Florida Designer Homes Magazine Home Entertainment and Automation September 2012, Volume 2, Number 2 Rock Star Seats to Your Favorite Show Our movie culture ranging from drive-in theatres based on the 1970′s movie Grease to black and white VCRs to cinema theatres… our timeline has finally reached the point of becoming more aware of society needs in cost efficiency, acoustical comfort, environmental concerns and customizing needs to watch an entertaining movie in the comfort of your own home.
Poodle skirts, leather jackets, motorcycles, and beauty school dropouts from 1950’s Rydell High School… The movie Grease surely made drive-in theatres as the place to kick back and enjoy the weekend even if you had to sneak out of your parents’ house!
Along with the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds, the rest of their generation eventually had to climb up the ladder of transient changes in movie theatre culture. From watching black and white reruns on antenna-controlled tv sets to our parents recording our birthday parties on those big, geeky VCR recorder cameras clearly defined our “home entertainment” of the day.
The smell of 500-calorie infused, hydrogenated butter oil, salted popcorn and discounted 16 ounce, large Pepsi to go with your front-row plush seats to the movies on a Saturday night was next best thing in kicking back and enjoying the weekend. This transition from filmstrips and drive-ins to cinema movie theatres was a major highlight on the timeline of movie culture… until Generation XYZ took over and brought in the Twitter kids, tree-huggers, and eco-entrepreneurs wanting to improve long term benefits of home interiors, all magically and wirelessly.
Those Baby Boomers as teenagers really emphasized home-owners needs for accessing motion picture entertainment in the comfort of their homes on their own couches at their own expense.
Our movie culture has finally become more aware of today’s high standard needs for environmental awareness, cost-efficiency, habitable accessibility and customized controlled environments for the home.
New trendy-generation Apple developers with a green mindset have now opened the market or at least brainstormed ideas for iPad integration systems and iPhone apps that allow us to save gas mileage and carbon footprint from driving to the movies and paying extra to get good seats, all just by one fingerprint tap.
Home automation enthusiasts nowadays are setting a perfect example as to how far our engineering society has reached demands for improved occupant efficiency, cost-effectiveness as well as less HVAC consumption. For example, DVD players and stereo systems with Energy Star label are retrofitted in reducing gashouse emissions. While advanced products appear to be most costly, Energy Star purchases offer U.S. governmental rebates and sales tax exemptions, so it is a good deal.
Sensor-based, with a human touch or voice, can control LED (low-voltage) light dimming and other power features in a smart way.
Acoustic panels are now a very exciting topic since green-minded junkies are inventing alternative ways in controlling sound reverberation. For instance, some former rock star members are helping home automation companies set up beta testing in enhancing sound while safely protecting noise pollution in the comfort of a home. One band manager from Phish decided to use special acoustic fabric of recycled denim hiding all electrical wiring.
Recycled denim is zero-waste material, has excellent thermal performance and is non-flammable in home theatres.
Looks like those who saved those good ol’ vintage 50’s Levi Strauss, hip-hugging, patched, bell bottoms from our disco days were true contributors to the industry of environmental engineers in improving long term benefits in home entertainment lifestyles.
Design Journalist 