This is a diagram of how I have my home theater setup. I use a Logitech Harmony controller to pull it altogether. As a reminder, my home theater is targeted at a small space: apartments, condos, small extra rooms. If you are looking for the full-on home theater experience, I highly recommend hiring a professional to at least consult and give you advice OR spend a tremendous amount of time learning about today’s televisions and projectors, sound systems, media formats, and seating arrangements.
Let’s start with the television. I went with a non-mainstream TV from Sanyo because it looked so amazing for under $1000. Fifty inches of killer glass giving 180 degrees of viewing angle.
Transformers (HD-DVD/Blu-Ray) looked absolutely stunning when we hooked it up. If I had it to do over, I would not have a 50″ TV. Seriously. It takes two people to move the beast. I am sold on plasma at my price range for now. For an all-purpose TV for movies and gaming, plasma hands down, BUT, it really seems like plasma is on its way out. I would recommend looking really hard at the Vizio, Samsung, and Sony TV’s with high contrast ratio in the budget price range under $1000. Buy as large a screen as you can, but be mindful that you have to carry it home. Forty-two inches seems like the sweet spot currently.
The other half of my equation deals with sound. I am not an audiophile, so if you can really hear all the pops and hisses in CD quality music — stop reading. I have had surround sound systems in my house and you haven’t heard Star Wars at home until you listen to Tie Fighters coming over your shoulder during the escape from the Death Star or swamp sounds in Halo just before you meet the Flood.
That said, many landlords frown on you mounting things to their walls. And the logistics of surround sound are just a hassle in my opinion. Three point one (3.1) is sufficient. This means that you have a left stereo channel, a right stereo channel, an all important center channel, and the subwoofer. In this day and age, most everyone should know what stereo sound does for you. That center channel is where voices really pop from out of movies. The subwoofer gives you the boom-boom-boom.
For me, Sony’s Soundbar, made a big difference in my viewing experience. The bar has the left, right, and center channels connected via a single cable to the subwoofer, which doubles as the receiver. A snap to setup. It supports three HDMI-in connections and one out. I have had friends suggest an HDMI switcher — I have the all-in-one switcher.
The HDMI cables take your video and audio over one cable. On previous DVD and VCR devices, you had a cable for video and two cables for left and right channel audio. You could have as many as five total plugins to cover all of your audio and video needs for a single device. Not any more. Three devices into the receiver (HDDVD, PS3, and XBox 360) over a single cable each. One cable out of the receiver/subwoofer to the TV. Much, much easier. The receiver/subwoofer handles the sound and passes the video onto the TV. Make sense?
Ok, it is getting late. I still need to talk about the Mac Mini, Apple Extreme, and Drobo storage unit in future posts. Good night.
