Home theater system

How to buy a home theater system!

Purchasing a home theater system, for watching movies, can be an impeccable experience, if you choose your combination well. A home theater basically comprises of a DVD player, a display panel, and a speaker set. These days, with HD in picture, there’s an utter chaos in the market, with companies offering various combinations, claiming to provide a breathtaking, experience. The consumers don’t know what to buy actually, and they end up buying the products not suitable for their needs. A home theater complements to your personality, gives an insight of what you are, with sleek cuts, or with bold designs. So its always recommended that you DO NOT compromise on the looks. The guide to choosing a decent home theater system will be dealt in steps; we start off with the DVD player configurations first.

1)      DVD player

DVD players have almost reached their saturation points, if their features are to be considered. Almost all the companies, today are manufacturing HD compliant, Dolby Pro Logic-II, video and audio systems. HD stands for high definition that enables a player to play videos with high resolutions, easily, and thus giving out crisper and clearer videos. For the needs of a home theater, you need to have atleast a 5.1 channel audio output with atleast Dolby Pro Logic-I tag. Besides the playing capability, DVD players are coming with an inbuilt USB port, so that you don’t always have to burn your discs as well as time to watch your favorite movies. Just plug-in the USB device, sit back and enjoy the experience. However, not all DVD players can play all the video formats, so in order to stay future proof, and remain hassle free, purchase one which has a tag of MP4 video playback capability.

Also sometimes, you might wish to play your videos directly from your laptop, cell, there are players in the market, that have the Bluetooth technology. Just stream the video, and will will be done in a few minutes.

Now that the features have been taken care of, make sure that your DVD player complements your display panel and your speaker set. Companies like Philips, Sony, Bush, Bose(I know its expensive), Altec Lansing, JBL, offer DVD players, that have a state of the art design and some even look like if they’re from the 22^nd century.

2)      Speaker set

While purchasing a speaker set, your first concern should be to have a set having more PMPO (peak music power output). Usually a speaker set with 5000PMPO results in a good buy. Also do make sure that the RMS (root mean square) rating of the speakers, which is the actual power output by the speakers, should be at most 11 times lesser than the PMPO rating.

Also if you’re buying a 5.1 channel output DVD player, do make sure, that you buy a 5.1 channel speaker set that should be compliant with the DVD player hardware.

Some considerations that should be taken seriously when deciding the features of home theater speakers you want:

• Placement of speakers– this is an essential factor for the listening experience, follow the placement guides
• Voice Matching – check this one out before you make your purchase. There shouldn’t be any sort of delay in the sound, else the picture and the sound won’t synchronize
• Rear Speakers – provide ambient sounds like rustle of leaves and rain drops, placement is critical, provide surround sound atmosphere
• Front Speakers – tower speakers provide the best sound experience, handle bulk of sound experience and placement is critical, provide off stage sound effects
• Sub-woofer – needs to be powered and located next to a wall or corner for optimum base sound, minimum 10 12 inch speaker cone
• Quality Sound – need at least 6 speakers for optimum Dolby Digital applications
 

Wireless Home Theater Speakers

·         The use of wireless speakers provide a lot of advantages, such as not having to run wires in walls or having the wires lay about looking out of place. Advantages of wireless include:

• Placement of speakers where ever you want
• Speakers can even be moved outside for special occasions
• The ability to move the speakers around to adjust to the acoustic conditions

Once you’re done with making choices, you should consider going to an online product catalog or a showroom for the demo of the product. Check out its GUI, its warranty and support and stuff like that.

3)      Display panel

There are 3 types of display panels available in the market, namely, LCD ,LED ,Plasma, and do not that all three are not the same. There is a difference in technology and you can’t just go and purchase anyone out of them. They all differ, depending upon your needs. By this point you should be confused, which one to buy out of an LCD, an LED, and a Plasma. The complete solution and guide to choosing a perfect panel be it an LED, LCD, and plasma have been given here, to differentiate between them, go to:

how to choose a display panel