Okay, folks, time for a little of that old fashioned brutal honesty.  Not everyone will have a perfect rectangular or square room to put their home theater hardware in.  In fact, more than likely, most will have to deal with some unusual shaping, which means figuring out ways to deal with horrendous acoustics.

And in the case of today’s sweet home theater, they had a whole lot of weird nooks and crannies to work around.  I’d say the room was at least partially hexagonal with some…odd lumps.  So to work around that, they added various wood features to the room to give it a sort of defining feature, like a proscenium.  Then they added the hardware.

And oh, what hardware it was–they put in a Marantz projector, an SMX screen, Triad speakers and a Denon DVD player.  Plus, because the homeowner in question had a large family, they’ve got seating for eight.

The huge handicap that was the oddly shaped room becoming an incredible home theater setup definitely qualifies this for sweet home theater status.

Jeremy Hummer’s love of movies began when he was a kid, much like most of ours did.  He actually began collecting films–and I mean ACTUAL FILMS, like sixteen millimeter film–but quickly branched out to video when he discovered that collecting actual film was a difficult and downright painful process.

But as he went on, and his love of movies carried on, soon he found himself the owner of a house with a five hundred square foot garage…or the perfect home theater to be.  And this set him down a path where, eventually, he would use that garage home theater as the centerpiece, and the showpiece, of his own home theater installation firm.

So what does he have in this incredible theater?  Oh man, you’ll hardly believe it.  He’s got Monitor Audio speakers, Velodyne subwoofers, a JVC projector, a VuTec one hundred ten inch screen, Oppo DVD player, Marantz Blu-ray player and plenty more to boot.

That’s one sweet home theater setup you’ve got there, Jeremy, and if that’s the kind of thing that your company, Electronic Home Designers, does, then even I’m interested.  And you know from experience I’m one cheap individual.

Vincent Bova’s home theater was something of a labor of love born out of tragedy.  He began analyzing the whole affair, trying to figure out what to do about it and how to set it up so that it would work out.  He made some calls and made some designs, but then, he got a problem he wasn’t planning for.

Vincent Bova had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

He left his Wall Street job (when you’ve got a brain tumor?  That’s probably for the best.) and put most everything else on hold trying to get the problem fixed.  But to keep himself sane and from focusing everything on the cancer, he focused on home theater gear.  He called it “therapy”.

And his focus ended up creating an incredible home theater–a JVC 1080p projector, Paradigm speakers, a Marantz receiver, a Velodyne subwoofer, a Pioneer Blu-ray player, and more.

It’s an absolutely beautiful theater–and in case you were wondering about the tumor, he had an operation that turned out successfully, and as a result of all these he now works with two companies as well as having started his own, Total Control Remotes. But one thing’s clear:  he’s got one sweet home theater setup.  Here’s to you, Vincent, and your sweet setup.

Ordinarily, when you think about a Star Wars themed home theatre, you think about the Death Star or the Millenium Falcon or maybe just a whole load of props.  You generally don’t, however, start thinking about Chancellor Palpatine’s office.  In fact, that may be the LAST thing you think about alongside, say, an Ewok village or Dagobah.

But for one Star Wars buff, an incredible simulation of Chancellor Palpatine’s plush office on Coruscant sounded like just the ticket when he built his home theatre.

Now, you can be impressed by the level of detail in that simulation–it actually DOES looka lot like Palpatine’s office–but it’s not just the detail that’s awesome.  There’s plenty of choice gadgetry going on in there, including a Marantz single-chip DLP 1080p projector and a 103-inch Vutec 16:9 screen with horizontal masking.  On the audio front, this sucker’s packing Anthem processing and amplifiers and an array of B&W speakers and Velodyne subwoofers.

With all that incredible hardware coupled with amazing attention to detail, Chancellor Palpatine’s office sounds like a great place to settle in with a movie, and definitely qualifies as a sweet home theatre setup.

There’s a couple out in California that loves their Bentley so much that, when the time came to build a home theatre, they decided to build it around the Bentley name and logo.

Of course, it’s not just logos and shiny trim that makes this home theatre a truly sweet setup–no sir.  There’s plenty else to be had here.  In fact, check out the component list they included when talking about the construction of the home theatre setup: a Marantz SR 8002 Surround Receiver, a Marantz VP11S2 DLP Projector, a Marantz DV9600 DVD Player, a Stewart Filmscreen 124″ Luxus Deluxe Screen, three Sonance SILHOUETTE II In-wall LCR Speakers, four Sonance CinemaII Ultra Surround In-wall Speakers and plenty more, including the D-Box chairs we previously highlighted.

You can see how they went with Marantz gear for pretty much everything but the speakers, which is about the ideal for home theatre construction–going with one brand as much as possible, that is. When you combine great looks with great function, you get what can only be called a sweet home theatre setup.

When you hear there’s a new Marantz device available you immediately wonder how much it will cost. Well Marantz’ latest AV receiver is an entry-level gadget which will be affordable to most people.

The NR1501 sells for only $600 and for that price you get four HDMI inputs, onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, Master Audio, onscreen display and analog video upconversion. What do you think, will this AV receiver do it for you or are you looking for something more complicated?

via cnet

Looking for a new CD Player? Check out the latest release by Marantz, its new CD6003 boasts an array of features. The CD player promises high quality audio at superior bit rates from a variety of disc types. The Marantz  CD6003 supports WMA, MP3, AAC and WAV formats. Apart from the regular Compact Disc, it can also play music from your USB Memory.

The Marantz CD6003 Compact Disc Player delivers a frequency response of 2Hz - 20,000Hz.  It enables crystal clear audio by minimizing noise levels by 110dB. The player is currently available in Japan for 49,800 Yen.

Marantz VP-1IS2

The Marantz VP-11S2 high definition DLP projector may just qualify as “Super Reference”. In addition to the Texas Instruments’ Dark Chip4, the VP-11S2 holds an amazing array of the latest video technologies to deserve this praise of “super reference.”

The Marantz VP-11S2 features an anamorphic option that is compatible V-Stretch mode, the most up-to-date GENNUM VXP GF9351 video processing, a wide range verticallens shift, and hand selected, customized optics by Konica-Minolta. A seven segment SilentWheel color wheel with three selectable color wheel speeds. Retails for around $14,999

Marantz launched a new Blu-ray player, the UD9004, which is ready to play a lot of disc types. CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs will be easily handled by this prototype player. The UD9004 is just a prototype for now and it will be launched later in 2009. It will feature a 10-bit Silicon Optix chipset, 14-bit video DAC, an SD card reader, RS-232 control interface, support for BD-Live and an Ethernet port. The prototype is built upon the SA-7S1 SACD player which costs $6,500 so should we expect the UD9004 to be at least as expensive?

Marantz has just launched a new Blu-ray player. The BD8002 is going to offer you that “ultimate-quality, reference standard High Definition source component”. Marantz will sell the BD8002 for £1,799. Here’s what it will feature:

• Full HD resolution at 1080p
• 24 frames per second
• Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding
• DVD upscaling
• HDMI 1.3a
• 12-bit/297MHz video chipset
• 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta processor
• SD memory card slot
• Supports VCDs, SVCDs, MP3s, WMA and DivX video files, display JPEG images

In case you like it, remember that it comes with Profile 1.1 only. You might not want to pay that much for it.

via pocket-link

From all the other Marantz products that we’ve mentioned before, like the AV8003 and MM8003 amplifiers or the BD8002 Blu-Ray Player, the Wireless iPod Dock is the one that stands out the most.

Unlike 80% of the other iPod docks on the market, this one doesn’t require cables due to the use of bluetooth 2.1 + EDR A2DP. Another wireless function is the bluetooth AVRCP - Audio / Video Remote Control Profile - that makes usability much better.

So, what’s the basic function of the Marantz Wireless iPod Dock? Stream content to other audio systems in a simple and useful way.