Australia's best home cinema - popcorn shared with fellow East Melbourne apartment block film connoisseurs

We’re down to the best of Property Observer's list of the 20 top home cinemas and this one's an interesting case.

All the previous 19 cinemas were like going to a Gold Class cinema and having it all to yourself or family and friends.

But this one is trend setting – its a shared cinema facility within a modern luxury East Melbourne apartment building.

The cinema is in the Salta redevelopment of the former Mercy Hospital for Women hospital building on Clarendon Street.

Property Observer gleans the 17-seat cinema can be booked by residents of the apartments for film screenings and parties. During big sporting events, such as the Olympics and the Grand Final, it's an open house with the first in getting the best seats.

The cinema comes with access to a hard-drive with 250 films or residents can bring their own DVDs.

RT Edgar agent, Sarah Case, says the building has a friendly atmosphere and shared facilities like this help build the community.

She says the building also comes with a library where residents meet once a month for a book club.

There is also a boardroom, an indoor pool, a sauna, a steam room and a full-sized gym with better facilities, says Case, than most commercial gyms.

Wine connoisseurs are able to buy a portion of the building's massive wine cellar to store their wine.

To get access to the cinema you could look at apartment 405 on the north eastern side of the building, being sold by RT Edgar's Sarah Case.

For just $3.8 million-plus, buyers will get a two-bedroom, two bathroom apartment with views from every room.

If you find the cinema booked out though, residents do have access to the movie hard-drive through the internal wired network.

Case says having a cinema as a shared facility in luxury apartment buildings could be an emerging trend.

Yve, on St Kilda Road, does have a shared cinema facility (photo below) but by our reckoning, it's nowhere near in the same league as this one.

As part of trend of vertical villages, at least two apartment blocks are being built with shared cinema facilities. Melbourne’s Fifty Albert and MY80 on A'Beckett Street will both feature shared facilities.

A 38-seater home cinema in a $9.5 million house at Paradise Point on the Gold Coast was the runner up on the top 20 cinemas on our Property Observer list which follows:

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

10

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