123 Home Theater Information

Getting Started With Your Home Movie Theater


Everything changes, of this we can be certain. The preceding generation of the 1950s and 60s remembers when gas was 22 cents a gallon, including full-service by a nice man in a white uniform; car hops brought hot dogs and root beer on a tray to your car, and movie-going was an exciting experience. Drive-in theaters had horrible picture quality and even worse sound; nobody cared because making-out was more important than the feature. Movie theaters didnt come in clusters, and were velvet-lined and richly carpeted even in the balcony.

Today the home movie theater is making a stunning debut. Mall theaters are still drawing a crowd, but many prefer the convenience of home viewing. Encarta defines a home movie theater as a combination of high-quality sound and video reproduction in the home. These systems range from simple and inexpensive to complex, expensive and high maintenance. A nineteen-inch TV hooked up to a couple of extra speakers in the family room may technically qualify as a home movie theater, but true enthusiasts would sneer at the mere thought.

Lets Do It!

To get started with a home movie theater, picture yourself as Russell Crowe playing Maximus in Gladiator. Youre standing in the middle of the Coliseum in Rome, surrounded on all sides by roaring crowds, advancing opponents and pounding chariots. You hear every clash of metal on metal during deadly sword duels. Its as if you were right there, experiencing the sights and sounds along with Maximus. Now youve got the idea: your home movie theater should create an atmosphere of virtual reality.

Theater enthusiasts will tell you that two things are essential to start building your in-home movie theater: a large television and a surround sound system. Consider strongly a TV of at least fifty inches, preferably the sixty-one inch, high definition models. You want to be there, remember. A decade ago, big screen TVs were twenty-five inches; today, a true theater-quality TV less than fifty inches is a contradiction in terms.

In addition to the TV, the heart of your home movie theater sound system is the surround decoder. This device recreates the experience of multi-channel cinema sound right in your home. The decoder separates all audio signals from a sound source and sends the signals to various speakers placed throughout the room. Dolby surround sound indeed puts you into the arena with Maximus. The sound isnt coming at you from the TVs speakers, its coming from all around you, depending on how youve strategically placed your speakers.

Now that youve acquired the basics of your home movie theater, youll want to think further about the location of the theater, its furnishings, and other extras that can turn any evening into a stunning cinema experience.

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Starting With A Cheap Home Theater System


Depending on the size of the room in which you watch television, you may be happy with a cheap home theater system, and there are a few of them on the market. When you consider the limited input capability and quality there are still reasons to buy a cheap home theater system.

Many of these systems come in one box with all the speakers and generally have a lower power output, read that volume, than the big, expensive component systems. However, if you live in an apartment where volume could be a problem, you may opt for a cheap home theater system.

Budget constraints and your technical expertise are other reasons you may consider a cheap home theater system to be a good deal. Everything you need usually is included in the box and some of the systems even come with a DVD player, CD player VHS player already built in. In most cheap home theater systems, the wires are color coded to help make a fail-proof installation the first time.

May Not Meet Your Plans For The Future

Progressive scan DVDs were not on the market a few years ago and if you previously purchased a cheap home theater system you may not realize the better picture quality and if you home to add on to your system, its limited accessory input capability may be a drawback,

Youll still probably get six speakers, three for the front, two for the back and a bass speaker but the companies supplying these speakers arent normally in the speaker business and in order to provide a cheap home theater system they are going to use low quality speakers.

For some, people who dont watch bang-bang-shoot-em-up movies, they probably wont be upset by low quality speakers, but for those who insist on pretending theyre in a movie theater watching guns blaze and buildings blow up, a cheap home theater system most likely wont work for them.

People who have no intention of adding to their system, maybe a video gaming system and have a smaller television, under 30 may be completely happy with a cheap home theater system and dont see the need for the extra expense of component systems. In addition, some people may not be able to see or hear the difference in the quality of a higher-priced system. Thats where the companies who make and sell cheap home theater systems are targeting their sales efforts.

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