Considering your home theater room design, performing a home theater plan or looking to upgrade your home theater room? Whether you have a house under construction or an existing structure and are looking for the ideal home theater spot. We can help you with your home theater plan. Lets get started.
Many people make the mistake, when considering their home theater room design, of jumping right into the audio and video. Obviously that is important and needs to be considered along with the accessories, and we do get to that, but we recommend considering a few other things first.
Home Theater Lighting Getting your home theater lighting correct is the single most important step to your home theater room design, therefore should be one of the first considerations for your home theater plan. The reason is simple, with too much light you will not be able to see the screen correctly and with too little light you may strain your eyes resulting in headaches and an unpleasant experience. Lighting will also impact the type of screen and projector you will require. Thankfully, lighting can be managed with dimmers, curtains, and correct placement. See our home theater lighting section for all the details.
Home Theater Wiring Although in the ideal situation wiring is not seen and not a determining factor in your home theater room design, in many cases it does have an impact. If your home theater plan is for new construction getting the correct wiring in the right place is critical and depending on the situation can be costly. For existing rooms there may be constraints on what can and cannot be done. Wireless Home Theater helps, but not everything is possible without wires, therefore some thought should be considered up front to any constraints the lack of wires may impose. For the all the details see our home theater wiring section.
Home Theater Seating Next up is considering the seating options for your home theater. This is where the dimensions and shape of your room become important. Home many seats, how far from the screen and at what angle from the screen all need to be considered for proper home theater room design. Also if more then one row of seating is desired then a riser may be in order. In addition accessories such as shakers (these provide vibrations related to the movie without requiring extreme amounts of bass) may be added. And of course the standard choices of seating functionality, color and texture. We address all of that and discuss various other seating configuration choices in the home theater seating section.
Home Theater Video Ok, now that we have an idea of what our lighting situation is, the room dimensions and seating arrangements we have to work with and what our wiring options are. We can now determine the video selections for our home theater. First we need to determine the picture quality desired (HDTV, STDV, EDTV), what type of player we are interested in DVD, Blu-ray or HD-DVD. And finally we have enough information to make the selection between a projector (DLP, LCD or LCOS) or TV (Plasma, LCD, or Projection) and determine which size is best for our room. Of course if we choose a projector then a screen is also in order and we address the surprising array of options in screen selection also. We cover all this and more in our home theater video section.
Home Theater Audio Of course a home theater is not complete without some home theater audio. Utilizing our knowledge of the room dimensions and seating arrangement we can determine what the best audio solution is for our room. We consider sound system options and of course the speaker options and locations.
Home Theater Installation and Setup Home theater installation and setup can be more difficult then expected. We start with the basics and work our way to the advanced. In addition we consider the usability and maintainability factors. One of the desires of many home theater owners is to keep the equipment hidden from view. Therefore some things to consider for usability are infrared sensors and remote controls so that the components can be hidden and adjusted without ever leaving your seat. If not considered, maintainability can be a nightmare. As home theaters get more complex, the number and variations of the cables is also increasing. You should be able to add a new component or switch out an existing one without spending hours rewiring. We address home theater installation and setup here.
Home Theater Accessories Last but not least for your home theater room design, consider some home theater accessories to make your home theater unique and enjoyable.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Technorati
Y! MyWeb
