Planning for a Dedicated Home Theater

Bring the cinematic experience into the comfort of your own home

Dedicated home theaters, designed for watching content on the big screen, bring the cinematic experience into the comfort of your own home. These rooms are becoming increasingly popular with new technologies, allowing you to personalize the lighting, seating, sound, and other features of the room — maximizing the experience.

There are a lot of factors at play in a home theater. Considering each aspect can help you curate the perfect home theater for your space.

Seating

Seating is one of the most important elements of an enjoyable home-theater experience. Tiered systems that imitate a sloped theater ensure that everyone can view the screen. You’ll want to place seats far enough away from the screen so that viewers are not overwhelmed by the screen size. Many options are available for materials and design to ensure everyone has a comfortable seat in the house. And with features such as USB charging, built in LED lights, and more, personalizing your home theater can provide you with a seating experience much better than movie theaters can.

Lighting

To embody the true theater setting, you’ll want your room to have as little ambient light as possible, as more light reduces your ability to see the content. That is why dedicated home theaters typically do not have any windows in the room. That being said, accent lighting to help minimize eye fatigue, rope lighting to improve the ambiance, and having it all controlled by the same system that controls your audio video will help make it easy to push one button and have everything set up perfectly and ready to go.

Screen Type and Size

There are many options when choosing a screen for your home theater, such as a flat-panel display or a projector with a fixed, electric, or auto-masking screen. If you’re going with projection, depending on the length of the room, learn whether your room is more suitable for a high-throw or short-throw projector. You can also consider new LED projectors, which use less energy, generate less heat and last longer than older projectors, and laser technology allows for even better picture, and you likely won’t need to replace it anytime soon. Typically, the larger the screen, the better — but the type of screen usually comes down to personal preference and seating distance, along with the format of movies you will be watching which we can help you with.

Sound Systems

A dedicated theater allows you to build a room that can be optimized to provide the best audio possible. For this reason, it’s good to invest in the best quality audio components to improve your movie watching experience.  Larger speakers are always better so they can handle the dynamic range typically found with movies. These speakers are available in floor stranding and built-in speakers which can hide behind wall treatments or the right type of projector screen. To power these larger speakers, a separate pre-amp that handles the processing and switching of sources, and high-power amplification will make sure your speakers are able to perform at their best. A high-quality receiver may also be used, but most receivers do not have the power capabilities of going with separate components. Multiple subwoofers are also necessary since a single subwoofer can often leave one person getting lots of bass and someone else in a different seat getting much.  Proper room calibration can be an important part of bringing all of the audio together.

AV Component Rack

An AV component rack is the central point for your source components, including things like a Blu-ray player, streaming box, along with your satellite or cable box. This rack needs to be properly ventilated, as these components create heat. Having open sides and as much airflow as possible will ensure that your components do not overheat. Using high-quality cabling will help to make sure the signal between devices has the lowest amount of loss which means better sound quality and more detail in your movie listening experience. You will also want to have the proper components for clean power and surge protection to make sure all of your equipment is able to perform at its best and is protected.

Dedicated home theaters add a much-needed space for entertainment to any home. If you’re looking to add a dedicated home theater room to your home, we can help you plan accordingly. Contact us to learn more about our products and services.