Things to Consider when Purchasing a Home Theater System

The first thing you will want to decide is whether you are going with a regular television or a projector. They both have their pros and cons. A Regular television works much better in bright rooms, like on the south side of your house. There can also be a problem with glair though. Projectors don't show up as bright and can appear somewhat faded but also don't have any glair. The chances are though, if you are going to put in a home theater system, it's not going to be in a bright room.

Cost wise, a projector will generally be much cheaper. They start at around $500 and usually display an image up to 300 inches. These obviously aren't HD projectors, but are great for low budget systems. Usually the problem with these is you will end up paying about the same price to replace the lamp. This leads me to another downside of projectors; you generally have to replace the bulb every 2,000 to 3,000 hours of use. If you use your projector for 10 hours a day and it only lasts 2,000 hours, it will last your around 200 days. I'm guessing the average person won't be using their projector this often though. If you watch 1 movie a night (2 hours) it would last you around 1,000 days, which is about 3 years, minimum. When you are purchasing a projector, it is very important to check the prices on replacement lamps. There may be two nearly identical projectors for different prices, but one may have lamps that cost hundreds of dollars less. I have seen lamps cost upwards of $600 each and others start around $150 each.

The next thing you will want to consider is whether you are going to run it with a Home Theater PC (HTPC) or a regular DVD/Blue-Ray player. Obviously, a HTPC will cost more, but there are a lot of benefits to it. Overall, it can simplify many things that you may need multiple pieces of equipment for. It can act as a DVD/Blue-Ray player, a Video Recorder (no need for Tivo, etc), a music player, and anything else you can do with a computer. You can rip all your DVDs to a decent size hard drive and maintain HD quality for about 1.3GB per movie. A 500GB hard drive will run you just over $100 and could hold about 350 movies. Then you can just click on the movie you want to watch; No finding the DVDs, putting them in, getting them scratched, etc.

Lastly, you will want to find a nice set of speakers. When looking at wattage, you can basically ignore the peak watts. Finding a higher RMS will generally lead to a better and louder system. You will also need to decide whether you want a 5.1, 7.1, etc. If you get a HTPC, make sure the sound card supports whatever you are using. Some cheaper sound cards do not support 7.1.

My preference for a Home Theater is a HD projector, which runs around $2,000, running off a HTPC with all the videos ripped onto it. This also allows you to share your videos across your Network, so any other computer can play the movies without having them on that computer's hard drive. The speakers are generally based on personal opinion and price range, so get whatever is in your price range. Bare minimum, expect to spend around $1,200 to $2000 for the entire home theater system.