Burst onto the Scene with a Home Theater Popcorn Machine
A home theater is a place of relaxation and entertainment. To make the most of your home theater, you may consider the addition of some fun extras to transform your entertainment space into home theater heaven. It is fair to say that once you put a popcorn machine in your television entertainment space, you have officially created your ideal home theater.
For the serious shopper of a home theater popcorn machine, the prices of the machines range from about $300 to slightly less than $2000. Although there appears to be a substantial price gap, the varying characteristics among the machines justifies the price span. One primary difference among home theater popcorn machines is the size. Size differences are a direct result of volume demands and primary uses of the popcorn machines.
The size of the popcorn machine you select should be determined by the volume of popcorn that the machine is going to produce in a certain amount of time. For example, in a movie theater you might need to be able to serve 100 people in an hour. In contrast, in your home theater you may be feeding a family of four for a single showing. To accommodate your popcorn volume demands, there are at least three different sizes of popcorn machines. The most popular popcorn machines are available in 4-ounce, 6-ounce, and 8-ounce sizes. There are also machines on the market that go up to 64 ounces for production plants or for those who are going to make popcorn to bag and sell. Otherwise, 85% of the market uses an 8-ounce machine or smaller.
Typically, when figuring out what size machine you should buy, there is a formula in which you would consider the busiest hour that you are going to have popcorn. The typical home theater experience does not warrant a high volume of popcorn. However, for a special occasion with a larger number of people in attendance, for example a Super Bowl party, for which you are going to invite from 25 to 30 people, you want enough to serve everybody popcorn. The formula requires that you take the maximum amount of 1-ounce servings that you need in one hour and divide that by 17 resulting in the size machine you would need. So, for example, in the average home theater environment, 4 ounces is by far the most typical. Of course, there will be occasions for which more than 4 servings of popcorn will be needed; but, rarely will more than 8 servings be served in the traditional home theater.
When choosing a popcorn machine for your home theater, size does matter. You want a machine that efficiently produces the amount of popcorn for your average home theater event, but you want to avoid spending more money unnecessarily on a larger machine that you will rarely need. Take the time to calculate your average popcorn demands and get the best machine for both your needs and your money.
Tame the Bright Lights of Hollywood with Fabric Wall Coverings
Fabric wall coverings are the perfect addition to your home theater design. They are a great alternative to acoustic panels and tiles for sound absorption. However, fabric wall coverings are not exclusively selected for their sound absorption qualities. They are also a great addition to your home theater space for reducing the reflective surfaces in your home theater area.
Fabric wall coverings are able to reduce light reflections because they have a matte finish and do not sag, dent, or fade. They simply act as a wall more than anything with a matted drywall look. An added bonus with fabric wall coverings is the possibility of including a photograph as a fabric wall mural. Your home theater design professional can make sure the fabric contains the right colors for the home theater and that it is not too busy or too reflective for the room. Not only can the fabric be used as a wall covering but also a covering for the ceiling.
Just as the fabric can be integrated with specially chosen graphics, the same may be done for your ceiling. You can use photographs or you can use an image, if you have a graphic you want to put up. Your choices are fairly unlimited. The fabric is a very common material that is actually being used a lot for restaurants and commercial spaces because of the dampening of the sound. Because the coverings are fabric, they are easily adapted to the most popular areas for home theaters and home theater design.
Because a lot of home theaters are built in basements and basements sometimes have the suspended tile ceilings, it is important to be able to integrate the fabric wall covering to the suspended tile ceilings that are found in most basements. The fabric actually goes under the ceiling. It is installed exactly like the coverings for the wall, except it would be under the ceiling currently installed. And, it is a hundred percent fireproof. In addition, the ceiling coverings may contain more popular designs found in home theaters today. For example, if you prefer to do a star ceiling you could just order the fabric with a photograph with a constellation or something printed on it and you might be able to add the fiber optic lighting by having your designer or installer cut the necessary holes to accommodate the fiber optics.
Another interesting idea allows you to replicate an old fashioned theater and simulate tin ceilings. You can actually use this canvas and make it look like tin. You use a picture of something that represents what you would like to see on the ceiling. The result is the image you want to see without having to go to all the effort and expense of actually making a tin ceiling. So you can really create a theater without spending all of the money. Also, if you wanted to get a picture of some theater curtains, or even a picture, an actual photograph, of a theater, it will look three dimensional, as if you had those actual curtains hanging on the wall but it would actually be part of the photograph.
Not only do they insulate sound and reduce light reflection, fabric wall coverings are an interesting and unique way of bringing in other design ideas without having to spend the money to buy those products when you can just represent them on a photograph.
