Selecting the Best Room for a Home Theater System

Series Summary

As movie theater prices continue to rise, so does the likelihood of someone interrupting the feature presentation. Annoying viewers don't even need someone to talk with in order to ruin your viewing experience. All they have to do is pick up their cell phone and start talking. “Hey what are you doing. Not much, this movie is boring. The first time I saw it, I didn't realize the cab driver was the murderer until the very end, but it's pretty obvious this time around, even though the movie hasn't been playing more than about twenty minutes. Oh, well, how was your date last night with Jeff....” Do you really need this aggravation for ten dollars of your hard-earned money? What you really need is to bring the theater viewing experience into the privacy of your own home.

In this series of free home entertainment videos, our stereo and HDTV expert tells you all you need to know about setting up your own home theater. Drawing on his experience as a Panasonic employee and a high-end audio and video salesman, Daniel Daly suggests guidelines on how to select the room which would be best for installing your new system. He also compares different brands of components and tells you what type of speaker you need for different positions in your setup. Not sure whether to get an HD or a plasma screen? Not sure how much you need to spend to get the system you want? Let our expert offer you some sound advice on these big purchasing decisions.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Expert Village.com. We are at Leigh Adams Discount Sales, and my name is Daniel Daly. Today, we are going to be demonstrating how to set up your perfect home theater, be it a little screen LCD, big DLPs or even giant screens on the wall. The first step in creating your perfect home theater system is actually the room. You want a room that is not too small, won't have your audio sounding echoed or bouncing in a way that you wouldn't want it. You want your center channel audio to be pronouncing the dialog correctly. You want your surround speakers to simulate sound in back of you. From then, you can decide what size of screen you what audio system you would like to hook up to that. If you look over here, we have a room that's a little "overkill" but ideal for home theater. We have a very large screen here and we have audio (different kinds of speakers for demonstration). But the important thing about this room is not what's in it, but rather, what the room is made out of. You'll notice this is a padded wall. Here, reflective sound. This will absorb the sound, this will reflect it. The goal behind this is to have the center channel from these speakers reflecting the way you would want it. You do not want your center channel or stereo speakers bouncing off that wall back there, which is why it absorbs. In that same respect, you do not want that sound bouncing off from here. What you do want is a balance of absorption and reflective sound to create an ambiance around the room."