Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Scott Wilkinson [00:00:00]:
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I profile a theater fit for Batman. Stick around.

TWiT.tv [00:00:10]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit.

Scott Wilkinson [00:00:26]:
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater geek. In this episode, I'm going to profile a home theater that I featured on ABS forum 10 years ago, but it is so cool that I couldn't resist sharing it with you. It was built by Chris Weir and I'm going to put the link in the show notes to the original article on AVS Forum, which unfortunately doesn't have a lot of the pictures that used to go with it that I'm going to show you right here because when they switched over systems or something, the link to those pictures got broken. Happens and it's unfortunate, but I'll put the link in there anyway. What the heck. So Chris is a huge Batman fan and a huge home theater nut, so he wanted to combine those two passions, shall we say, into a home theater that looks remarkably like a bat cave, which we will see as we go here. He started with a standard unfinished basement, as many people do, and he used standard materials and sound isolation construction techniques, including staggered stud framing, fiberglass insulation, mass loaded vinyl, and green glue for the dual layer drywall. And he did everything but the drywall finishing and flooring with his own two hands.

Scott Wilkinson [00:02:11]:
So this first picture here is a look at the framing and the fiberglass insulation in one wall. And in the next picture we can see the channels which, from which the drywall will hang on clips. And that isolates the drywall from the framing and the rest of the house to improve the sound isolation and that you can also see the mass loaded vinyl here, which is another means of sound isolation. In the next shot you can see that the theater is starting to look like a theater. And you'll notice the bat shaped stage in front of the screen, which, which is just one of many really, really good touches. One challenge that Chris talked about in the article was creating the cave like rock face facade. He said, quote, after a few prototypes, I finally settled on EPS expanded polystyrene foam because of cost, lightweight portability in and out of the room during assembly, and its ability to bond with several different types of coatings and paints. And he literally carved the EPS to look like rock and then reinforced it with a liquid fortifier called Boost.

Scott Wilkinson [00:03:40]:
Not the energy drink, but actually some sort of polymer probably before coating it in a beige, tan, brown, sandy textured paint with drywall, with a drywall spray hopper. So the next graphic we can see what that, that looks like along with one of the surround speakers. So I mean, that looks an awful lot like a cave wall to me. So aside from this rock face treatment, one of the coolest features of Chris's Cave Bat Cave theater is the secret entrance. He found a bust of Shakespeare in a and he put it in a bookcase outside the theater. And it opens up to reveal a red button, just like the 60s TV series Batman. You know, you open up the head of Shakespeare and you push that red button and it opens part of, there's a bookcase there and it opens the bookcase on a motorized mechanism. And he really took a lot of time with this too.

Scott Wilkinson [00:04:48]:
There are actually two doors at the end of a little corridor. The inner door is constructed out of two layers of three quarter inch plywood with a half inch gap filled with styrofoam. Very robust and heavy. And the swinging bookcase outer door is two additional pieces. The actual door that fills the opening when closed was built out of two by sixes and filled with fiberglass. The bookcase is fastened to the studs inside the door and aligned precisely. All, all the door jambs are sealed with rubber door seals so that you can't hear anything when that thing is closed. When and when it's closed, no one would know there's a Batcave theater in there.

Scott Wilkinson [00:05:31]:
But when it's open there, you can see that you're walking into this secret Batcave. I mean, how cool is that, huh? I, I asked him, I said well, what if you get trapped in there? And he said, well, they're commercial grade door openers with battery powered and they maintain a constant charge via low voltage wiring. And so the door open, the openers have slipping clutches so there's no danger of anyone getting a finger or a foot shut in the door. And the door can be pushed or pulled easily in a power outage. So normally he opens and closes it with an iPad controller when he's not pushing that red button. Among the paraphernalia in this Batcave theater is a high quality replica of a Batsuit from the Dark Knight. And there it is sitting in its niche. I mean, gee whiz, that's amazing.

Scott Wilkinson [00:06:40]:
Now at the time, this was 10 years ago, remember at the time he had a JVC DLA X70 projector 1080p undoubtedly with an anamorphic lens on a motorized sled so he could watch two, three, five movies in a in complete and full resolution. And he also had 120 inch Stewart Studio Tech 130 screen, a Marantz AV7701 preamp processor, Rotel power amps, Dynaudio speakers, really high end speakers in a 7.2 configuration. There was no Dolby Atmos at the time. He had a Marantz Blu ray player and a Mac mini running iTunes with 24 terabytes with nearly a thousand movies, HD movies. He also had a dish satellite tuner and a variety of game consoles. Now of course, video equipment has come a long way in 10 years and I'm sure that Chris must have upgraded by now to a 4K projector and 4K source devices. And probably I would say if I were him I would have added some overhead speakers for immersive audio like Dolby Atmos. But the screen, the power amps, the speakers, they're all still perfectly fine.

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:08]:
I would still use them. There's no reason not to. In fact, we can see the equipment in the next graphic when it's closed. You can see some of the acoustic treatments on the wall when the door is closed there. But when you open the door there is the equipment rack and a bunch of storage. And like Chris, I also really like my physical media. I know there are people who think physical media is dead, but I'm not one of them. I really like my disks.

Scott Wilkinson [00:08:39]:
In graphic 11, the next graphic we can see the iPad app that he used at that time called Complete Control. And a URC MRX1 iOS network controller passes the commands onto each piece of equipment. I'm sure I can't imagine that that app has not been upgraded by now. Or maybe he found a different one. But still, in all that's a great, great way to control your theater. So finally we see the picture of the theater itself, the finished product. Look at that. The, the screen itself is not acoustically transparent.

Scott Wilkinson [00:09:20]:
Doesn't need to be because the speakers are outside the. The speaker outside the screen. Sorry. And so you can see there the Dynaudio speakers and subwoofers sitting there on the bat shaped stage. And then finally we see a picture of the. Looking towards the rear of the theater and you can see seven elite HTS leather recliners, which, which are quite remarkable. They're really comfy. And the ambiance of the bat cave is continued throughout the place.

Scott Wilkinson [00:10:02]:
What an amazing job. What an amazing job. And he did it all himself. After six months of planning and two and a half years of construction, Chris figured he spent about a hundred thousand dollars. So you know, that ain't cheap by any means, but he did most of it himself. It would have cost twice that much or more if he'd hired somebody to do all the installation. And he told me the first movie he watched, Batman Begins, of course. Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you because it is so cool.

Scott Wilkinson [00:10:42]:
I would love to have a theater like that and I'm sure Chris enjoys his tremendously. Now if you have a question for me, you can send it along to HTGWIT TV and I will be happy to answer as many as I can right here on the show. And as you know by now, TWIT is offering all of its programming on YouTube for free, but with ads. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Go to TWIT TV Club TWIT to join the club today. Until next time, geek out from Silicon.

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