For video razzle-dazzle, it's hard to beat the US$5 million mansion of the Florida concrete multimillionaire Bill Williams, in Naples. The slickest piece of engineering in the home is most likely the 32-inch Samsung LCD screen in the master bath, which, in a Disneyesque bit of business that a wicked stepmother might appreciate, is embedded in a large mirror. If you feel like watching a movie from the tub, as Williams, a 51-year-old bachelor, often does, you turn it on; when it's off, you see only the mirror.
Williams has a designated indoor home theater, of course, with a Yamaha projector and a 110-inch Vutec fixed screen. His grounds, including a 25m pool overlooking the Tiburon golf course, are wired for surround sound. His outdoor bar has a 40-inch Sony LCD screen. If this TV seems large for an outdoor bar, you should know that his is 4.3m long and covered, and is equipped with a refrigerator, freezer and two dishwashers.
For this year's Super Bowl, Williams wowed his guests with a 16-foot outdoor inflatable screen set up beyond the pool. Partygoers could float, drink in hand, and watch the game. All wet and good, but you couldn't have that screen up there all the time or it would ruin the view.
Criteria of Naples, the Florida-based firm that designed and installed Williams's US$270,000 audiovisual system, is overseeing the construction of a permanent large-screen outdoor setup, likely to cost US$30,000. The original idea was a screen that could disappear into the ground, but what with concerns about water seepage, Dave Tovissi and Chris Locadia, the president and managing partner of Criteria, decided to go in another direction. Literally.
"Chris came up with the idea to make a backyard arbor, with a screen that will drop down," Williams said. "There are speakers in the column. We'll have bougainvillea over the top."
"We call it Dive-In Theater," Locadia said.
Outdoor video has landed. It's been seen here and there in the last few years — a pop-up TV in the side of the hot tub, a video projection on an inflatable screen — but it's been an outdoor novelty, the equivalent, perhaps, of Angelenos and their mobile phones 15 years ago. But with such advances as weather-resistant television sets impervious to rain; good-quality, low-cost video projectors and screens; and widescreen high-definition TV, as well as the general trend to move the indoors out, outdoor theater is gaining ground.
"It's becoming more and more popular because the products are better and cheaper," said Jeff Hoover, the president of Audio Advisors in West Palm Beach, Florida. "Instead of having to spend US$10,000 or US$15,000 for a projector, you can get a nice little US$1,500 projector now that will make great 100-inch pictures. And now that there are large-panel TVs that are getting brighter and cheaper, people are starting to put outdoor theaters in patios that are mostly covered.
"I put a 65-inch flat-screen LCD TV in the retaining wall of a man's pool," he added. "It's motorized up and down out of a weatherized enclosure. He's got a little waterproof remote control, and he can turn on the system in his Jacuzzi or pool."
Maureen Jenson, editor of Home Theater magazine, also sees what she calls "a huge trend" in outdoor viewing, particularly in the area of weather-resistant equipment, which is designed to be left outdoors.
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