If you have the space, it is surprisingly easy to build a home theater that brings home the full cinema experience. And its relatively inexpensive too. Here are 10 steps to building the perfect home theater.
- Buy a projector instead of an LCD or plasma tv. Yes, LCD tv's are approaching 70" in size, but a home projector can easily exceed 100" in diagonal screen measurements. It gives you a true cinematic experience that LCD's still cannot beat.
- Get a good quality screen. Its possible to use a projector against a blank wall, but a wall will never have the smoothness and reflective qualities of a good screen. I recommend Carada's brilliant white screen. Its a great little projection screen company based out of Alabama.
- Buy an AV receiver with plenty of HDMI connections. Modern AV receivers typically have lots of HDMI connections, which enable you to connect multiple devices to your receiver. Get a receiver with at least 4. You can always expand with a switcher, but its less convenient.
- Good speakers are almost as good as great speakers. Only a trained audiophile can pick up on the subtle improvements of extremely expensive speakers. You can still get great quality cinema sound from a good, but not great pair of speakers. I like the infinity primus speakers. Great value for a high quality speaker. Ideally you will want a center channel, front left and right, and rear left and right, plus a subwoofer for 5.1 dolby digital sound.
- Let a subwoofer handle the heavy loads. You can really achieve a big booming sound by pairing bookshelf speakers with a good subwoofer. Set your crossover at 120 and let your subwoofer handle the dirty bass work on its own.
- Buy a programmable remote. Harmony remotes are easy to program and you can set it up to turn on or turn off all of your devices at once. You can also set custom buttons that change depending on which device you are operating.
- Don't overspend on cables. HDMI cables are one of the industries biggest rip-offs. You can get a high quality HDMI cable at monoprice.com for just a few bucks.
- Get a wifi connected smart box. This can be a roku, apple tv, or even an xbox. You will get access to tons of online content including netflix, for a very reasonable price. You can also access your home photos and videos, hop on youtube, and even rent movies for instant streaming online.
- Save your money and skip 3D. Yes, its a cool effect, but the gimmick quickly wears off. Moreover, there is very little 3D content produced each year to justify the expense.
- Get some great sample material to show off your home theater to your friends. The new James bond movies are a great choice, combining huge sound with compelling action. Blu-ray is the highest quality, but a 1080p Apple TV is nearly as good.
