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How To: Create Your Home Theater For Under $5k

Epson Ultimate Home Cinema Experience : Welcom...
Image by Craig Grobler via Flickr

A home theater was previously a luxury only the rich could indulge in, but is readily available for your home today. A beautiful, well-appointed and comfortable home theater can be had for well under $5,000. This is especially true if you’re the DIY type.

There are several compelling reasons to have a home theater. Statistics show that American families are returning to bonding by dinner together in the dining room. A home theater is similar in setting aside a formal space for getting together to watch a movie, educational program or sitcom.

Another fun advantage of a home theater is its application in gaming and other media. It becomes the hub of both home recreation and learning. In addition, a well-designed home theater can raise the value of your home. Even though a home theater is affordably within reach, it is still impressive to step into a nicely appointed one.

There has been – and continues – rapid growth in the technology of home theater systems. The evolution of Plasma and LCD televisions has brought a superior audio-visual experience into the home, inclusive of 3-D application. Sophisticated projectors are capable of showing wide-screen beautiful films you shot yourself, that people really do enjoy watching.

DVDs can be shown at home on a large screen television with the same viewing ratio as sitting in the best seat in the house in the movie theater, with stunning clarity and amazing surround-sound.

So, if you’re convinced that you’d like to have an affordable home theater, the place to start is with the basic decisions of where to put it, how to lay out the space, how to decorate it, along with the decisions of which audio visual equipment to purchase.

This first stage of arriving at the goal of a home theater for under $5,000 requires careful planning. Sit down with pencil and graph paper and draw up some plans. Even if you’re going to hire someone to do some of the work, the more you do yourself, you’ll save money and the end result will be what you want. Don’t forget to include storage space for equipment and media, which needs to be both easy to access and attractive.

It’ll be helpful and fun to take a look at home theaters. Visit a Street of Dreams housing development to get ideas of what professional designers have done. There are also many resources and examples of beautiful home theaters online.

Do comparative shopping for the audio and visual equipment. You’ll easily save hundreds of dollars by doing so.

In addition to the quality of sight and sound, other factors that make a home theater a place everyone loves to be are the lighting and decoration. Again, savvy shopping can provide an absolutely first-class environment on a shoe-string budget. Consider fabric for walls. It can be purchased at mill end stores for pennies on the dollar and adds to the acoustics. Places like Habitat for Humanity have all kinds of lighting and decorating components. You might go to a retro or antique hardware store and find gorgeous period light fixtures that make you space look just like an Art Deco period theater.

The important point is that you have as much fun designing and constructing your home theater as you will have during the many hours of entertainment with your family and friends. And don’t forget the huge savings you’ll realize on concession stand goodies.

Pass the popcorn, please!

Chase Sagum covers the Home Theater Screen Paint section of ScreenPaintHD.com. He also covers Organic Internet Marketing on his personal blog ChaseSagum.com.

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How Effective Are Speaker Foam Repair Kits?

Many well known loudspeaker manufacturers including JBL and Infinity made some very poor choices in the 70s and 80s when they used foam surrounds for their drivers. Unfortunately, almost all of the foam surrounds of these speakers started deteriorating just 10 years after purchase. Other parts of these speakers were also aging rather quickly.

Fortunately, there is hope if you still own one of the good old Infinity Kappa speakers or just love vintage stuff. Dozens of third-party manufacturers including PartsExpress.com and SimplySpeakers.com are now offering reasonably priced speaker foam repair kits that not only fix the speaker surrounds but also holes in your speaker grill. Depending on your personal budget, you can give your „babies“ a complete makeover. SimplySpeakers even offers a complete reconing service for tougher jobs that cannot be fixed via do-it-yourself kits. Reconing essentially means replacing the diaphragm, voice coil and any internal wiring. This doesn’t come cheap but can be worth the price. The results are often stunning. If done well, you won’t believe how fantastic your speakers still sound even by modern standards.

For very exotic home stereo loudspeakers, there is often not much hope. Your best bet would be to contact the manufacturer or look for replacement drivers in the secondhand market. Similar speaker models may be offered on eBay that you could simply cannibalize. On the other side, drop-in replacements are not easy to find as the dimensions of the woofers differ in almost all cases. In addition, you probably need to drill additional holes into the speaker enclosure. I personally wouldn’t feel very comfortable doing that. And the internal crossover of your loudspeaker would have to be adapted, too. All of this could result in too many sonic compromises. But it could be acceptable if you just need the speakers for background listening and plan on getting newer ones in the near future.

In summary, speaker foam repair kits only make sense if your loudspeaker is from a larger manufacturer and if damages are minor.

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A Killer Home Theater?

Home Theater

What do you think when you hear the words “home theater”? There’s a good possibility you think it’s a surround-sound system hooked up to a Blu-ray player. You’d be correct up to a point, but there is so much more you can do with a home theater!

I work for a Utah home theater installer, and we’re constantly educating our clients on all the awesome stuff they can do with their home theater. The reactions we get are fantastic – technology has come a long way, and quality entertainment is extremely cost effective. Your home theater should be your hub for all entertainment. Sure, you’ll watch movies in there, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Array of Media

Do you hate flipping open your laptop to watch streaming Netflix content? Why shouldn’t you have full access to Internet content from your home theater? There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t. This is available on media servers and media players.

Media servers can store, play, and stream all kinds of media from hard drives, the Internet, and your home network. And don’t worry about fussing with your projector or TV to try to find the right input for everything – your media server will run everything from your Blu-rays, to Netflix, to Hulu, to Internet radio.

The Experience

Why do we go to the movie theaters? It’s certainly not because we like to walk on sticky floors, stand in lines, or sit in close proximity to total strangers. It’s the experience. The giant screen, the booming sound, and the smell of popcorn all bring you in. Think of all the time and money you would save if you could gather your whole family together for the same experience in your own home, without the sticky floors, lines, or strangers!

Your home theater can be the hub for activity in your home, and much more than just “the place you watch TV”.

Theater Seating

We’ve all experienced the less-than-comfy movie theater chairs, and you probably wouldn’t want those in your home (do they come with gum stuck to the bottom, and a Mike & Ike ground into the fabric?). Instead, you may not know that theater recliners are way cooler and very affordable. Check out an example of theater seating to see what I mean.

You can find comfortable, leather, cupholder-laden theater recliners for as little as $500 each. Plus, they can be optioned up with motorized reclining and subwoofers in the chair for maximum effect. The possibilities are both endless and incredible! Seating absolutely completes your home theater, so make sure you budget for them.

I highly recommend making your home theater a place for your friends and family to congregate, and enjoy all of your media – streamed or stored.

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Seen in a Better Light

More than half of the million millions bits of data that continually enters into our stream of consciousness pass through our eyes. The sense of sight is that important so that when deprived of its use we lose more than half of the world. Our personal universe shrinks considerably.

Since the birth of television many improvements have already been added to provide viewers the clearest images possible. Giant electronics companies are in for a tight race among themselves to come up with the latest in television technology. Starting with black and white pictures they stepped up to deliver brightly colored images in our television screens. It stucked there for a while before a breakthrough was made. This ended with the introduction of LCD TVs. Compared to its bulky predecessors the LCD generation of TVs are conspicuously thinner, had wider viewing angles and more noticeably sharper images enough to make your cat jump when a rat is seen on screen.

With the proliferation of LCDs buyers would find it a bit difficult to decide which brand offers the best features. This is particularly true when it comes to choosing the best 22’ LCD TV. The reliable indicator and guide to determine the best currently available in the market are the feedbacks coming from users themselves. Statistics show that the PANASONIC 26’TV together with the 22’ LCD TV consistently rank numero uno in 90% of raters. These data clearly indicate that the Panasonic brand of TVs is leading the race. When it comes to all around quality in terms of providing high definition images, wider angle access, and affordability Panasonic tops them all.

Given these unique features you will be spared from a lot of hassle before you come to a decision which brand to choose from. Panasonic is the name. So with confidence you now can go right straight to your nearest dealer or to the net so that your choice will be quickly delivered. I am certain you will soon be one of the millions of satisfied customer praising to high heavens the sterling qualities of your 22’ LCD TV or the 26’TV all by Panasonic.

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