SolveYourProblem
Home Theater Article Series
I
Want a Fantastic Home Theater Setup
Home
Theater: It's Introduction
It
wasn’t long ago that no one had every heard of a home theater
system. They knew about televisions, cable
and even VCRs, but the idea of big screen televisions and high-fidelity
stereo sound systems were foreign to them. When people thought
about movies at home they probably envisioned watching a badly
filmed home movie featuring a 1966 vacation being shot onto
the living room wall with a whirring old projector. Times have,
of course, changed. Home entertainment technology has changed
right along with it, too.
Now that we do talk about home theaters, it is worth mentioning
what a home theater really is. It’s an effort to duplicate
(at least some aspects) the movie experience usually reserved
only for cinema attendees. People use home theater systems
as a means of going to the movies without really going anywhere.
Understanding our collective love for the cinema is at the
root of understanding how we got to our current point. We simply
love movies. From indy dramas to summer big studio blockbusters,
we love watching and marveling over the latest creative offerings.
The big screen attracts our attention from the beginning and
blows us away time after time.
Movie screen clarity in picture and sound allows us to observe
every little detail as we watch the story unfold. We see actors
in detail, and are able to watch them practice their craft
as if they were only inches away.
It’s not just visual, though. Every movie since Jolson opened
his mouth and sang has been about sound, too. Can you imagine
a spaghetti western without that theme song? How frightening
would King Kong be without his belly-rattling roar?
The movie experience, it seems, is really beyond compare.
That might be the case—movie going could be irreplaceable—if
it wasn’t for the theaters themselves. They house not only
movies, but inconvenience, too. High prices are attached to
everything from undersized boxes of Milk Duds to large sodas
that might make it hard to pay the rent. Even aside from the
cost, there is a host of convenience issues that all point
to the very same conclusion: “The movies would be great if
I could just get them out of the theater.”
The
first sense of a brewing home theater phenomenon was the
advent of larger screens. People began to dump their small
sets as they searched out bigger and bigger screens. The growth
of the large screen television portended the advent of the
home theater revolution. From twenty-inch traditional televisions
to the new generation of flat screens all the way to the giant
plasma televisions that make people stop on their tracks every
time one is on display. There are even projection units designed
to imitate the theater.
Early home theaters, even those including larger televisions
still suffered from other technological inadequacies. Single
head VCRs replayed the action, but certainly didn’t bring it
to life. Today’s visual medium, including DVD players brings
a crisp move theater image home to the living room.
Sound
has improved, too. Today, no one but the most antiquated
would rely on a small three-inch speaker embedded with the
television. For some time, consumers were forced to live with
bad audio, even if their television offered the ultimate in
video. Few routed sound through their stereo and those who
did often didn’t really know what they were doing.
The movie going era is not yet over, but it may be in its
final throes. Technology has advanced sufficiently to duplicate
the movie-going experience in the home. When one looks at the
numerous negative associated with the laborious process of
going to the theater, it is hard to imagine that the multi-plexes
will retain their popularity for much longer. What was once
an impossibility is now a frequently realized reality. The
home theater system brings the cinema experience right into
the living room, and is becoming more affordable every single
day.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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