Build a State-of-the-Art Home Theater for Under 20 Grand!

Most of my many readers on the web are well aware of the importance I put on myself when it comes to researching all of my various topics I have posted on this site the past couple of years. I do an amazing amount of research on my subjects because I feel it is necessary for me to do all the legwork so my readers will not have to. And with my new foray into the exciting world of home entertainment, specifically Home Theater, I have recently researched this topic thoroughly, using the web and actual home theater showrooms in my area to achieve a vast knowledge of Home Theater for this article and many others coming up soon.

As recently as three years ago, 20 grand would not allow you to build anything more than a decent home entertainment system for your living room. A home entertainment system can be distinguished from Home Theater primarily because a home entertainment system is essentially comprised of a decent a/v receiver, a 42-inch or higher LCD or plasma flat-panel television, and a myriad of decent speakers arranged throughout the listening area.

But when I speak of a genuine Home Theater, I am describing four bare bone facts that have to be a part of any genuine Home Theater Experience: 1. A superior 7.1 channel A/V receiver such as the Marantz SR8002 surround receiver, which sells for around $2,000. 2. A DLP front projector such as the Runco Reflection CL-810 Projector, which will project true HDTV up to 1080i with brilliant results and sells for $5,500. 3. A set of quality high-end surround speakers such as Triad's On Wall Gold Surround speakers, which cost roughly $8,000 for a full set of nine speakers, including the sub-woofer. 4. A Da-Lite Cinema Contour fixed wall screen for the highest quality images that your projector can throw onto this incredible screen. This screen retails for around $550.

MY VISIT WITH INNOVATIVE HOME ELECTRONICS IN HONOLULU

If you have been doing the math correctly, you will see that the entire system I just described to you in detail is around $16,000 in total cost, which is $4,000 under the budget I have allocated for this project. But that is initially the amount you need to work with, because you still need to add in the cost of taxes and the installation fees that Home Theater technicians will charge your for integrating this Home Theater system into your home.

To get more of a hands-on description of what a state-of-the-art home theater really can be, I visited Innovative Home Electronics in Honolulu to find out more details about what a great home theater can look and sound like. I went to the Design Center located on Nimitz Highway in Honolulu and I met an attractive woman named Chris Burnside at this store, and it turned out that she is the main owner of the store.

Chris has been in the home theater design market since its inception, in 1975, and she is very well-informed about the best products in the business, as well as all the future innovations coming up, such as the 3-D televisions that Panasonic is working on, as well as some holographic technology that the mainstream public is not yet aware of. She and her co-owner have a predilection for Sony products, so I asked her for a demonstration of the Sony projector that they had installed in the home theater demo room of their store.

The movie that was shown to me was "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", and the main sequence shown was the thrilling action of the main truck chase in which Arnold Schwarzenegger's character is attempting to help out the young John Connor from being squashed like a bug from the onslaught of the villainous terminator, played by Robert Patrick.

The sound was driven home by an enormous rack of pre-amps and a multitude of A/V processors all made by Sony. The 52-inch screen really showed off the details of this great action scene, and the nine in-wall speakers, along with the massive sub-woofer and the very tall in-room speakers made this system sound like a great state-of-the-art theater that most people would pay good money to immerse themselves within.

THROW IN A "D-BOX" HOME THEATER CONTROLLER AND YOU WILL FEEL ALL THE ACTION THAT GREAT MOVIES DELIVER!

One of the most amazing components of the home theater demonstration I was shown was a set of chairs in front of the movie screen that actually moved and rocked along with the hardcore action elements that I was watching onscreen at the time. I had heard about the great innovations that D-Box Motion Code was implementing in their new controllers that you can connect with any chair in your home, but I was completely stunned as to how the effect really puts YOU in the action that is happening on-screen.

The two connecting chairs that were a part of this demonstration were two love-seat leather chairs that moved back and forth in time every moment that an explosion occured in the movie, or when John Connor's motorcycle was hit by the massive truck driven by the evil terminator. Even though the D-Box controller system will set you back more than $3,500, this method of getting you or your theater-goers fully immersed in all of the on-screen action is second to none, and I compeletly recommend it IF you are an action movie buff or enjoy action video games.

The way that the D-Motion controls work has everything to do with four direct drive Acuators that are installed underneath your chair. The 2 Gs of acceleration that will lift your chair up to give you that great motion control is synched up to your Blu-Ray DVD player or video game console by using a cable running from the Motion Controller to the SRP-230 platform that can detect all the action sequences from the actual movie or video game you are currently enjoying. D-Motion is known for bringing state-of-the-art technology to home theaters that really cannot be beat by anyone else.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN YOU FIRST GO SHOPPING FOR ALL OF YOUR HOME THEATER PRODUCTS

There is nothing more confusing to the typical consumer when he or she decides to upgrade their home by installing a genuine home theater in their den or family room. That's because there are a myriad of home theater products on the market right now that espouse how great their products are over all their main competition. While I have given you a choice of three different name brands when it comes to high quality home theater products, I'd like to now go over the actual details that determine what makes a home theater product superior over all others.

Let's start with what really makes a superior A/V receiver reign over inferior systems. Since you are primarily going to be using this receiver as your main source of sending huge sound throughout your new home theater, you really need to get a brand new A/V receiver that contains the following Dolby surround modes: Dolby True HD, Digital Plus, dts-HD Master Audio, THX certified sound, Digital EX and Digital Live.

THE MORE POWER YOUR RECEIVER COMES WITH, THE BETTER!

Most systems don't come equipped with all of these surround technologies integrated into the hardware, but it is essential to make sure that your new receiver includes at least the majority of these surround modes. Otherwise, your speakers will never be able to fully duplicate what the original film sound mixers were trying to acheive when they edited the sound for the movies you will be watching in your new home theater.

Also, since you need to keep up with new technology that seems to come out every five months, you need to have at least 125 watts per channel discharging that power to your powerful new speakers, as well as making sure that your new system comes equipped with 7.1 surround sound installed. This will ensure that you can thoroughly enjoy all of the latest surround sounds that I have already described for you. Just make sure that you do your homework when it comes to deciding on the name brand that makes quality products.

Finally, here are the main quality manufacturers of home theater A/V receivers that I completely recommend: Marantz, McIntosh, Denon, Onkyo, Lexicon and Integra. These are the ONLY manufacturers that I will be recommending to any of my readers in the future when it comes to excellent amplifier and A/V receiver perfomrance. Perform your own due diligiance and find out more info on these great companies on the web, or contact your local home theater installer for more detail on these company's superior product line of essential A/V processors and receivers.

DA-LITE IS THE ONLY SCREEN MANUFACTURER YOU NEED TO KNOW

When it comes to making superior theater screens, most people in the home theater business can only point to one source: Da-lite Home Theater. Why is this a fact? Because that company spends all their time and money on designing and creating projector screens that improve on their past screens that they put out just a year or two ago. This constant innovation in desiging their projector screens eliminates most of their competition's screen performance every single year.

Projector screens are the only products this great company designs and manufactures, so you just know that their screens are miles ahead of their competition who also manufactures other products instead of focusing on just projector screens. Find out for yourself by searching on the web for the many fine reviews of Da-Lite's projector screens. You will not be dissapointed.

DLP IS THE NAME OF THE GAME WHEN IT COMES TO HIGH-QUALITY PROJECTOR SYSTEMS

Now that you know that the main difference between creating a home entertainment system as opposed to putting together a quality high-end home THEATER is, you are very aware that an essential element of your new home theater will be the projector. And when it comes to purchasing a quality projector, I always recommend that the consumer spends his or her money on a DLP projector primarily.

DLP stands for Digial Light Processing, and it was developed by Texas Instruments in 1987. It is basically an optical semiconductor that consists of over 2 million hinge-mounted microscoptic mirrors that reflect light coming in from the projector's digital imagry. Now you can understand how important it is for a DLP chip to be installed in any projector you might buy in the future. Because of the laser-like images coming out of the projector from those millions of mirrors, the image you will be seeing projected onto your Da-Lite projector screen will dazzle and delight your senses like no other projector on the market is able to do.

So let's take a look at some of the quality manufacturers of DLP projectors that will give you a better overview of what name brands to look for when you are trying to make a decision on this essential part of your new home theater. BenQ makes some quality DLP projectors, and the BenQ W5000 will give you true HD imagry (1920 X 1080), as well as 1200 ANSI Lumens, which will give you bright images when displayed in a moderately dark room. $2500 is the retail price for this great projector.

If you still want excellent true HD in your new DLP projector, you cannot go wrong when you pick up the InFocus Play Big X10 system made by InFocus. This company has been in business for many years, and they make many fine projectors, but this latest model is astonishing for the low price point of around $2300 retail. The projector features a 1080P DLP chipset and the native contrast ratio is 2500: 1, a quite decent ratio considering the low cost. The contrast can be accelerated with the touch of a button to 7500:, so this is the perfect solution if you cannot get every shaft of light out of the room that you are trying to convert into the perfect area for your new home theater set-up.

QUALITY SPEAKERS WILL GIVE YOU QUALITY SOUND

The main focal point of any killer sound system is obviously the speaker system that your home theater employs. That's why it's generally a great idea to spend more money on quality speakers and sub-woofers than anything else in your home theater. The main components that make one speaker system superior over all others comes down to three criteria: 1. The design of the crossover in the speaker 2. The material the speaker cones are made out of 3. The power handling/impedance of the speakers themselves.

I am informing you of these speaker criteria for the basic reason that you need to know what differentiates a poor speaker system from a strong one, and you can shop on your own using this criteria for yourself. For a 7.1 channel A/V receiver, you need eight speakers. They consist of: 1 Center Speaker 2 Left- Right Main Speakers 2 Rear Surround Speakers 1 Sub-Woofer 2 Back Speakers.

A speaker's crossover is essentially the route the sound takes when your amplifier sends the sound signal to your speakers. So if you want a really clear and concise sound from your speakers, a very well-designed crossover means that your speaker will issue forth higher highs and lower lows when the crossover delivers a very high Q null. And the best material for any speaker is Kevlar.

There are also speakers that have a higher impedence level than other speaker systems. This results in a more powerful, sustained sound emanating from the speakers, so keep that in mind when you are shopping for speakers that will deliver the loud explosions from mortar fire in the battlefield sequences that movies such as "Saving Private Ryan" begin with in the opening sequence when he commands his squad into the living hell that was the Normandy Invasion.

GREAT SPEAKERS COME WITH A HIGH PRICE

I would never tell any reader of mine to scrimp when it comes to purchasing a high-end speaker system. After all, if you don't have excellent speakers that can output all the highs during a Blu-Ray DVD musical performance of Handel's "Messiah" that the London Philharmonic is performing with vigor, or you don't have a massive subwoofer that delivers all the amazing low-end requirements that an action movie such as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" requires, you will be missing out on half the experience that only home theater can bring to your everyday lifestlye.

So here are some of the name brands that I highly recommend that you invest some research time in to figure out which speaker configuration works best for you: Preference, Paradigm, Artison, Leon Speakers, Canton, Jamo, Velodyne and Sonance. As you can guess by now, there are plenty of excellent speaker manufacturers out there at the present moment, and in future articles I will feature the best speaker configurations for the money based on this specific group of manufacturers. These systems will all start out at roughly $7-8,000 for a complete set-up, but believe me, the price is worth it!

I hope this article has cleared up some issues regarding what to look for when you are starting to put together a genuine state-of-the-art home theater for a home upgrade for under $20K. Look for future articles from me regarding the top five home theater showrooms/stores in the Las Vegas area, as well as critical reviews of speaker systems, A/V receivers and processors along with the latest reviews of high-end HDTV LCDs and Plasma TV's.