Components of a Home Theater System

Bringing the movie theater home has never been easier. With today's high resolution Blu-Ray discs, digital sound and vivid large screen television sets you can have a better picture, better sound and the ability to pause the movie so that you can go to the bathroom. All that you need is a little bit of equipment.

3D

Whether or not you want to have a 3D home theater, you should consider buying 3D ready components. Because displaying 3D is relatively demanding, 3D capable components tend to be of higher quality than the average. As such, even if you never use it, the 3D system will do a better job of displaying 2D content well.

Choosing a TV

For most people, the most important part of their home theater is the TV set. Today, there are three choices, and they are all good: Plasma, LCD/LED and Front Projector. Front projectors can give you the biggest screen for the least money, but require that you have the ability to keep the room relatively dark. For living room home theaters, both flat screen technologies are excellent options. At the same price level, Plasma TVs may give you slightly better picture quality and smoother motion, while the LED/LCD will be a little bit brighter. Plasma TVs also typically burn two to three times as much power as an LED/LCD set.

Source Components

Since many TVs now integrate the ability to connect to Internet media sources like YouTube and Netflix, more and more people can do without a number of additional components, other than a Blu-Ray player. Although more expensive Blu-Ray players can offer better image quality, the cheapest Blu-Ray player will still look better than the most expensive DVD player. With this in mind, this can be good area to skimp.

Home Theater Receiver

Your receiver will serve as the nerve center of your system as well as handling the duty of sending sound to your speakers. Make sure that it has enough inputs and outputs to switch between components, as well as listening to the sound quality that it produces. If you can afford it, going with a separate preamp/processor and power amplifer will give you the best sound quality and most flexible system.

Look for a receiver with preamplifier outputs. This will allow you to use it with external power amplifiers when you upgrade your system.

Speakers

Other than your TV, your speakers have the greatest impact on your home theater experience. Furthermoe, they can last for years, if not decades, so they are an excellent place to spend a little bit of money. Find a set of speakers which are accurate but which also sound good to you and audition them in your home. Your room can make a great deal of difference in how speakers sound, so just listening to them at the store makes no difference.

Cables

No matter what the salesperson says, you can skimp on cables. Unless you have very long cable runs or have a unique situation, you will usually find that the cheapest decent quality digital cable for your application will perform similarly to an expensive one. You can save even more money by buying cables online.

Other than your TV, your speakers have the greatest impact on your home theater