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Home Theater IMAX Experience w/ A Robinson-Youtube

Anyone see this tutorial/educational viedeo series on Youtube? Home Theater writer Andrew Robinson has a series of Youtube videos on the subjects of home theater and IMAX Home Theater, where he discusses his opinions, experiences, and recommendations on home theater, HT theory and design, construction ideas, equipment, IMAX experience, technology, and so forth?
Looking for input on what others think of the series, the expressed opinions and suggestions vs your personal opinions, experiences, and competing advice on doing dedicated home theater?
I do find some of his recommendations interesting, but most of the time he demonstrates and suggests that all of this is, ultimately, "left up to your ideas, choices, and interpretations as what choices you make, equipment options and choices you chose for IMAX type of results"!!! Well I find issue with that, and don't agree with many of his opinions, choices, applications, suggestions, and recommendations, personally! Leads people to just do WHATEVER, and expect their dedicated home theater will be as good as anything, or "close enough" to high performance, IMO.
For example: in the IMAX series, he suggests that, since you can do an "inspired" IMAX system, you can pretty much just chose any type of loud speakers you have laying around the house, and they will work just fine!. Also, you can sit as far back and or as close as you like to the screen, and even forgoes the acoustics, from what I could tell!
Thoughts?...
avgoround
avgoround OP
287 posts
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upn4aeARWoc

Don't get me wrong...this kinda stuff, at least, does inspire me to want to design "better systems", and work towards putting a better effort foreword in building the very best HT scenarios I can implement. However, I just think that overall impression left by the series is one of "just go with whatever works for you", and it only end's up giving guideposts for "inspiration" for your project, and that all should turn out just fine!
My personal experience, over years of playing with this stuff, is that building a top flight system takes quite a bit more meticulous effort to achieve a quality final product, and that there's a right and wrong way to do things for best results, considering such a wide range of variables people will no doubt encounter. Basically, I find lots of holes in the details given here -or not given - which will, inevitably, hinder good visuals, integration, acoustics, sound and pic quality, practical application, and so forth...without more input and insight, and from lack of knowledge from the users end -All I'm sayin.
If you're gunna use a $2 million dollar IMAX home theater product as a "guidepost" , and clue people in to leaving things "up to you're personal interpretation", I think you're inevitably going to delude people into thinking what they end up with is nearly the same system or performance level, ...which it's probably not.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"My personal experience, over years of playing with this stuff, is that building a top flight system takes quite a bit more meticulous effort to achieve a quality final product, and that there's a right and wrong way to do things for best results, considering such a wide range of variables people will no doubt encounter."

I understand where you are going with this, but when you make absolute statements like "there's a right and wrong way to do things for best results", I think you'll be doing more arguing than listening to music or watching movies. What if you set up a system the right way and I don't like it. Does that make me wrong?

Lets look at this a different way and maybe you'll see my point here. List some specific examples of what you believe is the "right way" to do things when setting up a theater. Some basic guidelines that everyone MUST adhere to, in order to say that their system is "right".
criderfive
13 posts
 
I think he does a good job of explaining what he is trying to accomplish. We all know there are certain scientific rules that dictate how we are going to perceive our systems. He is saying we all don't have $2,000,000 to do a Imax theater at home but using a few Imax guidelines we can come to a reasonable fake for short money. In this day and age with the technology we have I agree with him.Like we all know most of us would do a ton of research before setting on such a quest. What gear you would use would be personal preference. The room and other factors are what we have to work with and there would be no way for him to cover all of that in a small youtube series.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"We all know there are certain scientific rules that dictate how we are going to perceive our systems."

I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about in the above quote. To me, scientific rules are variables that are fixed. They can't be altered. How we perceive something can vary greatly. Different people can have different opinions on the exact same thing. I don't see how scientific facts force everyone to perceive the same thing.
criderfive
13 posts
 
The rules are set, acoustics only work how they work, electronics only do what they were designed to do. Not everyone will perceive them the same way in different rooms or environments but they will always only work one way.Opinions are just that, without fact to dictate them they are worthless. That's the problem with this hobby, willful ignorance. Copper can only do so much but many claim they have magic that can transcend it's limitations. Silicon and magnets are barriers that even if you put a outrageous price tag on them will only do what they are supposed to do. I know quality is a factor and controls also but that is just another set of rules.
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