I forgot to mention that our house has the "strongest" gas filled double pane windows. We get 110F summers here. I found that even with these "heavy duty" double pane windows, the hot sun still just streams through STRONGLY. It wasn't until we put the mesh sun screen material mounted outside of the windows that we could tolerate the amount of heat transmitted through the glass.
I've seen the Huper Optik window film demonstration where they put a heat lamp on the other side of a coated piece of glass. The amount of heat that it cuts down is most impressive.
I understand about the noise issue with double panes. But with double panes, window film will void the warranty because the heat rejection of the film will expand the gas between the panes and blow the seals.
Being that I'm primarily interested in managing the heat from the hot summers, I'm leaning towards single pane windows and the solar film. I'm just not confident that double panes will do that much for heat control given my experience with relatively expensive double pane residential windows.
