Just What Is
Home Theater?
Dolby Digital, Surround EX, DTS, DVD, HDTV, DTV, DirecTV,
surround-sound processors, multichannel amplifiers, 5.1, 7.1 -- does it seem like you need
a degree in engineering to understand home theater? Well, you don't! All you need is a
friend to guide you through the thicket of acronyms and technologies.
Home theater isn't all that hard to understand. In fact, if
you've ever lost track of time watching a movie on TV, you get home theater.
Everything else is details.
According the electronics industry's spokesgroup, the
Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), a home theater is a TV and a pair of separate
loudspeakers. Certainly, that's where HT starts -- if you don't have the speakers, all
you've got is TV. HT is all about getting the sound and picture out of that confining
little box.
And the CEA is right about one thing, the first step is
freeing the sound. If you haven't attached your TV to your stereo yet, then you have a
whole new experience waiting for you. It sounds like a small step, but it's actually day
and night.
It's true that most TVs have speaker terminals (some even
have detachable speakers), but most televisions have tiny little 2W or 3W amplifiers and
that's just not much power. Almost all TVs sold now have line-levels audio outputs -- the
sort that use RCA connectors (the sort that connect CD players to your receiver) --
making it easy to connect them to a stereo or a home-theater receiver.
Wait a minute! Didn't the CEA say that all you needed was a
TV and a pair of speakers? It did -- but it was thinking we'd use that scrawny little 2W
amplifier built in to the TV. That won't really give most separate speakers enough power
to play back films at "realistic" volumes, so we need a source of power. If you
already own a stereo, you can plug your TV into it and you're set.
 But if your stereo is in another room or
if you don't already own a stereo, you'll need a separate amplifier or receiver.
If you're going to buy a new one, you should consider buying a full-function AV receiver.
These have built-in surround-sound processors and, usually, multiple channels of
amplification (typically five channels as opposed to stereo's two). We will devote an
article to purchasing AV receivers in March, but for the moment, it's enough to know they
exist. For the purposes of this article, however, all we need is two channels, so let's
assume you have a stereo amplifier lying unused in your closet.
Once you're connected to a real amplifier, you can
add a pair of loudspeakers. But before you do, pay some attention to where you put them.
In an ideal world, they'd be equal distances from the TV -- how far on either side is
primarily a function of how far away from the television you are sitting. If you sit up
close, they should just be on either side of the screen; if you sit further away, you
should move them out further to the sides.
If you've never done this before, you'll be astounded by
how much bigger the experience is. You will have created a sense of spaciousness that is
out of proportion to the little screen showing you the pictures. You're starting to take
TV out of the box -- and that, in a nutshell, is what home theater is all about.
When you add additional channels for surround, all you're doing is trying to take the
experience to the next level -- to put you in the center of the action!
The best home theaters I've been in have seriously rivaled
the finest cinemas I've experienced. There's nothing like sinking into a comfy chair with
your beverage of choice at your side, immersed in the soundfield, goggling at the images
projected onto a 10' screen in front of you. In the best home theaters, not only do the
sound and pictures rival those of the finest Academy showplaces, you never have to worry
about parking or loudmouthed louts or unruly children. What's not to like?
What most people don't realize is how close to that
experience we can come without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. It all starts
with a TV and a pair of loudspeakers. But it very quickly gets a lot better than that.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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