Part One: The 'Best of Best Stuff Awards' (pg. 5)

Home Theater Seating

Before writing this column, I was sitting in the reclining leather chair in my den. You know 'the chair'; you see them all advertised in all of the Sunday papers. In my family, we have had a succession of these reclining chairs (and sofas). Unfortunately, they never seem to last long before they began to mechanically fall apart, or the leather cracks or splits at the seams. This September at CEDIA (the large home theater and custom install show); I noticed the large custom home theater seating display. The reclining chairs and sofas themselves looked a lot like the ones we always buy, except they were more expensive. I was curious why they cost more than what you see at your everyday furniture store, so I decided to find out; keeping in mind that my current chair had a remaining life expectancy perhaps shorter than that of a gypsy moth. One characteristic the better models all shared was supreme comfort, with the reclining action driven by electric motors (on the best ones) to give you quite a range of reclining positions. While at this huge display, I discovered the 'Rolls-Royce' of home theater seating. CinemaTech Seating is a Dallas, Texas based company that manufactures exclusively in Germany, a patented all-steel, electrically driven recliner. Not only is the patented tubluar steel frame virtually indestructable, it allows you to 'articulate' or flex the headrest to fully support your head when you recline to watch television. Most mass-market reclining chairs and sofas employ wooden frames and cheaper leather or fabric that simply will not stand up very long under the wear and tear of everyday family use. These CinemaTech chairs are extremely heavy! Along with their tubular steel frames, these chairs feature the most luxurious European leathers I have ever seen. Each chair is made-to-order, just as a fine tailored suit, and you can choose the color and style from hundreds of top-grade leather swatches. Almost anyone can tell the difference between a $100 suit bought from a discount store and a custom-made suit from Saville Row; well, this holds true for chairs and sofas as well. Just as in the discount suit analogy above, you get what you pay for. These chairs are not cheap; but the fact is, they cost less than a good custom-made suit and will probably give you much more pleasure. Once you own one of these special pieces of furniture, you will not begrudge the higher initial cost. Cinema-Tech can be reached at www.cinematechseating.com

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