I spent a fair part of my career as a design consultant in the consumer electronics industry (with some significant experience in home theater design), so I got to attend the Consumer Electronics Show. With each passing year, I watched the audio industry evolve from two-channel music systems to a dominance by film-oriented home theater. I've always loved film, but two product demonstrations convinced me that I had to have my own home theater. The first time I saw a Faroudja line doubler I was amazed at how film-like video could be. And for several years, Miller & Kreisel (M&K) erected a home theater on the exhibit hall floor that consistently blew me away with its superb speakers. In my mind's eye, I had seen my little fixer-upper. Years of saving, planning, designing, slowly accumulating equipment, building, and budget busting would follow.

Building A Dream Theater

Within several chapters, I'll be describing my experiences as I planned and built my home theater. This won't be a general reference on home theater design - a book-length tome would be required for that. What it will be is an anecdotal tale that will include lots of helpful information (I hope) that you might be able to use when you design your own dream theater. And along the way, for those who may be new to the technology, I'll try to explain some terms to help you build your home theater vocabulary.

In Part One, I'll start with equipment selection. Rear projection or front projection? Liquid Crystal or Cathode Ray Tube? What should the screen size and field-of-view be? How about the 16x9 anamorphic vertical squeeze? And planning for HDTV? Should the surrounds be direct radiators or dipoles? What's unique about home theater speakers as compared to music system speakers?

In Part Two, I'll discuss the architectural design. What are the design considerations for viewing, acoustics, sound reproduction, and storage? How do you keep the sound within the theater? How do you maximize dialog intelligibility? How does the equipment selection affect the seating location? What wall colors are most effective for best viewing? How about room lighting?

In Part Three, I'll describe equipment installation and the support systems. How do you control everything from a single remote control? How do you remotely control the lighting? And what about line conditioning or surge protection? Do you have to spend a fortune on high-end cables?

In Part Four, I'll concentrate on fine tuning the system to extract the most performance possible. I'll be using the new AVIA Guide To Home Theater DVD for audio and video test signals (so this part will also include a review of this recent release). The projector will be adjusted. And the sound system will be tuned using parametric equalizers.

In Part Five, I'll add HDTV capability. I'll include discussions of HDTV sources like cable, satellite, terrestrial broadcast, and my expectations for DVD. I'll choose a source and describe program availability, channel availability, transmitter locations, and reception requirements. Links to information sources and utilities will be included. Set top boxes and interfacing techniques will be next, along with a brief explanation of DTV formats. Finally, I'll describe the results. How does HDTV's 1080i and 720p look when compared to a great anamorphic DVD?

In Part Six, I'll describe some of the challenges to improving a home theater's performance by upgrading its equipment. Easier said than done. Technological progress is a two-edged sword. In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel, observed that microprocessor transistor density will double every year, implying a geometric growth in both power and speed. He was a bit off; it takes about eighteen months to double transistor density, but the principle he conceived has held up well for nearly forty years. Such progress provokes the swift development of new features and improved performance in all microprocessor-based or digital signal processor-based consumer electronics, making it difficult for the consumer to keep up. When DVD was introduced only six years ago, there were no DTS-capable players, progressive video was available only to those willing to take out a second mortgage, 16:9 aspect ratio displays were very rare, and EX's center surround channel had yet to reach the motion picture theater. But as progress accelerates, engineering cycles shorten; design errors and glitches creep in, laying in wait for the unwary. So in this chapter, I'll discuss choosing wisely and include descriptions of some of the less obvious attributes to watch for and some problems that might get in the way of obtaining the biggest bang for the buck.

Also, check out the Dream Theater photo gallery, as well as an addendum with more information on workarounds when using the Avia Guide To Home Theaters and Toshbia players (as discussed in Part Four).

I hope you'll enjoy this journey as much as I did. And if any of you learn from my mistakes, this series will have been worthwhile.

(If you have any questions or comments for the author, say hello to Dan here.)