I am sitting in a chair — mock-jock Howard Stern would call it a “stool” — in the rear of a new home theater. The chair is made of sturdy wood (perfect for Stern show lap dances), is cushioned in fine leather, and boasts Mediterranean-style carvings that would be a natural in my parents’ living room. It does not swivel.

This Emperor’s chair — flush against a granite counter — is one of a set of triplets that ultimately led to the Howard Stern Show smackdown between Howard and the chairs’ owner, Howard’s long-suffering producer (and S&V “Gadget Gary” columnist), Gary Dell’Abate. The fracas was ignited when Howard first spied shots of Gary’s completed basement cinema.

“You put in a home theater, and you put in stools?” Howard bellowed on his Sirius XM satellite-radio show back in January. Gary shot back that they gave guests a place to eat and drink. “Wow,” Howard replied, “that’s a f---ed-up experience. Who chooses to sit on stools in a movie theater?” Within the hour, the rest of the Stern crew would ultimately take Howard’s side in the Great High-Stool Debate. And on the next show, the embers were reignited. Despite pro-Gary support from listeners and a pro-stool statement from S&V Editor-In-Chief Mike Mettler, the Sternies again tore into Gary’s chairs.

But no matter. The home theater — stools and all — were part of the dream Gary had when building his Connecticut A/V castle (see “The Real King of All Media,” May 2007). And his vision is finally a reality. So Gary threw a party to celebrate.

What’s the correct description for an event where a guy invites his guy friends over for an evening of home theater content sampling? A Tupperware party for dudes? “I would say it’s more like a book club,” Gary answers. “But instead of discussing the book, we’re discussing the equipment.”

Yep. Gary Dell’Abate actually has friends with enough techtosterone to fill his 11-seat (including those three stools) home theater for the purpose of sampling a selection of visual and aural fare, piped in by way of a variety of gear. “It’s just an excuse to get together,” Gary says. “Listen, I could fill that room with people who would be bored shitless, who would think we’re geeks, talking about how crisp the picture is and how good the sound is. But for guys into the tech aspect, it’s fun to be there. You just watch stuff and see what you like.”

And so it was decided: One weeknight in early spring, Gary’s gang would descend to his basement, linger in his “man cave” (the rec room, complete with bar, billiards table, and multiple flatscreen TVs), and devour chicken wings, pizza, chips, and suds before filing into the new screening room to sample Blu-ray Discs, Vudu, TiVo (by way of Cablevision), DirecTV, and DVD-Audio. There would be snark, sports, song, and bonerattling plane crashes. And if Vinnie Favale didn’t shut up, there would be blood.

It’s the night of the March 26 “clip” party, and Gary is sprawled across a cushy leather chair in Row One of his home theater, with family dog Murphy by his side. (See Murphy “in charge” on page 50.) He recalls the installers who did his whole-house A/V upstairs — the guys he didn’t ask back to do his home theater. “The thing about the first guys was that their work was really good,” he says, “but the journey was f---ing miserable. I still love my great room setup, and I still love the all-room audio in my house. But they were hard to get on the phone! The comfort level wasn’t there.”

And so Gary once again had to play the installer dating game. “I went through a lot of people,” he recalls. “One A/V guy comes in and I say to him, ‘Here’s my budget: I want to do about $50,000 or $60,000 tops. I want the room to be both fun and functional.’ And he goes, ‘Okay, okay.’ So I spend, like, an hour with the guy. A week later, I get a proposal from him giving me three potential levels. The absolute rock-bottom level was $110,000. And I’m going, here’s a guy who just clearly did not listen to me. If he’s doubling the price for me on proposals, God knows what I’ll end up with. So I threw the proposal in the garbage. I wanted to find somebody who would listen to me.”

Enter installer Craig Shumer and his New Jersey-based company, Theatermax (theatermax.com). “I told him the second he walked in the door, ‘I’m your worst nightmare,’” Gary says. “ ‘I know exactly what you’re doing. I just can’t do it myself.’ Craig knew I’d be very involved, and he was really willing to work with me.”

Says Craig, “I’m not the kind of guy who says, ‘We have to do it my way or we can’t do business.’ I’m very flexible — and it’s not just because of who Gary is. That’s just the way I treat my customers. And it’s come back to me 100 times in very good ways because I give them what they want. We’ll say, ‘Here’s stuff that will work in your room.’ But he really was within a budget. I showed him how to get there without a lot of money.”

“We did butt heads a couple of times,” Gary adds, “because Craig was really big on wanting me to get the best of everything. And he was so great to work with because what he wanted had nothing to do with him making money. He’d be like, ‘This is the carpet you have to get.’ The worst it got between us — which was never bad at all — was, I said, ‘Craig, you’re trying to sell me a Maserati and I’m perfectly happy in a BMW.’ And he’s like, ‘I get it.’”

To start, Gary and Craig looked through photos to nail down the home theater style Gary wanted. “I wanted it to be almost like an understated version of a screening room you might see in a ’50s movie,” Gary says. “I wanted it to just look classic. So the builder, Craig, and I sort of hashed it out, and the builder — who had never done a home theater before — built it as Craig directed.”

The result: a warm-toned room with peach-colored walls framed by cherry wood molding. The Berkline Dream Seats are rich burgundy leather, the carpet is wine-hued and patterned, and more wood paneling encases the speakers that surround the projection screen.

The gear includes a 123-inch Stewart Filmscreen screen, a Sony SXRD front projector, a Pioneer receiver, a Panasonic Bluray Disc player, a TiVo HD DVR, and a set of Klipsch speakers. (See “Equipment Breakdown” on the next page for full list.) An entry-level remote control from Universal Remote makes the whole system easy to operate — even by Gary’s wife and kids. “They all come down,” he says. “My wife has done viewing parties while I’m at work. They watch movies I couldn’t stand, like The Secret Life of Bees. Sometimes I’ll come home and my kids are down in the home theater.”

Gary’s biggest problem right now might be deciding when to watch something in the theater as opposed to on the 58-inch Panasonic plasma in the great room upstairs. “If it’s appointment TV, we usually end up down here,” he says. “I’ve been watching American Idol up there because it’s just okay. But we’re a very big Survivor family, so we come down here to watch it together, and it looks so amazing.”

Tonight’s big clip party will be the pu-pu platter of screening-room content. Or, as Gary announces to the seated crowd (see “The Guest List” for who’s who), “I’m going to show some scenes from some movies that I like. I have Blu-ray, TiVo, DirecTV, and Vudu, so we’re just going to go through some of the stuff I watch, and it’s just for fun. We’re going to start with the first ever Blu-ray Disc I watched in here.”

“Ooh! Memory Lane!” shouts Vinnie Favale.

“Mammary Lane,” Gary snaps back.

That first Blu-ray winds up being Tom Hanks’s Cast Away, from which we watch the epic plane-crash scene. While the video quality is good, the audio is outstanding — the room rumbles an 8.0 on the Richter scale.

End scene. Applause.

“Amazing! I’ve never seen it like that,” Vinnie says.

I ask Gary, “Can they hear this upstairs?”

“Yes,” moans Gary’s 14-year-old son, Jackson. “But it’s not as loud as I thought it would be.”

The evening continues with more scenes and more comments from the Penis Gallery. Watching a scene from Lost and the opening to Survivor using the TiVo DVR, everyone is stunned by the saturated colors. (“Gary, this is amazing!”) Gary next rolls a battle scene from the Flags of Our Fathers Blu-ray Disc to demonstrate complex audio effects. We then do an A/B comparison of an NCAA game on CBS using both the DirecTV and Cablevision/TiVo receivers. “Watch the reflections on the floor,” coaches Mettler. And sure enough, as we switch from Cablevision/TiVo to DirecTV . . .

“Ooh!”

“It’s not as vibrant.”

“I’m a little disappointed.”

“DirecTV sucks.”

“You know, I never A/B’d it before like that,” Gary observes.

Next, we watch The Dark Knight both on Vudu’s new HDX format and on Blu-ray. Upon playing Vudu:

“So far, I haven’t seen anything with true, crisp blacks,” says Scott DePace.

“I think the Vudu looks awful,” notes Craig. “A regular DVD looks better.”

Then, the Blu-ray version:

“This looks much better. You can tell!”

“The metal blades are much shinier.”

“This picture is spectacular.”

And now, the restaurant-shooting scene from The Godfather:

Vinnie: “Look at the reds in that.”

Scott: “Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Vinnie: “F--- you. You direct f---ing radio.”

Other highlights: scenes from this year’s Grammy Awards (cable/TiVo); the car sing-along scene from Step Brothers (Vudu); a baseball videogame, by way of Jackson’s PlayStation 3 (plugged into an HDMI auxiliary jack in the back of the room); an Eagles concert (cable/TiVo); and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (on DVD-Audio).

The party’s over. Gary asks, “So what was the best part?” Comments include, “Music was incredible: the Fleetwood Mac.” “The Grammys looked great. Lost looked really good.” “There was a noticeable difference between the two Dark Knights.”

Scott adds, “My biggest critique of the projection overall is that the blacks are just not dark enough. Now, on a plasma, you get much darker blacks, but then you get all the reflection bullshit to deal with. So this, the largeness, is what does it for you. You sit down and you think you’re in a theater. And it is great. I would choose this over any theater I’ve been to.”

As for me, I sat on one of those stools — er, sorry, chairs — through the whole event, and I was perfectly comfortable (especially while grazing). Still, I confess: Had I not decided to be a test monkey, I would have gone for a leather lounger. But definitely keep the stools and counter, Gary. They’re much better at snack time than TV trays.

Equipment Breakdown

• Sony VPL-VW60 SXRD front projector
• Stewart Filmscreen Luxus Deluxe 123-inch Firehawk G3 screen
• Chief Manufacturing ceiling projector mount
• Panasonic BD50 Blu-ray Disc player
• DirecTV HR22 HD satellite receiver
• TiVo Series 3 HD DVR
• Vudu Box Internet movie player
• Sonos ZonePlayer 90 multiroom music player
• Pioneer SC05 Elite A/V receiver
• Panamax 350 PM power conditioner
• Universal Remote MX-650 remote control
• Zantech IR repeater system
• Klipsch RF63 front left/right speakers
• Klipsch RC64 center speaker
• (6) Klipsch 5650W in-wall surround speakers
• (2) Klipsch RT12D subwoofers
• Middle Atlantic 5-29 equipment rack o put the HDMI pack in the back of the theater.

The Guest List

Aside from S&V party crashers Medich and Mettler, here’s who Gary invited to his big screening party — and why. — R.M.

Name: Scott DePace
When not in Gary’s theater: Directs shows on Howard Stern’s Howard TV On Demand channel.
Invited because: “He and I have always been tech-heads about this stuff,” Gary says. “We cut out magazines articles to show each other.”

Name: Steve “The Intern” Brandano
When not in Gary’s theater: Is one of Howard Stern’s producers and hosts The Intern Show on Sirius channel Howard 101.
Invited because: “He fit the bill: He’s a really young guy, and he’s really into music. He’ll talk about how stuff looks and sounds all the time. And I thought his was just a different perspective. He’s younger than most of us here by 10 or 15 years.”

Name: Vinnie Favale
When not in Gary’s theater: Is the CBS VP for late-night programming, East Coast.
Invited because: “Vinnie has always been on the cutting edge of technology. He built a home theater in his house, and we always compared notes. He’s the guy who I just thought would understand the work that went into it and appreciate it.”

Name: Tom Athan
When not in Gary’s theater: Lives across the street from Gary’s last house.
Invited because: “When Tom moved into his house, he actually came to me and asked me a bunch of A/V questions. He’s not a big A/V guy, but he’s definitely interested. I thought it would be nice to have somebody here who wasn’t in ‘the industry.’”

Name: Jon Hein
When not in Gary’s theater: Creator of Jump the Shark and Gary’s on-air partner for The Wrap Up Show.
Invited because: “Jon is probably one of my best friends. He and I are always IM’ing each other during the show [about tech] — ‘Did you see this? Did you see that?’”

Name: Craig Shumer
When not in Gary’s theater: A custom installer in New Jersey.
Invited because: Duh! He’s Gary’s custom installer!

Name: Jackson Dell’Abate (not shown)
When not in Gary’s theater: A 14-year-old.
Invited because: He’s Gary’s 14-year old. Plus, “he deserves to be in that group as much as anybody. He really understands and embraces it. He was the impetus for me to put the HDMI pack in the back of the theater.”