Posts Tagged ‘celebrities’

Selecting A Screen For Your Home Theater

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

If you are thinking about setting up a home theater system, then there are three essential pieces of equipment to consider. They are the screen, the speakers and the player. Two of these pieces of equipment are directly linked to the dimensions of the room in which you will be sitting and where you will be sitting.

All DVD players over a certain price are pretty good and you ought to listen to a couple to make up your mind. The same with speakers, although how many you will need is dependent on the proportions of the room. The screen is more important and that is what I want to discuss here.

It will not actually be of very much help to you to just walk into a department store which stocks fifty or sixty television sets all in a line. You may find that you have a preference for one screen’s colour display over another, but the colours are controllable anyway by brightness, contrast and colour mix. You need to view the screen as it will be seen in your home theater.

In order to do this, I always advise getting a pen, paper, preferably graph paper, and a rule. Draw in the proportions of the room to the largest scale that the sheet of paper allows, maybe one inch for two feet or there abouts. Then draw a line to represent the screen against whichever wall you choose and finally add a few squares for the seating. Now measure the space between them and write that figure down, because it is very important.

Using our scale above, if the gap on paper between the screen and the seats is five inches, the distance in the room will be ten feet and ten feet is 120 inches. A good rule of thumb, when trying to work out screen size is the same one used for paintings, which is that the ideal viewing distance of a picture is between three and five times its diagonal measurement. Therefore, in our illustration, the ideal screen size should be between 40 and 24 inches. Nevertheless, many experts put a minimum screen size for a home theater at 28 inches.

That may come as a bit of a surprise to many of you, because a lot of people think that the answer is the bigger the better. However, primed with this information, now go to the TV store and look at the TV’s again. You will find that if you get up too close to some sorts of screen the picture becomes rather poor, particularly with conventional television screens. Plasma and HDTV permit you to get a little closer without losing quality.

Another factor is your age, or at least, the quality of your eyesight. Would you rather watch the film with your glasses on or off? Off for me, so I would tend towards the higher end of our scale or maybe even go above it. My eyes are not going to get any better, but I can always put my glasses on when the time comes that I cannot see my screen properly any longer. However, I want to put that time off for a while yet, so I would go for a 48 inch screen in this illustration for my home theater. Plasma, if I could afford it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with Home Theater Screens. If you are interested in a Home Movie Theatre, please click through to our site.

Home Theater Speaker Fundamentals

Friday, March 12th, 2010

The second most essential part of a good home theater set-up is its loudspeakers. You simply cannot attain that authentic theater environment, if you do not have good speakers. It goes without saying too, that the amplifier and player must be equally as good, because any system is only as good as its weakest element.

However, if you do it right, you can easily reproduce the sound quality achieved in a full size movie theater. Unfortunately though, many people seem to get baffled about which speakers they need, when they go to buy for their home theater in order to create real surround sound.

The minimum requirements for a decent set of surround sound speakers are a left and right channel speaker, a centre channel speaker and a sub-woofer. The following are the basic speakers that are necessary to complete a good home theater: front left and right speakers, a centre channel speaker, surround sound speakers. Often people try to do without the centre channel speaker, but this speaker provides a good proportion of the soundtrack in many movies as well as adding depth to the dialogue.

The surround sound makes the film sound more realistic. It is what makes the difference between watching TV at home and going to the movie theater. The opportunity of having this at home has only recently become affordable. The most frequent systems are: 5.1 channel, 6.1 channel, or 7.1 channel surround sound. The first digit refers to the number of normal loud speakers and the second one to the number of sub-woofers. The amount of speakers that is the best for you, depends on the size and shape of the room you are sitting in. The more is not always the merrier.

The sub-woofer is the cause of the deep bass sound that underscores so many movie soundtracks and these are the sounds that are responsible for heightening the drama in a film. A good sub-woofer is an essential element of your home theater speaker package, if you do not have one, you will miss out on this.

There are many makes on the market and some are cheaper than others, but it is essential that you pick speakers that will work well together. They have to be compatible. If you do not know how to make certain that they are, the best choice for this is to purchase all your speakers together in one kit by one maker. It may be tempting to save money by mixing and trying to match speakers, but if you get it wrong, you will not create the true quality of sound you are hoping to achieve in your home theater.

Some speakers are made to place on the floor and others are made to hang on the wall. Floor standing speakers are the best for home theater, but they also take up the most space and can have wires running everywhere. If this is not a problem to you, then fine, but if it is, you can solve it by buying wireless speakers.

Owen Jones, the writer 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.

Speakers Are Not The Last Word

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

When most people are looking for a sound system, they usually go directly to the speakers. This is not of necessity wrong, but you must not stop there. The speakers are an important part of a sound system, but they are not the be all and end all.

It also essential to think about the player and the amplifier, because any sound system is only as good as its weakest constituent. Another important topic is the positioning of those speakers. It is just as important to position your speakers correctly as it is not to buy cheap speakers. There are also misconceptions about size. Bigger is not always better.

In the past, it was often the rule that bigger meant better, but now often the opposite is often the case. Technological development has been concentrated on producing smaller speakers, that will take up less room in our smaller houses and smaller cars. Therefore, the smaller speakers are often the most technologically superior.

If you are opting for surround sound, which is the best obtainable today, then you will also have to think carefully about placement. That is the positioning of the speakers. In a typical 5.1 surround sound home theater, you will have six speakers: five ordinary speakers and one sub-woofer.

These speakers would be set out one to the far right of the screen and one to the far left of it and one beneath it. The other two speakers would be at the rear of the audience, but not so far apart as the front speakers. The sub-woofer can go in the centre at the front or the rear.

For smaller rooms, a 3.1 surround sound system might be adequate, that is you leave out the rear speakers. For a larger room, you may want either a 6.1 or 7.1 system. The 6.1 has the rear row of speakers corresponding to the front row, while the 7.1 has an additional middle rear speaker.

It is better if you can buy all your speakers at the same time from the same manufacturer. Obviously, they all have to match each other and the amplifier. The output from the amplifier has to match the capabilities of the speakers or you risk blowing them. That is, sending them more power than they can cope with, which causes too much vibration and permanent damage to the speaker’s internal components. Everyone has heard blown speakers, they sound awful.

If you can not afford to get all your speakers at the same time, buy a famous brand and a late-ish model, so that you can get more of them when you can afford to. Do not go for end of line speakers, because they are cheap, unless you can buy all the speakers that you will ever require for your set-up.

Buy your speakers online, if that gets you the best deal, but you really ought to hear speakers like the ones you are buying in action, before you make up your mind. You could also take your Internet price to the local dealers and ask them to match it. They might, you never know and it will save you carriage too.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, 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.

Xbox And The Home Theater

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

There are several video game systems on the market, but if you are looking for a game console that also can be utilized for home theater entertainment, then the right choice has to be the Xbox game console. Very often, it is the case that children will want to play games in the daytime on holidays and before bed during the week, whereas parents will want to watch films at night before going to bed. Therefore, the two age groups need not clash often with their use of the home theater console.

Therefore, if you can get a device that fulfills both the roles of playing games and playing films, you can save some money. The Xbox game console fits this role, because the Xbox is one of the new generation of video game consoles that can also play films on DVD or whatever disk format.

The Xbox is actually a very hi-tech piece of equipment, something that non-game players might not have realized. It meshes easily into a home theater system because it has wide screen video capability, HDTV screen resolutions and Dolby Digital and DTS sound support, making it a perfect home theater set-up component.

The Xbox is also a good looking piece of equipment, which will match any existing black home theater equipment you may already have. It does not look like just a plastic toy. It was invented by Microsoft and has a powerful, stylish look. The Xbox’s case is black with an X on it and a green Xbox logo resembling a jewel.

The Xbox is basically a cut-down computer as it has many parts of a personal computer such as an Intel processor, NVidia graphic chips and an internal hard drive among others. PC’s are general purpose tools, whereas the Xbox is designed for playing DVD’s in more ways than one. In other words, it is a dedicated computer. It is dedicated to the task of playing DVD’s and it does it very well.

However, it also has four controller sockets in the front of the box for connections and it has an Ethernet socket for multi player games that allows other gamers on the Internet to take part in the game. The Xbox system includes as standard: the controllers with a 9 ft cable, a standard AV cable, and an AC power cord. It also comes with a DVD loading tray and a multi signal audio-video connector for easy connection to televisions and other home theater systems.

The Xbox will transform the way you think about games and how you play them, because it is so committed to making interactive games a reality and as exciting as possible. Games are written especially for it such as the Dead or Alive series and the Halo series too.

However, their are sports games to be had too such as football and Formula 1 motor car racing. The graphics, sound and overall reality are fabulous. Finally, for parents who are worried about what their kids are watching, playing or doing, there are parental controls built into the Xbox.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with Home Theater Screens. If you are interested in a Home Movie Theatre, please click through to our site.

Our Home Theater

Friday, February 19th, 2010

It all started about nine months ago, when my wife and I decided it would be a good idea to remodel our home. It took a lot of talking about because neither of us really wanted to take the project on as we both have active business lives. However, one Sunday afternoon, I took the bull by the horns and started to strip the paper off the walls and the ceiling in the kitchen. My wife soon joined in.

It took us a month to finish it, because we only had Saturday afternoons and Sunday, but we found that we liked the physical work, we both have desk jobs, and we really enjoyed working and planning together. It was a new but pleasing experience for us.

So, on the day we finished, we prepared a special meal and laid the table properly. After the meal, we sat down to watch a film on TV. But neither of us had been able to do that for a month and we both felt restless. My wife said something like: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have another project to do?’ and I reckon we both had the same idea at the same time.

The spare bedroom! Well, our kids had families of their own now, so we essentially had three spare bedrooms. We decided to turn one of them into a home theater. Neither of us particularly liked watching TV, but we both liked films which are normally ruined by too much advertising.

We went up to the smallest room, but it was too small so, like Goldilocks we went to the next, but ended up in the biggest room, so that we could entertain friends or family too. Neither of knew what to do next about the home movie centre, but we knew that we could clear the room out and measure it, which is what we did. All the furniture went into the garage until the charity shop could take it away and we went to the computer to get advice.

There was tons of guidance on websites and in articles and we soon felt confident enough to take the venture on. We transferred the dimensions of the room in scale onto a sheet of paper and drew in where the screen would go and where we would be sitting. The distance left between us and the screen would be about 15 feet.

We had read that the optimum viewing distance is between three times and five times the diameter of the screen, so we could choose a screen between sixty inches and 36 inches. Being in our fifties, we though we would make it easier on our eyes and opted for a forty-eight inch plasma screen.

We ordered that from the Internet. We had also read that the Xbox was a good double as a DVD player and we knew that our grandson was always on about one, so that was next. We were a bit stuck with the speakers, but my brother could help me on that one. We had about a week before our equipment would arrive, so we determined to redecorate in the evenings.

Once complete, we installed all our equipment with my brother’s help and we were off. At first we used a couple of sun loungers as seating, but we fairly soon got two delightfully comfortable reclining chairs and two couches for visitors. We may upgrade those later and put in dimmable lighting too, but for now we are very pleased with our home movie system and so is our grandson.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with Home Theater Screens. If you are interested in a Home Movie Theatre, please click through to our site.