A homeowner plans to renovate his Cape Cod-style home without adding a theater until his interior designer convinces him otherwise.

When building a home theater, the interior designer is usually considered the enemy. Often having a complete disregard for acoustical needs and the proper positioning of screen and sound.

Frilly flourishes here, fancy accents there—and don’t even think about visible speakers.

This private screening room, however, would not exist without the coaxing and cajoling of—surprise—the interior designer.

More Immersive 3Dⁱ TV Viewing

DreamWorks Animation and Samsung Visual Display described plans for an expanded strategic alliance. Consumers who purchase a new Samsung 3D TV will gain exclusive access to two of DreamWorks Animation's new 3D Blu-ray titles, including Megamind. The animation studio and consumer electronics company also expressed their intentions to explore joint research and development activities throughout the year. 

"Samsung's expanded alliance with DreamWorks Animation marks our collective goal to offer consumers the best of technology and entertainment combined," said Samsung's Boo-Keun Yoon. "Through this mutual relationship, DreamWorks Animation is helping us to create an increasingly immersive home entertainment experience for audiences at a moment's notice." 

Added Jeffrey Katzenberg, of Dreamworks: "We look forward to continuing our valued strategic alliance and furthering our reach in enabling audiences to bring more of their favorite DreamWorks Animation content to life at home." 

The two companies plan to explore a new streaming 3D Video-On-Demand (VOD) service that would make DreamWorks Animation content - trailers and promotions in both 3D and 2D - available for streaming via the 3D application for Samsung Smart TVs beginning this year. Upon launch, consumers will be able to access VOD content through any of Samsung's LED, LCD and Plasma 3D smart TVs, all of which deliver high-quality, visually enhanced and connected entertainment experiences to the home. 

Award-winning Chicago Interior Designer John Cannon weaves together an elaborate downstairs entertainment zone that revolves around an antique Parisian bar and a breathtaking home cinema, all decorated with the utmost in Art-Deco detailing.

For sophisticated design with a total glam effect, Art Deco's alluring appeal defies shelf life. The iconic style, popularized since the 1930s in opulent restaurants, theaters, and luxury ocean liners, is redolent with a modernist attitude that's forever fresh, luxurious, and easy on the eye.

One of life's joys is discovering that appearances don't always tell the full story. Particularly in the South, even the most genteel of façades can mask a colorful past. Such is the case with this 29-year-old saltbox in one of Atlanta’s most prosperous neighborhoods of white-columned, traditional brick houses. Anyone strolling by would find it hard to believe that one of the home’s prominent owners fled from the FBI. Another vanished in the night, never to reappear.

It’s hard to imagine Bill Jones being content with an out-of-the-box home theater—or a media room with a couple of couches parked in front of a big-screen TV. After all, he’s not living the college bachelor-pad lifestyle. He’s an electronics mogul whose 14,000-square-foot Florida home is his castle: a shrine to Art Deco design filled with dozens of works created by the noted masters of early 20th-century style.

Devout modernists know that perfect form doesn’t merely follow function. It’s function boiled down, stripped bare, magnified and then—this is crucial—honored. Or as Frank Lloyd Wright put it, “Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”

Art aficionado and patron Homeira Goldstein’s contemporary California home, perched atop the highest hilltop in a tony Los Angeles beach neighborhood, is more than a residence—it’s an Art Deco–inspired museum. Indeed, from the moment pen hit paper to sketch the home’s architectural plans in 1988, Goldstein, who was born into Iranian royalty, knew she wanted more than just a routine home: She wanted a sophisticated, livable, open-air gallery space where her family could enjoy and exhibit its extensive art collection, and host her many arts-related fund-raisers.