Home Theater

[NonSenseSuperman]

I"m curious to know if anyone here has what they would consider a "home theater" setup? To be honest, i'm not entirely sure what constitutues a room officially being considered as such, but i would think having a 5.1 surround setup and a decent size tv counts as far as I'm concerned.

I actually only have front speakers and a subwoofer, with an lcd mounted on the wall. I would like to dedicate a room to full surround and an even bigger screen, unfortunately i just don't have the space to do so.

If you have a setup, post some pics!

[Stubblecat]

My home theater is in flux. I'm building a new house and the bottom floor is going to be all mine, with the focus being the theater room.

It won't be a particularly big room in itself, nor does any home theater have to be.

My setup is a 46" Samsung LCD HDTV, plus a Samsung 5.1 surround unit and an upconverting DVD player and my trusty PS3 for Blu-Ray and games.

In a few months when the house is finished and I start to dress the room to my liking I'll get some pics up here.

[aperio]

My usual question, different product...
How much of a difference could you notice with the upconvert DVD player? That's one of those things I hear about but have yet to actually seriously look into.. .i don't think they are even that expensive, are they?

Details boy, I want details...

[aperio]

Oh, and I forgot to answer the question but i do have a "theater" room of sorts, but it's messy at the moment while I borrow it to hold things while I paint another room, so no pics for you right now.

[Stubblecat]

An upconverting DVD player makes a surprising difference.

*side note* It should be noted that if you have a Blu-Ray player, it automatically upconverts your standard DVDs.

Back to the point:
Standard DVD is 480p. Let's just call that number lines of resolution, for clarity.

High Definition is 1080p, so it's a little more than double the lines of resolution, which in turns ups the clarity, definition, color palate and overall quality. The improvement is 5 times greater over standard DVD.

What an upconverting DVD player does is essentially double-scan the image to artificially create more lines of resolution. It's not exactly double, but you could call it 720p.

So a basic upconverting DVD player can make standard DVDs look pretty darned sweet on a HDTV. I've found this most evident with animation. I watched Lilo And Stitch with my kids last week and the colours and backgrounds were unbelievably vibrant. And my DVD is a slightly compressed burned copy.

[aperio]

Well shucks, that was actually a most excellent explanation. See, for as much as I love technology, every now and again I get into this mindset of 'how much better can it really get'. However, your explanation makes an incredible amount of sense. I'd probably be inclined to go that route before blu-ray... i may casually shop some players over the weekend for kicks

[Stubblecat]

Wow, this might be the first time I've ever helped anyone in the history of my life.

But yeah, a plain-old upconverting DVD player is fairly cheap. If it has an HDMI output (and assuming your TV has the HDMI input) then drop the cash on one of those cables for best results.

But then THAT opens the HDMI can o' worms...

Short version:
They tell you to buy the $150 Monster Brand cables.

They are lying to you. Yes, you should get quality cables, but you can get quality for $40-60, and you'll never be able to tell the difference.

Why?

Because HDMI cables are moving digital information from point A to point B. They either work perfectly or they don't. End of story.

[AKmaro1]

Actually to help out a bit here, all the upconverting players I've used specifically state that you have to use the HDMI cable to upconvert the signal. It won't upconvert without HDMI, I do speak from experience on that one, I have a Toshiba upconverting player, but have no HDTV yet. And it won't even let me upconvert unless I have the HDMI cable hooked up to a TV.

Lastly, I feel you don't need a huge setup to have a home theatre. I have a 27" Toshiba flat screen CRT with a 5.1 Kenwood system. It has a separate receiver with 5 speakers and a 100 watt 8" sub. It does DTS and Dolby Digital, so I'm happy with it for the time being. Onkyo makes a killer 7.1 system for around $500 that sounds fantastic, two of my closest friends have that setup, and the bass alone is fantastic! So you don't have to spend thousands to get a decent system in place.

[aperio]

Thanks for the additional input on that! I actually would use the HDMI cable so all is well there. I had intended to go casually shop them this weekend but instead got sidetracked with my little drawing project... Since I seem to have a couple good authorities here... is there any specs to pay particular attention to when shopping them?

[Stubblecat]

I really can't speak for the specs when it comes to the cables.

I got really irritated by the salespeople telling me that I absolutely HAD to buy the most expensive cables.

After some research online, I think I boiled it down to this: You generally get what you pay for, and when you buy the most expensive brand name you get the pride of knowing that you've got a little status symbol hanging out the back of your TV.

My experience says go with trusted names and reputable sellers, but keep your persepctive about what you're buying (AKA maybe you should skip the Sony Store).
I bought my HDMI cables from a national chain and they were Phillips brand. Cost 60 bucks for about 3 feet of cable and they seem to work flawlessly.