CEDIA Expo offers a unique opportunity for custom installation industry professionals to experience cutting-edge technology through ongoing home theater demonstrations. Attendees line up outside the prefabricated booths where these demonstrations are held, eager to sit in plush home theater seating (another popular product category at the show) and enjoy carefully curated movie and music clips.
For me, these demos are the highlight of CEDIA Expo, because unless you have the money to pay for a really impressive home theater setup, you'll never see or hear movies that sound this good outside of an IMAX or Dolby Vision theater. In a word, it's show time, and manufacturers are putting a lot of effort into the quality of presentation at their booths. I was surprised to hear that one demo at CEDIA, booth, equipment, and all, had been initially set up and fully calibrated in Italy, then shipped overseas and reassembled with its audio and video calibration almost perfectly intact for the show.
To round out TechRadar’s Home Cinema Week coverage, I’ve compiled a list of 5 demos that left a strong impression on me at CEDIA Expo 2024. Since these demos took place in completely darkened rooms, the accompanying images only hint at the high-tech goings-on inside – but a look at the equipment listed for each should give you an idea of the power of the hardware behind the scenes. Wish you were there!
Barco / madVR / Seymour-Screen Excellence / Kaleidescape / Trinnov / Perlisten / Oficina Acustica
This was the first home theater demo I had seen, and it set the standard for what was to come at CEDIA Expo 2024. The system used a Barco Nethus RGB laser projector with 32,000 lumens brightness paired with a madVR Envy Extreme MK2 video processor and a Kaleidescape Strato C movie player and Terra Prime server. A Seymour-Screen Excellence Enlightor Neo with a 189.3-inch Cinemascope aspect ratio was used for the display.
A Trinnov Amplitude audio processor (see our How Room Correction Improves Your Home Theater Sound feature for more information on Trinnov and the unique Waveforming technology used for this demo) driving a Perlisten speaker system with 19 speakers and 14 subwoofers. Yes, fourteen subwoofersEight speakers in front and six in the back provided the system’s audio. All of this was installed in a custom-built home theater room by Officina Acustica, the same one shipped from Italy as mentioned above.
The demo started with music, specifically, Eric Clapton playing an acoustic version of Laylafollowed by Ashes to Ashes of Sting: live from the Olympia in ParisBoth tracks had exceptional vocal clarity and impeccably clean, deep bass. Next up, the final transformation scene from the film was heard. Lucyand the white background of the opening image was so bright that I literally shuddered. A typical home theater projector can’t match the Barco Nethus’s professional level when it comes to brightness, and this one even had its light calibrated to 300 nits, a more standard value for home theater.
Christie / Lumagen / Seymour-Screen Excellence / StormAudio / Ascendo / Moovia
This impressive demonstration utilized a Christie Griffyn 4K35-RGB laser projector capable of producing 36,500 lumens and covering 98% of the Rec. 2020 color space. The projector was paired with a Lumagen Radiance Pro 5244 video processor, with a Kaleidescape movie player and server system (a standard component at CEDIA demos) acting as the source. A 4.1-meter-wide Seymour-Screen Excellence Enlightor-PRO (0.9 gain) acoustically transparent screen surface coupled with the company’s 4-way ART (Adjustable Ratio Theater) masking system was used for the display.
For audio, a StormAudio ISP Elite 32 Digital AoIP MK3 processor was paired with an Ascendo Black Swan AoIP 13.12.10 hybrid system, with the system’s AoIP network-enabled amplifiers digitally connected to the Black Swan speakers and subwoofers via Cat6 cable. Last but not least, the theatre featured three rows of super-comfortable Moovia Marbella seating.
If you got caught Dune 2 In an IMAX theater, you'll get a sense of how powerful this demo looked and sounded. One clip in which the Fremen battle the Sardaukar began with the roar of a giant sandworm, and the effect of that roar and the fight that followed was the very definition of surround sound. Another demo clip, from Ford vs FerrariIn this film, Matt Damon's character recklessly piloted a plane with a group of terrified auto executives on board, and as the plane flew over a crowd of people, the accompanying sound effect pierced the theater ceiling with pinpoint precision.
Digital Projection / Kaleidescape / Screen Innovations / JBL Synthesis
JBL is a veteran when it comes to explosive CEDIA home theater demos, and the Synthesis system they were showing (total system cost: $156,666) continued that tradition. I didn’t get any details on the video side of things other than that they were using a Digital Projection projector and a 222-inch Screen Innovations perforated screen, but the audio side consisted of 15 SCL series speakers and 4 SSW series subwoofers, all powered by a 16-channel JBL SDP-58 processor and 6,800 total watts of Class-D amplification.
This system was calibrated using Harman's default target and employed Dirac Live room correction and sound field management processing to correct the bass based on seat-to-seat variation in the large room. Whatever was happening, Lady Gaga's voice singing Always remember us this way In the movie A star is born It sounded incredibly realistic. And when JBL played that crazy train escape scene Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part OneThe sound of furniture sliding around in the various compartments of the train as it collapsed around Ethan and Grace was terrifyingly visceral.
Sony / Kaleidescape / Focal
This demo at Sony's booth had a relatively modest video component compared to others at the show: the new Bravia Projector 9, winner of the TechRadar Best of CEDIA Expo award, only It costs $32,000, but the premium Focal Utopia 9.2.4-channel in-wall speaker system more than makes up for it when it comes to home theater brilliance.
The Bravia 9 projector's image had stunning contrast despite its modest 3400 lumen light output compared to other projectors at the show, and its new XR projector processor with features like frame-by-frame dynamic HDR tone mapping delivered a level of shadow detail that set the standard for a projector. This was easily seen in a dark clip from the movie. The darkest nightwhile another of the new Bad Boys: Run or Die demonstrated the projector's rich color reproduction.
Sony / Kaleidescape / Audio Wisdom
Micro-LED video walls remain an option only for very wealthy home theater fans, but Sony's demo room using its 137-inch CH-Series Crystal LED video wall gave the rest of us a look at a luxury micro-LED-based home theater.
Along with that massive video wall, the system consisted of a Kaledescape Strato S movie player and a 6TB server. A Sony STR-AZ7000ES 13.2-channel AV receiver was used as a preamp for a Wisdom Audio 9.4.4-channel sound system, consisting of Wisdom Audio Sage Cinema Line 2 Source (front LR and surround sides and rear), Sage Cinema Series HLS (center), and four SRS RTL subwoofers.
Sony and Wisdom Audio also used Always remember us this way of A star is born for their demo (it's a popular home theater demo clip) and Lady Gaga's voice sounded as full, clear and lifelike as in the JBL Synthesis room. But the real star of this demo was a chase scene Mad Max: Fury Roadthat sounded and looked so intense that I had my arms tightly gripping my plush theater seat.
