Setting Up Your Home Theater System

Your home theater can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. It can be a 20” television with a set of stereo speakers or it can be a 36” HDTV with full surround sound speakers, complete with DVD player. So how does one set up their home theater system?

Well you can start by setting a budget. Spend as little or as much as you can afford. Then stick to that budget. If you can’t get all the components you want right away that’s okay. It’s far better to buy fewer components that are top quality than more components that are low quality.

When you are setting up a home theater system your goal is to duplicate that commercial Dolby sound you would have at the movie theater. Of course you’ll be duplicating it on a smaller scale. The plan is for you and your family and friends to be able to enjoy quality movie sound from the comfort of your living room.

This isn’t as difficult as you might think. Even the most basic home theater system can do a remarkable job of producing quality sound. Part of the reason is the excellent quality of the DVD’s you watch and part of it is that in such a small area [compared to a movie theater] you really require very little equipment to get amazing sound.

A basic home theater system will have the TV then there will be a right and left speaker on each side of the TV. These are your front speakers. You’ll also need a center channel speaker which sits either on top of the TV or directly below.

Then you need your surround speakers which are the speakers that bring you all those neat affect sounds like the rain, an explosion, jets rumbling, or the noises of the jungle. These speakers need to be located on each side of your main seating area which is generally the couch. Lastly you’ll need a subwoofer which produces all those deep bass sounds.

So to obtain the 5.1 Dolby sound of the theater you need 5 speakers plus the subwoofer. Now you need one other component to get the Dolby sound quality. That’s a Dolby Digital Surround Sound Audio Video Receiver. The receiver is able to decode all the information on the DVD so that it can assign the correct sounds to the correct speakers.

Of course you’ll also need a DVD player to listen to all those great movies. You can buy a DVD player for under $100 and it’s worth the investment. Of course you can continue to use your VCR but you will only be able to give you analog Dolby sound and believe me there is a huge difference!

The more you spend on a receiver the more bells and whistle and options you are going to get. The more you spend on the speakers the higher quality the speakers will be. Now that said don’t base your decision entirely on price. You need to compare specs.

This is especially true if you are shopping online where you can get some great buys on electronics. Some companies are more competitive than others so be sure to do lots of research until you are comfortable you are getting the best bang for your buck, or should be say bet boom for your buck.

Your home theater system will be bring you hours of enjoyment and save you all those costly visits to the movie theater and those uncomfortable seats. So what’s holding you back?

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.