Shoppers in this new millennium are much more aware about electronic goods than people were at any time earlier. The older generation of today grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s when everyone in the West had a television set and a stereo. Previous generations were not so lucky for financial and technological reasons. Therefore, most shoppers nowadays have no compunctions about going shopping for complex electronic equipment like a home theater.
It is in the shoppers’ best interest to study and understand about the components that go into making up a good home theater. It is not exceptionally exacting and many if not all of the elements involved have been around for at least a few years now. Think about what goes into a home theater:
a screen – can be a television screen, a canvas screen for a projector or a modern plasma or LCD screen. Forget about the modern varieties of screen, they are still fundamentally TV screens and they have been around for 80 years or so. Same with a projector.
a player – a DVD player is just an improved CD player and they have been out for 20-30 years. You have probably had one for most of that time. (You can add another dimension to your home theater here by swapping an Xbox for the DVD player, but games machines are not new).
speakers – they are nothing new either. Speakers have been about as long as the television set.
So you see, there is nothing in that package which you should feel awkward about buying. Fair enough, you will be buying state of the art examples of what I listed above, but they are fundamentally the same. You attach them all together with their special plugs and wires and then plug them into the mains. Switch on and it will work.
So the next question is: do you purchase a package or do you buy the elements and build your own home theater? The answer to that question really depends on your level of competency. A package is easy and may work out cheaper too, but will it have the flexibility that you want? If you have a standard sized and standard shaped room, then I am sure that you will be able to buy a package that will suit you. If you think that the speakers are sub-standard, you could always sell them on and upgrade after a period.
if you want to be sure of getting exactly what you want, I think that most people will have to buy the elements separately: that is screen, player and speakers.
The size of the screen depends on the size of the room and how close you are sitting to it: a distance of between three times and five times the diagonal of the screen is about right. However, some people like to be dominated by the screen and others do not want to wear their glasses, so it is up to individual preference.
The DVD player is a matter of individual preference too. They are all much of a muchness, but some people favour Sanyo while others favour Philips. If you want gaming capability too, use an Xbox instead of an regular DVD player.
Most rooms will require at least a 5.1 surround sound speaker set. These ought to be bought as one package to ensure that they are all well-matched. That is five normal speakers and a sub-woofer.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with home theater speaker placement. If you are interested in a Home Movie Theatre, please click through to our site now.
