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View from the second row.

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Movie time.

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LED lighting so you don't trip over the raised platform.

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The room is still a work in progress. Recently, Alex added more ceiling speakers. Now on the ceiling he has top-front and top-rear speakers -- but what he did was double them up. So, on the ceiling he now has eight speakers.

"My wife thought I was nuts," he says, "but you can definitely hear the difference. The ceiling just comes alive when Atmos tracks play."

The ceiling speakers are Acoustic Audio Cinema Series CS-IC83.  They're 8-inch 3-way speakers.

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Painting the 16 speaker grilles outside.

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Here's one last look at this impressive DIY home theater. Thanks, Alex, for submitting it.

If you have a home theater you want to submit, just send us some good photos and there's a good chance it will get featured on CNET.

Submit your photos here.  

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