Once again, our staff at Pointed Magazine is dedicated to bringing its readers the hottest products for 2006. We have found another product that is sure to make you home theater the envy of the neighborhood, Illuminaire’s ambient light color changing system.
For those who do not have any experience with added color lights, we will give you a little background. why the home theatre packages available from Illuminaire are for any room in the house not just the home theatre. You could use the Illuminaire kits to light a piece of art, a framed painting or anything that you would like a little bit of pizazz added to the subject.
When our readers first gave us the idea of checking out the product from Illuminaire we did not know how we could find a way to incorporate the lighting into the house we are restoring. Once we received the product we quickly saw why many are seeing the dramatic difference once an ambient light system is installed. What a difference the lighting system makes on our home theater.
A good lighting system enhances your theater room in a couple of ways. From a performance point of view, the system needs to provide light so that people can safely move around the room. You should also arrange the light sources so that they don’t cast any glare or light on the image, which would wash out the picture. If you have a direct-view or rear-projection display, the folks at the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) recommend that you place a source of light behind the display. This reduces eye fatigue by providing a constant light source, and it doesn’t compromise image performance.
Our first test of the Illuminaire PLX 318 kit was determining the ease of installation.
The PLX 318 kit comes with two 23″ wands that are designed to fit 32” to 60″ tv screens. We found this to be a perfect match for our 50″ DLP projection television in the basement of our home restoration project. One feature that home theatre enthusiast will like is how the lighting is ready to go out of the box and within 10 minutes of looking over the contents of the box our lighting system was installed and operable.
With the PLX 318 you will have total control of the colors of your home theatre. With the color show that lasts 30 minutes, your theatre can now have a variation of the five different colors that the wand allows you to see. The deep blue creates the most dramatic effect. Any color can be used for hours at a time and with the combination of the remote, sleep is even an option for your lighting and can be found on the remote provided with the PLX 318 kit.
Each vibrant color the PLX 318 emits will allow you to solve the biggest problems found with home theatres, eye strain. It’s important that you don’t have a lot of bright light in the room, because this may cause glare on the screen or distract from your television show or movie. But you also don’t want a completely dark room, because the high contrast of the light from the screen may strain your eyes.
The best feature of the PLX is its expandability. We liked the set up so much, we suggest that you add the wands to the speakers and the side of the room creating a fully lighted environment like no other.
After we had installed and tested the product it did not take more than 20 minutes to fall in love with the look the Illuminaire product produces. We definitely suggest putting this kind of lighting throughout the entire house.. Well okay maybe a few rooms and under the kitchen cabinets, but with the colors that are included in each wand, no room will look the same.
Home theater enthusiasts will like the price point for all of the Illuminaire products. From as low as $99.95 you can change the look of your room. While the PLX 318 is sold at a very reasonable $349.95, we suggest at least two of these kits for a strong lighting effect in your home. If you plan on lighting the back of your speakers, the smaller kits are an option if you only desire one color for a room. The kits with the remotes make a great way to make any room look different in a matter of seconds.
For more information and all of the home theatre ambient lighting kits available from Illuminaire, please visit their website at www.illuminaire.com
