#1 2006
atomictoys

contents

atomictoys    

by macdude

atomictoys

Home Theatre

A journey of one

"Poll Position", showing the central seating position looking toward the screen. I'm doing some work on the Network DVD & standard DVD which is why thay are on top! Notice all the remotes in the foreground - they are being replaced next week with the Logitech Harmony 880 remote.

Around 3 years ago I lashed out and bought a ‘Home Theatre’. While she-who-must-almost-always-be-obeyed would have preferred one that came in a box where you just add water, it’s just not the way I do things.

This little story is about the rationale I applied to the process, and a hell of a process it was. Onward!

The lay of the land.

It sounds silly, but you must clearly define what HT is for you. For some it’s nothing more than external speakers for their existing TV, while for others it’s a room with remote control over lighting, curtains, bar fridge, usherettes with little torches, etc. Most of us are somewhere in between.

For me, I wanted a BIG 16:9 screen where I could watch DVD’s, free-to-air TV, High Definition Digital TV and Cable TV. Conventional CRT/LCD/Plasma are still just TV’s in my opinion, projector was the only way to go.

I also wanted to be able to play PC stored music/movies, with the PC being in another room from the HT.

The amp, yammys are AWESOME!

As far as budget goes, yes you must have one and you must stick to it. The approach I used was to have an “A” and “B” list. The things on the A list MUST be there when the HT is initially installed. The “B” list are those things that are nice to have, but if the budget is tight they can be purchased later.

There is another important concept here, tradeoffs. When you start to look at all the bits that make up your HT, there are a number of components your can skimp on and others you can’t. For example compare the display device to the DVD player. If you skimp and buy a Yum Cha “Play You Long Time” DVD player for $60, that’s no big deal. This can be a stop gap measure until you can afford the Porsche designed $400 beauty you really want. Try the same approach on a projector. You buy a $1,500 Two Dollar shop bargain bin unit instead of the $4,000 unit that will do the job. In this case you are less likely to upgrade because you are throwing away $1,500, which means you have to put up with its crappy for longer.

The moral of the story is don’t skimp on the big ticket items because you will hold on to them longer as the cost of upgrading them is much greater. For HT, the big ticket items are the display device and the HT amp. These two components made up around %65-%70 of my budget.

Finally, don’t forget to budget for incidentals – cabling (audio & video), power – do you need additional power points, and consider running costs – projector bulbs are expensive!

Now look at where the HT will live. This can have a big impact on your initial wish list.

The projector - notice the windows on one side making balancing the sound tricky. Fortunately the yammy has a mic that allows for automatic adjustment of the amp based on your room acoustics…

We have a dedicated room, however one wall was mainly glass. So, we had to budget for curtains including a custom job for a high diamond shaped window. We did go without the curtains for some time because we mainly use the HT at night so outside light is no big deal.

This dedicated room had existing cabling for speakers in two other areas, so the HT amp ideally would be multi-zoned. The kids can watch a DVD in the HT room while the same amp is playing a CD for the adults in the lounge room or outside to the back veranda.

Space. Don’t forget to look at all the bits that make up your home theatre and where they will live. Do you have a cabinet that will hold the amp, dvd, stb, etc? is there room for larger speakers or do I have to go small? Where will the sub-woofer go?

Finally one aspect of the environment that many people forget is seating position. Are there going to be any lighting problems (e.g. reflected from screen), and distance to screen. Especially for projectors, there is a ratio for how big a screen should be based on how far you are away from the screen. I’ll stop here for a quick link : http://www.projectorcentral.com/projection-calculator-pro.cfm Here you can plug in the model of your projector and the calculator will tell you what the ideal screen size is for you.

Why do you need to worry about this?

If you are sitting too close to the screen, you start to see screen elements like pixels and scan lines, you end up viewing each movie as a tennis match – having to move your head to scan left and right, and for DLP projectors you can encounter the ‘rainbow effect’ by sitting to close. This is a flash of colours especially in dark scenes.

You don’t want any of the above, so don’t go too big. My projector for example is capable of a screen width well over two meters, but my screen is 1.8m wide which is fine for the current seating position.

This process of going through features, budget & environment is something you will go through a number of times until you have a good understanding of what you want, what you can afford, what you can put off until later and what will work in your home.