Home Theater 101.
Background and Basics.

The sound in home theater is reproduced in direct relation to the action that is occurring on the screen. This is different from the days of a VCR playing sound through the 1 or 2 speakers of your television. The difference is primarily the sound quality and its reproduction. Home Theater 101. If someone in the movie is speaking on the left side of the screen, the sound comes from the speakers on the left side of the theater. If a car comes from behind the viewer to the left and drives past off into the distance of the screen towards the right, the sound should faithfully reproduce this action.

This is movie theater sound. It is clear, it comes from all directions in relation to the action, and it is big. Home Theater 101. Home theater systems have all of these capabilities nowadays, including the power for that oomph, as long as you have all of the components to create it.

So........... what do I need for a home theater system? - Home Theater 101

As of today the home theater standard according to this Home Theater 101 section is
1. a progressive-scan DVD player
2. a television 40" or greater (generally, the bigger the better)
3. receiver (amplifier) with multi-channel decoding (at least 5.1 channels)
4. speakers (I don't mean only 2, but a minimum of 6)

Now, it may sound like a lot of equipment, especially if you don't yet have any of the 4 items above. Again, the truth is, this is the standard according to Home Theater 101, and one missing component results in a system that really isn't an adequate "home theater system". That doesn't mean you have to buy everything at once. Build up your system over a few years to get the system you're happy with.

But be careful, what is the norm for today may change in the blink of an eye. Research is important before you buy. That's the reason our website exists. Technology changeover does occur but perhaps more slowly than many critics suggest. DVDs are now more than a decade old and it was only June 2003 that for the first time ever, US DVD rentals and sales surpassed VCR rentals and sales.

What's wrong with the equipment I have now? - Home Theater 101
The majority of people today own audio/video systems which probably perform better playing music than watching the latest Harry Potter DVD. The most common audio/video setup today is a TV connected with a VCR or DVD player. Fewer people are more advanced with their TV connected to a VCR or DVD player hooked up to an audio receiver. The receiver would play sound for movies through a few speakers spread around the room.

This is not home theater. Why? DVDs and DVD players were invented, that's why. Multi-channel sound.

A background on video. VCRs. They served their purpose and it's time to move on. - Home Theater 101
Before DVDs and DVD players we had VCRs (Video Cassette Recorders) and VCR cassettes. VCRs and their tapes operate in analog mode. It's a basic and cumbersome data format that didn't allow for much storage capacity or complexity. As a result, sound data could only be coded and reproduced in two channels, left and right. That is why VCRs had two plugs for sound. One was red for the right signal (sound occurring to the right of the centre line of the TV screen), and the other, white, was for the left signal. This is also how music was commonly recorded, left and right signals. Some older/cheaper VCRs and TVs only have one plug for sound. This is called mono (one) audio. All of the sound comes through the speakers as one solid unit. It is not even broken into two separate channels (left and right). You'll appreciate why this is bad as you read through this site.

Since VCRs could only reproduce sound in two directions, only 2 speakers were needed to reproduce the sound. For most people this was the 2 speakers in the television. Some people hooked up their receivers and 2 speakers they used for playing music, and used that system to watch movies. That's what I used to do as well.

Something happened in the early 1990s and it's called DVD. - Home Theater 101
DVD is a format that is already being surpassed by bigger and better formats. But today, it's the best supported format we have. And it's good. Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-audio (DVD-A) were new, fledgling technologies promising some advanced audio and video capabilities beyond what DVD could offer. They are not well supported. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are competing new advanced DVD technolgies. It will remain to be seen whether either technology takes hold and succeeds. Don't spend any extra money on acquiring these technologies just yet. Home Theater 101.

DVDs can encode digital signals and store exponentially more data than VCR. This has two repercussions. Firstly, the data for the image is digital and non-degrading, thus resulting in a sharper, cleaner picture than VCR, free of fuzz, static or interference. Secondly, sound data can be split into multiple channels because of the storage capacity and characteristics of the DVD disc.

What this means is that when the sound for a movie is recorded, it is recorded with multiple channels and can be stored on the DVD and played back when you watch the movie. As a result DVDs generally store sound in 5 channels, and now sometimes 6 and 7. You will often see this represented on DVDs as 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 channel sound. 5 channels represents a front center speaker (directly in front on top of the TV), two front side speakers (one left and one right), two back side speakers (one left and one right), plus a subwoofer (which counts as .1 for some reason). The extra speaker (channel) present in 6.1 coding, is a second center speaker located directly behind you. Home Theater 101.

Now although DVDs can store 5 to 7 channels of sound, you need a receiver which can decode all of these sound channels and send them to the appropriate speakers during playback. This is a receiver which has multi-channel decoding capabilities. If you don't have one you might as well stick with your VCR until you do.

Take away one and the others will fall. What is a "true" home theater system, and why? - Home Theater 101
We're going to make this story shorter than we would like to make it. A true home theater system is crystal clear digital video reproduced by a DVD player and a large screen TV. Add in crystal clear digital sound which represents exactly the directional relationship of objects on the screen. It is the experience you witness in your local movie theater. It's available at home if you follow our reviews and guides in this site and buy wisely.

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