Home theater

The own home cinema

The home theater – the new dimension?

Do you know the problem of lying comfortably in front of the TV in the evening and suddenly falling asleep? However, if you sit in the cinema, you are captivated by the whole scenery and atmosphere. You feel the fever with the film and are wide awake. In the cinema, there’s simply more of a feeling, and that’s not just to do with the large screen, but also with terrific sound. “The motto here is “in the thick of things instead of just being there. But can you get this feeling at home? Of course you can! With your own home theater, you no longer have to travel long distances, you don’t have to be bothered by strange neighbors and you also save a lot of money.

Setting up your home theater properly

For your own home theater, three things are crucial. First, you need a suitable projection surface. There are several options for this. If you have your own room for your home theater, then we recommend a fixed screen. For example, you can install a frame screen. This is an ordinary frame over which a white cloth is stretched. Once this is mounted on the wall, an important step towards a home theater has been taken. If you want to set up the home theater inconspicuously in the living room, we recommend a roll-up screen or a motorized screen. Both variants are very inconspicuous and can be retracted and extended as needed. Of course, you can also use a large white wall as a projection surface. If you decide to use this option, we recommend painting the wall surface with screen paint. This is not absolutely necessary for your home theater, but it ensures that colors shine more and contrasts are displayed higher. To fill the screen with moving images, you will need a projector for your home theater. The projector is the heart of a home theater and always belongs on the ceiling. But which beamer should it be? Entry-level models are available for as little as €80 and are suitable for a small budget. The different beamers are roughly divided into two variants. For your home cinema, you are spoilt for choice between LCD projectors and DLP projectors. The difference lies in the construction and both projectors have advantages and disadvantages. With LCD projectors, you have fine gradations in light and dark colors without artifacts. However, these projectors have the disadvantage that black is not very saturated and therefore looks rather grayish. The maximum contrast is usually lower. The LCD projector is particularly suitable for moving images. Alternatively, the DLP projector is available. This produces a very high-contrast image and the colors are saturated. The big disadvantage that could arise for your home theater is that, due to the technology, disturbing rainbow effects occur as soon as your eye movement is not synchronized with the moving object on the screen. But since this effect doesn’t occur for everyone, you should just try them out at the electronics store. Anyway, the DLP beamer is perfect for presentations, but does not exclude a home theater application.

What’s still missing

Once you’ve chosen the right projector for your home theater, all you need is a small management center and a sound system. The management center is an AVReceiver, which ensures that the image is sent from the video player to the projector. When buying an AV receiver, you still have to consider whether you want to operate your home theater in 5.1 or 7.1. This tells you how many speakers your system should consist of. For example, a home theater with a 5.1 sound system consists of two front speakers, two rear speakers, a center speaker and a subwoofer. The decimal place tells you how many subwoofers are supported. If you now also have a cozy sofa corner in your home theater, nothing stands in the way of a popcorn battle in your own four walls.