When I saw this my jaw dropped in a kind of joyful alarm.  I had never thought of something like this myself, and yet, in retrospect, it’s the most perfect idea EVER.  Ken Allwine managed to stun me into incoherence by creating a drive in home theater…in his driveway.

It quite literally is the PERFECT idea.  You’re already in the car.  There’s enough room in the driveway for a car and then some, so why not put up a projector screen and make your own drive in theater!

Most of his equipment is housed inside the garage so it’s protected from the elements, but outside is a speaker array and the eight by twelve foot screen.  It’s a pretty big setup, with room for thirty or forty people (not thirty or forty CARS, though), and shields the viewers from the lights and sound of the street outside.  Viewers actually say it works like a small amphitheater.

But by way of specifics, it’s got a Crown amplifier, a Sony DVD player, an InFocus projector, Fisher speakers and some extra custom gear.

When a theater can present the kind of thing that anyone probably should have thought of before, but didn’t, well…it’s got to be a sweet home theater setup.

It’s possible you’ve already heard the name of Ruben Ortiz, the guy who build SmX Cinema Solutions, a company that deals primarily in home theater gear.  But what you may not know is that his company got his start as part of his very own sweet home theater setup.

He developed what’s called an “acoustically transparent screen surface”, which basically reduces the amount of sound distortion caused by the screen.  Naturally, one of his screens is in his own home theater (which may well be the strongest endorsement anyone can give a product) but it’s not just the choice screen that makes Ruben Ortiz’s home theater setup a sweet one.

You can tell from the picture that he’s got one of those awesome star fields in there, which alone makes most any home theater setup a sweet one, but he’s also got Crown amps, Klipsch speakers, an Xbox
360 and a PS3, which of course serve double-duty as DVD and Blu-ray players, and a SIM2 C3X Lumis 1080 projector.  Plus there’s his own SmX screen, which is a whopping one hundred and forty inches.

When you care enough to use your own custom-designed hardware, it can’t be any less than a sweet home theater setup.

Out at Skywalker Sound, there’s a home theater setup that may well set the standard for home theater: George Lucas’ own home theater, The Stag.

We’re not talking about that one today.

What we ARE talking about today is the home theater setup made in RESPONSE to The Stag, made by a home theater installation company, Charisma Productions.

This six figure replica contains a superabundance of awesome components to show those customers sitting on the fence the kind of power and majesty they can have sitting in their very own basement if they’re willing to drop a check equivalent, in some places, to the value of an entirely new house.  The Stag replica, for example, includes THX home components and speakers, along with a JVC digital projector, JBL subwoofers and Crown amplifiers.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the Stag replica is the sincerest form of sweet home theater setup.