Overview
For movie lovers, going to a cinema have been the only choice for years, as the technology to bring such level of motion picture and sound to somewhere else would cost too much to be feasible, or even possible at all.
However, with many technology breakthrough, now you can bring all those experiences to your living room, an experience to take you far away to the land of imagination. With a huge high-definition screen and a set of sound system that can blow your living room wall away, so this guide looks at such the two parts that your eyes can see, and your ears can hear: the picture and the sound — from your cinema-like home theater systems.
A home theater system can change your living room (or your home theater room, as you may call it) into a 5-star cinema at a great value. No crowds, no expensive pop corn or soft drinks, no ticket fees — and what’s best is that it’s sitting right in your house! With the right setting, even the largest armies or the smallest dwarf will be alive in your high-definition TV, making a high-quality surround-sound speaker system. You can even feel bullets flying pass you by in The Matrix, just like when you sit in the cinema, or even better!
The Eyes
Picking Your DVD/HD Players
To get started and get something displayed on your high-definition TV, you need a “source reader” – a DVD player or some HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc players. DVD video output offers more than double the quality of an old-school VHS tapes that your VCR used to play. With the higher resolution, a smoother and more detailed quality can be observed in the picture, thereby bettering your movie experience. You can find a DVD player from almost any major electronics companies e.g. Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony, Philips, Samsung, just to mention a few. However, with high-definition players like a popular Blu-ray Disc player (plus a Blu-ray Disc, of course) you can experience a picture quality FOUR TIMES higher than that you can experience from a DVD!
You can expect prices for standard DVD players from as low as $50, though some top models may cause many folds as much, with some extra feature that you probably don’t even know what it does (and that you’ll never use it). Most players comes with the ability to read music CDs, MP3 music on CD-Rs, video in a DVD-format recorded on DVD-R/DVD+R, or some more advanced encoded DivX format. Or if you’re interested in the new high-definition formats, you might be looking at $300 or more, but the price is getting lower and lower these day. But with whatever you choose as your players, you should make sure that your TV can support them to the fullest extent possible. Don’t buy a Blu-ray Disc player to team up with your 25-Inch CRT TV.
