The Home Theater Experience

The home theater experience can be a great one and these days you can build your own home theater at a reasonable price. If you're a true movie/entertainment lover, there's nothing better than to build a theater of your own, all you need is great living room furniture! Every home will have its own unique design because of each room's different dimensions and the wide array of different types of media equipment out there for you to buy but in general, you'll need at least four components to build a home theater system. This includes a TV or digital projector, a DVD player, and a home theater speaker system, which lets you, hear movies the way they sound in big theaters, and lastly great seating.

The first thing you will need to do is figure out what the main intention for the room and furniture function is going to be. Is it going to be a family setting for movies, a room for friends to watch sports, or a combination of many things. After figuring out your needs, you will then have to figure out the best way to use your given space in your home. You'll have to ask yourself, how many people can the room accommodate? You'll also have to ask yourself things like, will you use the theater for only movies or will you watch other programming such as sports and TV shows too? Will it be used by kids, adults or both? Will it be a gaming facility? Will it be part of a whole house audio and video system or a stand alone home theater? Do you want to incorporate elements of your home’s existing décor into your theater or do something completely different? Do you have any ideas on what you would like your theater to look and or function like or are you pretty much undecided?

After that, you will have to ask yourself things like, do you have equipment you will be incorporating into your new home theater or are you buying mostly new gear? What are the dimensions of the room or are you expanding a room or even building a new addition to the house? What is your budget? Do you want dedicated theater seating or couches and loveseats? As you can see there are many things to be taken into account when conceiving your home theater project. Once you’ve answered the basic need questions, you can begin the design process.

Design

Today’s home theater seating experience implies a real "cinema experience" and therefore a higher quality set of components than the average television provides. A typical home theater includes one or more audio and video sources. Some home theatres now include a home theater PC to act as a library for video and music content. You will need a receiver or a Pre-amplifier and Sound Processor for complex surround sound formats. You will need a system that consist of at least 2 speakers, but can have more speakers then that with additional subwoofer too. For your television you will have options of a video projector, a plasma TV, rear-projection TV, or a traditional TV. For seating, you will want a comfortable and organized layout to capture a movie cinema feel. Higher end home theaters commonly also have sound insulation to prevent noise from escaping the room, and a specialized coating to ensure correct absorption of the sound in the room.

The TV

The first component you'll need for your home theater system will be a television set or digital projector, some people use computer furniture for this. For this there are a wide range of options available! In general, high definition sets offer a much sharper picture when viewing DVD movies and also present a fantastically good picture when tuned to a high definition channel. Most high definition sets also offer a wide-screen aspect ratio which is much closer to what you're used to seeing in movie theaters. It will be up to you to choose a wide-screen or standard display when watching your high definition set. There are so many high definition sets and projectors to choose from that come in different screen sizes, prices, and other factors important to your home-theater experience. There are many different kinds of technologies you'll find in high definition displays.

Plasma Sets are the best of home theater TVs, but you will need a plasma tv stand. They come in jumbo sizes up to 60 inches diagonally, with bigger ones are on the way while only a few inches thick. Because of this you can hang one on the wall like a high-tech masterpiece. They are expensive but if you can afford one, it will for sure take your home theater room to a much higher level! LCD TVs look a lot like plasma sets and are built with technology found in flat-screen computer monitors. LCDs are only a few inches thick, so you can hang them on a wall or elsewhere in a room without using up much space. Unfortunately, though, LCD sets don't offer the jumbo screen sizes that plasma TVs do with the biggest LCD sets being about 40 inches. This is definitely a little small for your ultimate home theater use, but it’s still pretty good. Other drawbacks are higher cost and visibility decrease from the sides; Rear-Projection TVs are your best bet for getting a big HD picture without spending a lot of money. The set projects images onto the back of a screen and if your screen is large, then the picture will be large as well! Lastly, if you really want that movie-theater experience, your best option isn't a TV set at all, but a digital high definition projector. These projectors can typically be installed on your ceiling or some elevated spot behind the sofa, and they can project images onto a white screen or nearby blank wall. Images generated by a projector can get very big so they dwarf even the biggest high definition plasma sets. Without a doubt, a projector is your best bet if you're looking for the ultimate big-screen experience. The drawbacks to a projector system are, their images don't hold up very well in anything but a very dimly lit or dark room and also they are very expensive, you may want a cool office chair for the room as well if you have a computer in the same space. Extra television equipment you'll need will be a high definition receiver that can receive TV signals and a DVD player.