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Plasma TVs rarely work well at 10,000 feet, and because Telluride is our second home, anything that goes wrong electronically tends to fester for months at a time when we're not there, in spite of our full-time housekeepers. So the new system had to be, on one hand, sophisticated and extraordinary enough so I wouldn't be forced to spend time outside doing physical activity in the beauty of the San Juan Mountains. On the other hand, it had to be simple enough that it wouldn't be always breaking, which would force me to spend time outside doing physical activity in the beauty of the San Juan Mountains.

With the above contradictory knowledge hovering over me like a nagging mother, I convinced Sweetie to let me build out the space that was designed to be our screening room, and I undertook the daunting task of upgrading the entire house's A/V system. The idea was to start from scratch, getting rid of all of our tube TVs and rewiring the house's audio system and controls. Like all remodeling, it ended up costing more than I wanted and was full of stupid decisions, but it turned out to be incredibly rewarding.

The house in Telluride has the same size screening room as the one in East Hampton — 22 x 24 feet with a 10-foot ceiling. This is not ideal, in that it's a little too square. (Square rooms aren't great for sound.) But I advise you that there's nothing better than a dedicated screening room — no windows to glare-out your image and no foot traffic wandering from the kitchen to the living room — to change your entire home-viewing experience.

In Telluride, we have a 12.5-foot Stewart Filmscreen microperforated screen. Since you want your three front speakers behind the screen, not below or alongside, microperf (tiny holes that let the sound come at you from directly behind the picture) is the way to go. Using a gray screen like the one here, instead of a white one, helps make the blacks in the picture even darker and richer.

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