I don't know if this is the best place to post this, but here goes:

Hey Everyone,

I'm dreaming up a home theater room for the future and trying to decide what the best way to do everything is.  I'm a youth pastor and as such I have quite a few students over to my house a lot to watch movies and such.  One of the challenges I have in my current living room home theater setup is seating.  I can only fit about five students comfortably in my living room to watch a movie.  If there are any more than that, some people end up on the floor, some people can't see the tv very well, and many aren't in a good spot to hear surround effects.

My wife and I are hoping to be able to buy a house in the next few years, and we hope to have a basement with which we can custom design a home theater room.  My wish would be to be able to accommodate about 15 to 20 people comfortably so that all have a good view of the screen and can enjoy the surround my future Aperion purchase will provide.  The question that has been on my mind has been "how do I fit 15 to 20 people into a medium sized home theater room"?  The room can't be overly large because I don't want it to take up too much of the basement, but it does need to be big enough for the people, room for using the Wii, and floor space in case we do have to fit 30 people or so in there and compromise on comfort.

One idea that I had was buying good quality, comfortable "movie theater" seats for the room.  This would seem to take up the least floor space, while still being comfortable enough to watch a movie in.  The downside to this is that many seats I've found online cost anywhere from $300 to $1400 per seat, which gets very expensive if you want 15 to 20 seats in the room!

So my questions are these:

1) Does anyone know of a good place to buy comfortable yet inexpensive home theater seats?

2) Does anyone have a better idea for getting 15 to 20 people to comfortably enjoy a movie?

Thanks!

I'm not much of a seating expert myself, if it were me I'd be checking out craigslist and yard sales for cheap recliners and/or love seats.  Not sure if it's important to you to have everything matching, if it is then you'll probably have to buy new.

You might try posting a thread in these forums for some additional advice:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=19

http://www.hometheaterspot.com/fusionbb/showforum.php?fid/20/

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?board=60.0

Best of luck!

With all due respect, I simply don't believe there is a way to fit 20 people in a medium size room, even UNCOMFORTABLY, to watch a flick, and fit the requirements mentioned.  Unless our definitions of medium sized room are different...

How big would you predict the room to be? 20x20?

20 people could mean 4 rows of seating (at 5 seats a piece).  You'd need risers...any way to do that in a standard 8' ceiling?

You'd need a projector at minimum.  No way would that many people all have a good view of even a 50"+ television.

Plus space to move around, plus room for extra standing/floor-sitting folk, plus room for Wii action...plus you don't want to take up the whole basement.  Even Jason's suggestion of cheap furniture still doesn't deal with the space issue.

This isn't a cheap hobby for even a few people to enjoy at one time.  20 people is even more difficult to accommodate on a small budget.

Not trying to burst the proverbial bubble, but this one is a pretty tall order.  Maybe the church could dedicate some space (read: larger space) in which you could build this project.  Then, through donation of old furniture/gear, you might be able to accomplish the goal even easier.

I've got it, lifeguard chairs! 

Here are some ideas....it will be hard though to seat that many people without a big space.  http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/vbclassified.php?do=category&categoryid=41

Have you thought of a inflatable screen and a projector for outside use?  That would be your best bet to accomodate that large of a group and the plus side would be everyone would be outside....who cares if they leave there shoes on and spill the sodas.  I believe Best Buy carries inflatable screens.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=7016224919804740131&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=inflatable+screens&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960

Thanks for your input everyone.

A projector outside will not work for my purposes here, my setup would have to be inside.

As far as room size goes I'm thinking 20x20, or perhaps 20x25.  PJ, I guess that would be considered a large room in HT speech.   I would expect to be putting a projector in, so that wouldn't be an issue.  BTW, I love your setup with the TV behind the rolldown screen! : )

Thanks for the thoughts guys, maybe when I have my thoughts a bit more organized I can sketch a scaled layout of what I'm thinking in perhaps a few different arrangements and go from there.

Scott E.:

I don't know if this is the best place to post this, but here goes:

Hey Everyone,

I'm dreaming up a home theater room for the future and trying to decide what the best way to do everything is.  I'm a youth pastor and as such I have quite a few students over to my house a lot to watch movies and such.  One of the challenges I have in my current living room home theater setup is seating.  I can only fit about five students comfortably in my living room to watch a movie.  If there are any more than that, some people end up on the floor, some people can't see the tv very well, and many aren't in a good spot to hear surround effects.

My wife and I are hoping to be able to buy a house in the next few years, and we hope to have a basement with which we can custom design a home theater room.  My wish would be to be able to accommodate about 15 to 20 people comfortably so that all have a good view of the screen and can enjoy the surround my future Aperion purchase will provide.  The question that has been on my mind has been "how do I fit 15 to 20 people into a medium sized home theater room"?  The room can't be overly large because I don't want it to take up too much of the basement, but it does need to be big enough for the people, room for using the Wii, and floor space in case we do have to fit 30 people or so in there and compromise on comfort.

One idea that I had was buying good quality, comfortable "movie theater" seats for the room.  This would seem to take up the least floor space, while still being comfortable enough to watch a movie in.  The downside to this is that many seats I've found online cost anywhere from $300 to $1400 per seat, which gets very expensive if you want 15 to 20 seats in the room!

So my questions are these:

1) Does anyone know of a good place to buy comfortable yet inexpensive home theater seats?

2) Does anyone have a better idea for getting 15 to 20 people to comfortably enjoy a movie?

Thanks!

First of all I am not being sarcastic, see if you can find a church in your area that is going be replacing their pews.  Or a quick google and I found this

 http://www.usedpews.org/free_pews.htm 

You would still need to stair step them somehow.  I guess you could call that your stair way to movie heaven.  Ok, that might have been a bit much.

Cheers