Six million dollar home theater system
My audio-nut and eFlea pal Steve Williams sent along a link to a blog about a fellow that has build a 6 million dollar home theater. The comments in the blog cover a range of opinions from citing the waste of money to a celebration of free will and capitalism and “more power to him”. Steve writes:
Wow, this brings up a lot of mixed feelings for me! I have been employed most of my working career as an audio/video installation tech. I have installed some high-end home theater, since before the term existed, though nothing approaching this!
On the one hand I would love to have been involved with the installation of this. It would give a great sense of pride to have done it. I would love to hear it. At one time I might have tried to conceive of something like this in my head and set it as a life goal to have some sort of ultimate room such as this. Between trade shows and houses I have seen/heard some pretty incredible systems in my life.
I started to wade through the comments. There was everything from specific criticism on a technical level to alarm over conspicuous consumption of resources, use of money, global warming from power consumption etc. etc. to a few who pointed it out as a triumph of capitalism and let-the-guy-spend-his-own-money-as-he wishes- to thank you very much!
… I am more and more "in check" as you might say, about such conspicuous consumption. It does bring up great conflict about the disparity of wealth from the most to the least powerful in the world.
I guess I am still not ready though to say "you can’t go this far" but rather that if you really have that much to blow on a home theater, (or for some of us an over the top car or house or motorcycle or anything else we don’t actually "need") then we need to be at least as generous, if not more so towards those who can’t even get by or make ends meet.
Because, after you and your friends have all seen and played with the toys, which can be short term fun for all us guys especially, there is only the quest for something even more over the top that you "can’t take with you".
My own criticism of this is not so much along the lines that he should be giving some of his money to charity, as opposed to what possible real and measurable benefit can be obtained from this Frankenstein of a sound and video system. All those speakers will just cause a lot of standing waves and phasing problems and muddle the sound. All those tube amps will just heat the air and distract from the video with their glow. You wouldn’t string Christmas tree lights around your TV and you shouldn’t do this. I don’t think he should have given the 6 million to charity, I just think he can get a better system for about 10 grand. Start with a Sharp 52 inch LCD and put it close enough so it still occupies the same arc of vision as his big screen. I get great sound from the 99-dollar Sony stereo that I bought from Fry’s. OK, I would go surround sound so that means I need two more for the back channels and the subwoofer. Those big $120 speakers I got at Fry’s work great too. Some sound deadening on the walls of a much smaller room and a nice leather recliner and I suspect no really rational person could say that one system looked or sounded better than the other. In view of the fact that HD source material is 1920×1080 anyway, and having one pixel represent one pixel on a 52-inch screen seems more sensible to me than using a bigger screen, placed further away, that has to up-convert to put 4 pixels or worse, yet, some non-integer scaling of the 1080i source material. Then you can use the $5,990,000 you have left over to buy crack or other recreational drugs. That will have a lot more effect on your psycho-auditory experience than blowing $6 million and creating the cognitive dissonance that it actually made a difference. Like my buddy Fast Freddie used to say:
“If I won ten million in the lottery, I would spend 4 million on drugs, alcohol and gambling. Then I would take another 4 million and buy a bunch of hookers, some fast cars, a bunch of motorcycles and a big fishing boat.”
After a long expectant pause someone would always ask Freddie what he would do with the remaining two million dollars. To that he would smile and say:
“Oh, that last two million, I would just spend that frivolously.”
Asad commented:
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