Dec
4
Creating a Home Theater
Filed Under Home Theater Construction, Home Theater Design | Leave a Comment
Congratulations! The renovation came in on time and under budget! The whole country’s going digital, so your timing is perfect. And those new, comfortable chairs—well, if furniture could talk, they’d say “what time is the movie?” You are about to create a home theater, and you and your family can hardly wait.
Only two considerations remain—equipment and a consultation with your lighting specialist. The following tips will help you make good choices to get your home theater up and running.
Choosing Equipment: Home theaters are based on one of two kinds of technology—projection-based and TV-only. Both have advantages and distinctive features.
Projection-based equipment features screens up to 100 inches—this is the real lights-camera-action big-screen experience. Think a bit about your room before you decide whether you want more information on front- or rear-projection units.
If you expect to use your theater room strictly as a theater, either system will work well. If, on the other hand, someone will likely be reading the paper, playing a game, or doing needlepoint in one area of the room, look at rear-projection systems. A front-projection system generates a light stream that can be interfered with by light needed for other activities. A rear-projection system is self-contained, and those who wish to turn on a lamp can do so without conflicting with the show.
Although screens are smaller (50 to 60 inches), TV-only theaters provide a great theater experience. Two types of TV displays are available. Again, issues of light may help you decide which display is best for your room. Plasma screens have a reputation for strong definition between dark and light tones, clear detail, depth, and true-to-life colors. The gas cells of a plasma screen do not permit any light-leaks between cells, giving truer and deeper black levels than LCD screens.
Anyone who owns an LCD flashlight knows that LCD means light and plenty of it. An LCD screen features brighter display and more intense colors than plasma. An LCD screen is the perfect choice for a room with high ambient light, whether from daylight or adjacent areas.
Close examination of both kinds of TV-only display systems will reveal no major differences in picture quality. You may well find that both perform equally well in your room, advise experts.
May
2
If you’re building a dedicated home theater, do yourself a favor and plan on adding a game port or two. What’s that, you’re not a gamer? Take my advice and add them away. Video game consoles are revolutionizing the home theater market and many of the recent converts are folks that would have never described themselves as “gamers”.
The purpose of game-ports is two-fold, first so that the console can easily be transported from room to room and secondly for easier access to settings, controllers, and loading media. I like to place my game ports flush mounted to the face of risers and or at the front of the room in a wall-box.
A game port cabling should consist of a HDMI cable, component cables (for Wii’s and older X-Box’s), a RG-59 for digital audio, and a CAT-6 for future proofing. Don’t worry about the RG-59 being limited to coaxial digital audio only; RadioShack, Amazon, and eBay sell cheap optical to coaxial converters that allow you take an optical digital out and convert it to coaxial.
Apr
16
From time to time I have to tell people, 8’ ceilings aren’t ideal for full-sized home theater recliners sitting on elevated rear platforms. The ceiling’s just not high enough to make something like that work with this particular screen size (usually over 100” diagonal). Sometimes they look at me as if I just shot their kitten or told them their lifelong dream isn’t attainable.
Room dimensions, realistic expectations and budgets are rarely forgiving and often times the single most limiting factors when it comes to dedicated home theaters. Simply put, you need to keep in mind that front projectors often hang down into the room and a rear riser, combined with a hanging projector in a room at 8’ or shorter quickly becomes an obstacle. At 9’ or greater the chances of this becoming a problem quickly diminish.
That’s not to say 8’ ceilings won’t work, but the rear riser may have to be sacrificed and or a projector (with lens shift) that can be placed at the top of the ceiling, i.e. without a drop-pole, may have to be used. Remember dimensions, perspective and hardware aren’t forgiving but imagination can often overcome those limits.
Apr
6
Multipurpose Home Theaters
Filed Under Home Theater Design | Leave a Comment
While it might not be the first thing anyone thinks of when they hear the phrase home theater, our dedicated theaters can accommodate a variety of activities in addition to watching movies. Whether it’s the kid’s play or a business presentation home theaters can easily serve multiple purposes, however getting the most out your room takes some preparation.
Starting with the kids play’s, if you’re going to build a stage then by all means build a stage and do it right, if not don’t bother. Too often I see these half-stages or lips as I like to call them, which really wind up being more of an obstacle than a place to perform or address the audience in your home theater.
As far as presentations go, simply put if your presentation involves a power point display you’ll want to make sure you have some way of connecting your laptop to the display/projector. If your laptop has a VGA out you’ll want to run the proper cable ahead of time and likewise for an s-video out. Some business projectors have the ability to display networked video but this hasn’t been widely adopted for consumer projectors as yet.
Feb
15
Home Theater Design Basics
Filed Under Home Theater Design | Leave a Comment
One of (if not) the most important design considerations for a dedicated home theater is choosing the right location, assuming you have a choice of rooms and or areas beforehand, you’ll want to pick a room that you have control over certain variables. Number one and most importantly you’ll want to pick a room you can control the light in and by control I mean make dark in the middle of the day, now I don’t mean pitch black can’t see your hand in front of your face dark but certainly dark enough as to not have ambient light hit the viewing surface.
Another consideration is well, the consideration of others, you may want to pick a room that’s somewhat insulated from the rest of the home for noise consideration, that is the noise both coming from and entering the home theater. Lastly and this is one of the most overlooked consideration is climate control, many rooms (basements in particular) don’t have adequate heating and or cooling capabilities to offer a comfortable environment at either of the extremes, this is worth considering before you choose which room you’ll use for your home theater.
Feb
10
Home Theater generally consists of an entertainment system with a “big screen” television (42” or larger in many cases) multiple speakers in either a 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 configuration and a high quality video source, generally high definition cable or satellite, DVD and or Blu-ray. More often than not the home theater environment is a dark or darkened room which ensures the image is as sharp and bright as possible.
Another thing that typically separates a home theater setting from the everyday ‘just watching TV’ is that home theater seating faces forward, directly forward and toward the screen, contrast that with our modern off-set, angled and or otherwise non symmetrical room layouts and it’s easy to see how the pinpoint accuracy of a modern surround sound system can be compromised and diluted beyond relevance.