Top Five Things To Look For When Buying A Home Theatre System
When it comes to setting up a home theater, purchasing the right audio and video equipment configuration will give you an impressive movie theater experience in the comfort of your home! A home theater includes some crucial electronic components, and putting together these pieces requires knowing a few pros and cons about them.
So if you’re in the process of buying or putting together a really great entertainment setup, Rocky Mountain Sound and Security has put together a list of the top five things to look for when buying a home theatre system.
1. Wiring
Wiring is still one of the most crucial pieces of a successful home theater or media room, and there are various types of wiring that are blended together to complete the task,
a. Video cabling
This type of cabling is known as a High Definition Multimedia Interface or HDMI, can be connected from an AV receiver to a monitor or projector. You can also distribute HDMI to other rooms to share what is being played from the theater to other rooms in your home.
b. Audio wiring from the AV receiver to the speaker locations.
The locations of the speakers are one of the most crucial pieces. Typically the wire used is 14/2 or 12/2 copper stranded wire. Some advanced audio wiring will tie the theatre into distributed speakers around the house, for example, during a movie night, if someone is finishing up cleaning in the kitchen, they could still listen to the start of the movie while the rest of the family and friends are getting settled in.
c. Source wiring
This type of wiring allows you to view video on the theater screen from local sources in the same room such as a computer, note pad, phone, fire stick, apple tv or Blue Ray. Additionally, you can play other sources from around the house. Video cameras in the case someone rings the doorbell, you can flip over and see what’s going on at the front door or around your property. It also works for Zoom calls for work, family, or church. There are options for a main video server that all the TVs in the house can access your complete movie selection.
d. Control wiring
This type of wiring allows all of the main components (AV Reciever, projector, lighting TV or screen) to communicate for ease-of-use. These components can speak to each other through Wi-Fi, infrared, RS 232, and radiofrequency.
2. Display
Choosing the right video display for your home theatre is essential. There are lots of options when it comes to TVs and projectors. If your media room or theater has a lot of ambient light, you may want to choose a TV monitor. Depending on the size of the room, it can be anywhere from forty-five inches to seventy-five Inches. These sizes are standard and are fairly inexpensive ( all video screens are measured diagonally). Today you can find TV displays that are two-hundred and ninety-two inches diagonally!
Projectors have come a long way and are truly amazing if you have control of your lighting. This is the most economical way to go bigger than seventy-five inches.
At Rocky Mountain Sound and Security, we usually engineer the screen’s size to the size of the room from the first seat to the last seat in the house. A screen that is too big can cause fatigue and headaches from subconsciously trying to see everything on the screen. Projectors can display an image anywhere from seventy-five inches up to forty-two feet.
3. AV (Audio-Video) receiver
The AV receiver is another important piece of the media space. This component switches between the sources (Example, Satellite, Blu Ray, Apple TV) to be displayed on the monitor. The receiver also supplies the power that is fed to the speakers. Extra power can supply additional clarity to your sound.
We are an Onkyo and Integra dealer, and we also have separate components for higher-end customers with impeccable taste for audio.
4. Speakers
Speakers are another essential piece of the home theater puzzle. When we engineer a speaker system, we are trying to recreate the soundstage that the engineer initially recorded.
If you close your eyes and can hear the singer, bass, keyboards, drums spread out across the room as though the band was standing in front of you and NOT hear where the speakers are actually located. You are transported into the location that the sound was originally designed for.
The size of the speakers reflects how much air is being moved and the frequency response. The materials used to make the speakers dictate how they can reproduce the original content.
Different speakers can have different dispersion patterns. This comes into play when you are designing the speaker locations. Typical Systems might be labeled 5.1.2. The five stands for five satellite speakers. The left front, the center front, and the right front are designed to have the sound passing from one side of the screen to the other, like a car driving by. The remaining two speakers are at the listener’s back to recreate planes flying past or bullets flying. The number one stands for a speaker called the subwoofer. The subwoofer recreates low-end bass frequencies of explosions or the roar of a motorcycle, it moves the air in the room, and you feel it in your chest or body. The last number, the two, represents height speakers for anything flying overhead like a UFO or a bird.
We carry the brands of Atlantic Technologies, James, Polk, Audio, Klipsch, Keff, and Artisan.
5. The Control system
When you have several components, it’s nice to be able to hit one button on one remote without having to think about several remotes. Suppose you don’t have a control system. In that case, you have to manage your AV receiver remote, your projector remote, your blu-ray player remote, Cable or satellite remote, Xbox or game, and any streaming remote like Amazon fire stick or Apple TV manually.
We like to make our systems easy and fun. When you hit the movie button on our control four remotes, it will turn on the projector, turn on the AV receiver, put it on the right input, start the DVD player, and play the movie while the lights dim and the curtains open. It’s easy to leave the world behind and enjoy yourself by being immersed in a movie at the touch of a button.
If you’re looking for services like sound systems, audio or video systems, home theater systems, home security systems, or home automation in Twin Falls, Idaho, reach out to Rocky Mountain Sound and Security. We have over thirty years of experience in installing sound and security systems in Twin Falls and surrounding areas. We do a clean and professional job. Our services are extended to clients across Twin Falls, Magic Valley, Sun Valley, Kimberly, Burley, Gooding, Heyburn, Rupert, Hailey, Bellevue, Idaho, Elko, Wells, Jackpot, Nevada.
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