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Tips to build the Perfect Home Theatre Room

 

Make Your Home Theater Room the Best Possible Ever

Building a home theater room can often be the true endpoint of home remodeling. Once you have concluded the more utilitarian work of fixing windows and installing floors, it’s time to reach deeper into the bank account and lavish attention on your entertainment needs. After all, who doesn’t need a home movie theater room?

But a home theater room is more than just a sofa and a screen. Certain requirements, like controlling outside light and the ability to cast a large enough picture, should be met in order to call this a proper home movie theater. Requirements apply both to video projectors and screens as well as to large, flat-screen TVs. When there is an exception, it is noted.

Locate the Home Theater Room in a Dedicated Space

A dedicated home theater room is a room solely dedicated to watching videos on a big screen. This means that little else happens in that home theater except for screening-related activities. And today, screening means far more than it ever did: streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, BluRay movies, video gaming, and conventional cable TV.  

When the home theater shares space with other activities, the cinematic experience is lessened. When the non-dedicated home theater shares open floor plan space with the kitchen, cooking sounds and smells invade. When the theater is the living room, kids run around and light is difficult to control.

Spare bedrooms work fine, but they do need to be long enough so that viewers can maintain a proper distance from the screen. This is especially important with video projectors. At the extreme end, a projector needs roughly a 14-foot throw distance in order to cast a 150-inch diagonal picture, though short-throw projectors are available.

Control the Ambient Light

Ambient light means light from sources outside of the theater, such as from other rooms or through windows. With most home remodeling, you’re always trying to add more natural light. Home theaters are spaces where you want to ​limit ambient light, whether natural outdoor light or light from other rooms. Light-bleed kills video projection images and it even makes flat-screen viewing less than enjoyable. On the video projector side, you will need a projector with a high lumens rating if you have some ambient light that you cannot control. But the best way to deal with ambient light is simply to stop it before it starts, by choosing a space that already has little light, such a basement. If you cannot do this, limit the light with light-blocking curtains and shades.  
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A Critical Home Theater Decision — 16:9 or 2.4?

Choosing the Right Aspect Ratio

What is aspect ratio, you ask? Aspect ratio is the ratio of the width of the screen to the height of the screen. Essentially, it describes the shape of the rectangle. Today the most popular aspect ratio for consumer video display is 16:9, which is the standard HDTV format. The numbers mean that the picture is 16 units wide for every 9 units in height.

Sometimes you will see the 16:9 aspect ratio referred to as 1.78:1, or simply 1.78. Why? Because 16 divided by 9 = 1.78. But it means the same thing. A 1.78 screen is 1.78 units in width for every unit of height.

If you are going to use a flatscreen HDTV for your home theater, you are stuck with the 16:9 format for better or for worse. Though they come in a wide variety of sizes, they are all 16:9 aspect ratio. But if you are planning to use a projector and screen, you have another option, which is 2.4:1, commonly known as the Cinemascope format. This is a wider format than standard 16:9. Many people prefer it because it matches the aspect ratio of a lot of movies being produced today.

Think about the black bars

Here is a simple fact of life: Videos and movies are made in a variety of different aspect ratios. There is no standard. So no matter what aspect ratio your screen is, you will always end up with black bars at the top and bottom of some material, and black pillars at the sides of other material. The only time you don’t get black bars is if you are viewing video or film shot in the format of the screen you are using–either a film done in 1.78 displayed on a 16:9 screen, or a movie shot in 2.4 on a 2.4 Cinemascope screen. In both of those cases, the screen frame will match the picture precisely, and no black bars will exist.

(By the way, we’re assuming you want to see the material you watch in its correct original aspect ratio, as the director created it. If you don’t, there are several ways to stretch, manipulate, or crop video images to get them to fill a 16:9 screen and eliminate the black bars.)

So in choosing between a screen aspect ratio of 1.78 vs. 2.4, you are really deciding how the various film and video formats will appear on your screen. For example, if you select a 16:9 screen, all of your 2.4 format movies will have black bars top and bottom. If you select a 2.4 screen, all of your 16:9 material will be “pillar-boxed” in the center of the screen with black columns on each side.

 

By Evan Powell

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Tips for setting up a home theatre connection hub

Photo by picjumbo.com from Pexels

A home theater requires a centralized connection point — a hub — for the A/V gear. For most people, the hub is the A/V receiver. An A/V receiver should be capable of accepting the connections from every piece of A/V gear in your home theater (with the exception, perhaps, of an HDTV tuner/set-top box) and providing a central connection and control point.

  • The A/V receiver should be the primary connection point in your home theater. If you decide to go with separate components (A/V controller, power amplifier, and radio tuner) instead of an all-in-one A/V receiver, the primary connection point should be the A/V controller.

  • Don’t connect components directly to the TV or display unit. (There are some exceptions to this, however, that are mainly related to HDTV. Refer to your device manuals for more details.) All your audio and video should be routed through the A/V receiver, which then switches — or distributes — these signals to your speakers and display. With this setup, you can switch among these video sources by merely turning a knob on the receiver or pressing a button on the remote.

    Some folks feel that sending any video through the receiver’s video-switching circuitry slightly degrades the quality of this video. However, unless you’re talking about a really high-end HDTV system, you probably won’t see the difference.

By Danny Briere, Pat Hurley

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Tips to Improve Image Quality on your Home Theatre Projector Screen

There are several tweaks that you can make to improve the image quality of your projector. Keep in mind that if you are trying to maximize output using a cheap projector, there are not going to be many settings that you can adjust, so you will not have that many options.

Improve Picture Contrast, Blackness, And Brightness

When we are talking about black on a projector, we are talking about the lack of light. When we are talking about brightness, we are talking about maximum light output. The first step is to figure out what type of lighting you’re going to have in the room.

If you’re going to use the projector in a completely dark room, then you want to adjust the contrast, blackness, and brightness in that atmosphere. If you are going to have ambient light, then make adjustments in that setting.

These calibrations should be done in cinema or movie mode. You want to find a scene that has plenty of black, such as a space backdrop in a Star Trek or Star Wars movie. You want to adjust the brightness dial until the overall image is bright, but the black parts of the image are convincing. In a space backdrop, the darkness of space should be black, but you should still be able to make out the individual stars.

When calibrating the contrast slider, you may want to use a scene that has a sky full of white clouds. You will adjust the contrast slider to the point where the white clouds retain their brilliance, but their detail is seen.

By

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5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Home Theater

1. Don’t Sideline the Subwoofer

Bass is a crucial part of the sound spectrum, and it’s important to always keep that in mind. Electronic House recommends “not treating your subwoofer like a misbehaving 4-year old and put in the corner.” Many times we are tempted to keep the subwoofer in a hidden spot to cancel out some of the deep bass, or because that’s the way you’ve always seen it done. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no need to hide the epicenter of your home’s sound system.

2. Position the Center Speaker Higher

Center speakers go in the center — simple! Website Realtor.com recommends placing your center channel speaker above your television set, centered horizontally, and we agree! It’s important that you get a sense that the dialogue is coming directly from the screen verses some ambient source somewhere else in the room, and this would be best accomplished by placing it above the screen if possible. A great way to achieve this is either via a wall mount, rubber feet for angling, or a stand. If there is absolutely no way to do so, keep the center channel as close below the television as possible.

Regardless. Center channel speaker = center.

Important. And easy.

3. Remember…Size Does Matter

Listen, no matter what anyone says, size matters. According to DIY Network, for most people with a “medium-size living room or den, 12” to 15” tall book shelf speakers make a lot of sense.” This is probably the size of speaker you’ll want to get.

Unless…you’ve designed a home theater room or are currently building out your entertainment room in a much larger room or multipurpose space. Then you may want to consider 38” or more. The idea here is to create an immersive experience, so be careful to not to go too big and end up drowning…in sound.

4. Bigger Room Equals Bigger System

While the 5.1 system is great, it may not necessarily work the best for the room in which you are currently enjoying your home entertainment center. Sometimes we really just need an upgrade on either the technology or the amount of speakers you’re currently using. A 7.1 or 9.1 system may be your best bet if your room is a more expansive space or if you’re remodeling your current home theater.

Surround sound pioneer Dolby does a great job of recommending speaker placements for your home entertainment center surround sound systems whether you’re working with a 5.1, 7.1, or 9.1 set up.

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