Among the highlights at CEDIA Expo each year, the home theater demos put on by audio and video companies easily top out the list. This year, however, a collective of manufacturers seem intent to outdo the annual tradition by presenting what a million-dollar home theater can deliver.
Among the list of manufacturers participating in the million-dollar home theater demo at CEDIA Expo 2025, we have Seymour-Screen Excellence, StormAudio, ASCENDO, Christie, madVR Labs, Panamorph, Moovia and Simplified Acoustics.
Each company will be lending their products to put together an impressive 14.18.10 home theater configuration, with the estimated cost of such a system rounded to roughly one million dollars.
The full list of the products that will be on display during the display is as follows:
- Projector: Christie Eclipse G3
- Source: Kaleidescape Strato V
- Screen: Seymour-Screen Excellence 15-foot multi-format retractable (MFR) film screen
- Lens: Panamorph Alpha Pro
- Video Processing: madVR Envy Extreme 8
- Audio Processing: StormAudio Elite 32 Digital Audio-over-IP
- Speakers: ASCENDO HALO
- Subwoofers: ASCENDO Infrasonics
- Room Acoustics: Simplified Acoustics
- Seating: Moovia
Audio calibration for the demo will leverage several manual tools in addition to Dirac Live’s Active Room Treatment (ART).
Commenting on its contribution to the demo, Panamorph’s CEO Shawn Kelly said, “We’ve been getting a lot of dealer interest in a lens specifically made for ultra-high-end installations.
“That combined with dramatically increasing client interest in the cinema format is helping projection dealers differentiate against increasing 16:9 flat panel sizes while preserving excellent margins.”
Increasing Competition Between Projection and Displays
While the debate of TVs versus projectors has always held public attention, competition over what shows up in a home theater has ramped up in recent years as TV display sizes have grown to rival projection in many ways at nearly a fraction of the cost.
Hisense has recently ramped up its efforts to not only compete with the likes of Sony, Samsung and LG in terms of display offerings and performance, but also in making sure its displays are controllable on popular professional smart home systems like Control4.
In writing for CE Pro on the topic, Michael Hamilton, a co-instructor at ISF, stated that while these larger models can be enticing, they do come with inherent drawbacks such as limited dynamic range and narrow viewing angles when compared to projection.
In an article written back in 2023 on the topic, CE Pro speculated that higher-end technology such as microLED (or now DVLED) could allow video displays to stand toe-to-toe with projection on projects.
As of right now, though, the pricing of microLED and DVLED technologies remains prohibitively expensive for many, even those in the high-end channels that custom integrators frequently cater to.
That isn’t to say there won’t always be clients for that type of solution, though, with microLED still having fervent supporters of its inclusion in the luxury home theater.
The Growing Extravagance of CEDIA Expo’s Home Theater Demos
In the past, CE Pro editors have had an opportunity to sit in on a variety of home theater demos at CEDIA Expo, both on-site and off-site, with L-Acoustics hosting what Executive Editor Zachary Comeau described as a “Top Tier Space” at last year’s show.
The 11.1.6 Dolby Atmos system demo was run as a collaboration between L-Acoustics and Denver-local integrator Quality Audio Video (QAV) with the theater being in QAV’s showroom.
Since their introduction to the CEDIA channel, Just Video Walls has also regularly held demonstrations of its video wall production, regularly drawing large crowds while at the show.
These types of demos have always been geared towards the more extravagant, but this might be the first time in at least a long while where a home theater presentation has cracked the million dollar mark for all the product featured.
Where to Find the Million-Dollar Home Theater at the Show
The million-dollar home theater demo will take place on site at CEDIA Expo 2025 in Sound Room 7 (SR7), which last year housed many of the same manufacturers in a home theater demo run by Playback Custom.
Throughout the three-day event, company experts will be on hand to provide in-depth insights and engage with attendees of the SR7 demo.
This includes Seymour-Screen Excellence (Chris Seymour, Evan Zerby); StormAudio (Olivier Thumerel, Sébastien Gailleton, Gary Blouse, Matthew Trinklein); ASCENDO (Geoffrey Heinzel and Todd Sutherland); madVR Labs (Richard Litofsky); Panamorph (Shawn Kelly); Moovia (Frank Dlugos, Todd Sutherland); Christie (Doug Boyer) and Simplified Acoustics (Matt Call).
