So, you've been bitten by the home theater bug, eh? You want to design your own home theater but are unsure about how to do it? Here are some quick tips on how to design you very own home theater. First, there are some basic questions you must answer.
1)How much space are you working with, or, alternatively, if you are building a room from scratch, how many people would you like to seat in your home theater? If using an existing room, what shape is it. Is it a closed room or is it open to the rest of the home? Where is the door in relation to the rest of the room? Would you like true theater type seating or will you be using sofas and love seats?
2)Will it be a multi-use room or a dedicated theater? If you are using the room for multiple purposes, you will need to be more careful about hiding components to integrate the theater with the rest of the room. Layout will become extremely important so you can maximize the use of the available space.
3)What is your home theater budget?- If you are fairly new to the game, you may not have a good idea about a realistic budget, so do some research on material and equipment costs.
4)What kind of dcor are you trying to achieve. Do you want an art deco theater straight out of the 1930's? How about something a little more contemporary? Do you have a design theme in your home you are trying to match? Have you seen pictures of home theaters that you liked? Are you working with an interior designer in the rest of your home, or did you use the services of an interior designer to achieve the dcor you have throughout your home?
5)What is your favorite type of program material? Do you watch mostly DVD movies or are going to be using your home theater mostly for watching sports? Will you watch a lot of regular or HDTV in your theater? Do you even have a good HDTV feed into your home theater? Would you really enjoy watching concert DVDs or music videos? If this theater will be used primarily for watching movies, what is your favorite type, or genre, of motion picture? Large production, action movies have a different set of demands on your home theater system than do romance films, for example.
6)Do you have existing audio / video equipment you'd like to incorporate into your new theater? Should you? Some of your existing gear may work great or maybe you need to replace a piece or two. Maybe you're building everything from the beginning and need all new gear.
7)Are you going to be doing the installation yourself or contracting with a professional installer? What is your level of expertise in the building trades? Are you a fast learner?
8)Will this theater be used mostly by you, or will family and friends be using this room even when you're not around? If many people will be using the theater, consider investing in a really good remote control, and some programming to make everything really easy to use. You'll thank yourself later, and so will everyone else. It's very nice when the remote control is so simple that you can watch whatever you want by pressing one intuitively labeled button or icon that makes everything happen. With touch screen remote controls, the screen will change depending to reflect the appropriate source or task, so you have only the buttons displayed that you need, not a confusing jumble of buttons to control every conceivable function of your theater.
9)What are your performance requirements? Do you have any?Is it important that your pant legs flap in the breeze created by your subwoofers (use at least two)? Would it be really nice to understand every, single word of dialog? How about the video? Are you extremely picky when it comes to picture quality? Are you a trained viewer that is familiar with what video anomalies look like? Do you want the largest possible video image?
10)Will your theater be integrated with your house music system if you now, or will, have one, or will it be completely stand alone?
If you can answer these questions, you have begun the design process for your home theater. It's important to know the answers so that you can formulate your design targets. A well designed home theater will bring countless hours of enjoyment to you, your family and friends. The more information you have, the happier you'll be with the finished product.
Steve has 15 yrs in consumer electronics. He is a CEDIA certified designer with ISF and THX certificates. His experience includes: installer and programmer; system designer; business unit director for an a/v importer; sales rep for a CE distributor; and principal of a $1.5M+ CEDIA custom installation firm. He's now senior sales engineer for Digital Cinema Design in Redmond, WA. Find out more about home theater design at the Home Theater Design Guide.
