Thanks for stepping in Randy.
Yea, I don't want to dump my M60s for M80s, and I heard that the VP180 is purely awesome. I don't see how having the speakers behind the acoustically transparent screen/wall would be impacted by the bass traps any more than if they were directly in front of them like others have done. I am sure that there is some difference, but the wall would be more of a culprit than the bass traps, in my opinion (and I could very well be wrong, just thinking out loud so to speak).
As for the sub, I am going to put a couple of sub "jacks" in the walls and see what works doing the ol' subwoofer crawl. My plan is also to add a second sub to the mix to help keep things more even in the room.
Someone at work told me to put the equipment and movies in the back corner near the top right of the diagram. His idea was to build a "cabinet" in the wall there for the equipment and movies and would bump the wall outward into the family room area, but along the outside wall, and not in the middle of the basement as if it was in the lower right part. He said, just frame it bigger, and do the double drywall, Green Glue deal in there, stagger the studs, etc. I would need to seal the crap out of the edges and corners, but that MIGHT work. It seems a bit tight though with the seating.
I was looking at the ever popular K-Mart home theater seats. 2 rows reclined requires 11 feet by 11 feet of space, this I would only have 2 feet to get around the front row, and a 2 foot wide opening maximum for the equipment/storage rack.
Keep in mind too that I just will have a receiver, blu-ray player, hd-dvd player, and satellite receiver. I would leave some space for any sort of future expansion, but that is the basic count of items anyway.
The other option that I thought of (just brainstorming in my own thread) was a small (short) equipment rack that sits off in one of the front corners in front of a bass trap. Short enough to be under the screen. that still doesn't help with the dvd storage issue though.
