My Dream Home Theater System
Introduction
One of the things I’m always striving to get is my dream home theater system. Being a USC cinematic arts student at USC it’s only natural to wanting to have a great home theater system on campus at USC for watching movies, TV or even for listening to the radio in my room. With so many great new features in movies and TV, having a dream home theater system to see and listen to them on is almost becoming essential.
Components for a dream home theater system
The basic components for my dream home theater system will need to include: TV, sound system, DVD system and subscriptions to services like satellite or cable TV and radio, and possibly a DVD rental service. Of course it’s not quite as simple as just going into a store and saying “I want a dream home theater system please” and the assistant showing you already boxed sets of dream home theater equipment. Sure, you can buy pre-arranged packs, usually with just one manufacturers gear in them and no control over exactly what you get. No, for me I need to create my own dream home theater system, choosing all the best bits and pieces of equipment that I’ve read about in home theater system reviews; rather than a home theater system the store thinks I should buy. Also, quite often buying a ‘pre-packed’ home theater system from a High Street store, you’ll find that you might not get the very latest model of a piece of equipment; whereas buying online you can easily search around and make sure you’re not only getting a great deal - but also all the latest models for your dream home theater system.
Constructing a dream home theater system
Starting with the TV, apart from it having to be a wide screen one I’ve immediately got a big decision as to which type of TV I buy. Plasma, LCD, CRT or rear-projection are all options open to me, but with digital HD TV coming through it’s going to have to be a flat panel LCD screen. Whilst the size of LCD TV screen I buy would in reality be restricted by the budget that I can afford, as it’s my dream home theater system I’m building I’d have to go for at least a 40 inch HD LCD television. Next I need to add the sound system, unless you’re quite adept at balancing audio equipment I would recommend buying a cinema style system that’s got a DVD/CD and radio tuner etc alongside the speaker system - personally it would have to be a Sony one with Dolby Pro Logic II for me. You will need an HD DVD player too, and again for me that would be a Blu-Ray one, which seems to have won the HD DVD battle. Obviously the DVD system needs to also record to a hard-drive and burn DVDs and I’d want to be able to store at least store 250 hours of programs on it. Only a couple of years ago I’d have been looking at paying three to five thousand dollars for that little lot - today by shopping around on the internet I should be able to get all of that gear for my dream home theater system for under $2000.
Subscription services for my dream home theater system
OK, so I’ve now got all the equipment for my dream home theater system, I can watch regular TV, listen to regular radio stations and play CDs, MP3s and all the latest DVDs and movies. Whilst I can watch HD DVDs on my new home theater system I still wouldn’t be able to watch HD TV. So an absolute must will then be to subscribe to a cable or satellite TV service. Living in Los Angeles this would probably mean using one of the two major USA companies - Dish Network or Direct TV. I’d probably just see which offers the best deal at the time I was signing up for the service, as there’s really little to choose between them. I love listening to radio that’s not the usual inane US talk-show type, so subscribing to Sirius or XM would be a ‘must do’ for me, so I can tune in to some decent radio and not suffer any signal loss and static. Finally - I do like watching movies as soon as they’re out on DVD. However, I’m not a fan of constantly re-watching them. So to finish off my dream home theater system I’d have a subscription to a movie DVD rental service, which at around $10 a month could save me a load of money in quite a short time.