Choices in building a home theater

One thing to consider when deciding how to build your home theater is what solution you will decide to go with. There are a number of ways to get started in setting up your first home theater.

There are HTIB or home theater in a box solutions, which I generally recommend against because the money you spend on an HTIB system of any quality, you could use to purchase higher quality separate components which will perform better. The only break even exception would be the Bose 321 System. For the price it sounds good, plays fairly loud and is easy to setup. However, since it is all integrated as a system, if any of the components in the system fails you will likely be paying more to repair it than replacing a component that failed from a component based home theater.

Another fairly elegant home theater solution is the surround bar or sound projector technology. These solutions are convenient to setup and fully integrated. These systems perform best when accompanied by a subwoofer, which is an added cost, but well worth it. I am running a Yamaha ysp-800 sound projector with a definitive technology ten inch subwoofer in my bedroom, and the audio as well as the soundstage are excellent. I went from a 5.1 setup consisting of an Energy take 5 system with a separate receiver to the Yamaha system and have had no regrets. I have also demo'd the Polk surround bar solution and it is also a high quality solution in need of a subwoofer to sound excellent. However, the channel separation was not implemented as well as the Yamaha in my opinion and the cost is higher than the Yamaha ysp-800. The Yamaha utilizes 23 separate drivers with discrete amplification and decodes Dolby digital and DTS bitstreams. Also, the Polk surround bar requires a separate receiver.

My Bedroom setup is as follows and yields excellent results.

Sony Playstation 3 blu ray player
Yamaha ysp-800 Sound Projector
Definitive Technology Subwoofer 10 inch
Sony 32 inch Wega LCD 1080i Display

Home theater separates are the preferred method of setting up a home theater. The strategy of using separate components to build your home theater allows you to upgrade at your own pace. For instance, you can start out with a nice high quality receiver and just two or three high quality speakers for front Left and front Right and Center channel speakers along with a sub for a 2.1 or 3.1 system and later add surround speakers. You could also forgo the sub if you had front tower speakers for your left and right channels that could produce adequate bass. Home theater separates will obviously be the most expensive way to setup your home theater but will produce the best sound for a reasonable amount of money. Speakers can be one the most important pieces of the home theater puzzle and thankfully, they are one of the longest lasting. I have had my speakers for about ten years, and they sound better than the day I brought them home. I have in fact upgraded receivers twice, and my TV once, now with these same speakers and sub. So, the moral here is choose your speakers wisely. Don't rush, and give yourself plenty of time to audition speakers before you commit to purchasing them. Also, you will want to keep the timbre the same in your home theater by using the same brand and if possible series of speaker. This will keep the surround effect fluid and natural sounding.

Introduction

Value Home theatre is a fascinating hobby, and has matured quite a bit since I first got interested in the hobby over ten years ago. I can remember my first home theatre experience. It was 1994 I believe, and I saw a demo being given for Jurassic Park. It was a VHS tape played on a Pioneer dolby pro logic system, and I was capivated by the experience, especially the low frequency effects of the dinosours walking and roaring. It was from that point that I got hooked on the home theatre hobby. That system by todays standard is very archaic and outdated, especially when it comes to video quality, because the difference in the maturity of the technology available today is like night and day.

Today we have blu ray high definition video and sound, which is the state of the art at the moment. However, DVD is still mainstream in my opinion and it will take another year or so before blu ray becomes mainstream. This is due to the slow acceptance of the technology due to high priced players and movie titles as well as DRM issues. This is especially true because DVD delivers a pristine picture with very high quality discrete multichannel audio, just at a lower resolution, and at a very reasonable price point with little DRM enforced in the hardware. There is also the possibility of upconverting the dvd signal to HD resolutions using the latest DVD players, Blu Ray players, and HD TV's for an even better looking picture.

The focus of my blog will be on high value, high performance audio video gear that will still look and sound incredible but will still be affordable. One does not need to purchase audiophile rated A/V gear to get an acceptable and even incredible home theatre experience in your own home. I will also discuss home theatre do's and dont's, pitfalls and workarounds related to the tech involved in setting up your gear based on my own experiences, and offer advice and tips whenever I can.

I hope you will enjoy reading my Home Theatre blog. Visit often for new content, reviews, and opinions on gear that I am upgrading to, or planning on upgrading to.