Equipment is the most obvious element of your home theater that will affect your experience. The basic home theater equipment list might look something like this, amplifier or receiver, source such as Blu-Ray player, monitor and speakers. Each of these components affects the overall experience of your home theater. You should take care in choosing each making sure that it is suitable for your performance expectation and your budget.

As a general rule of thumb, its often a good idea to buy a bit more than you can afford. A note of caution, don’t overspend on your monitor (flat panel TV or projection system) and undermine your speakers and power source. It is widely believed by home theater professionals that sound is 80% of the experience. Buy the best speakers you can and make sure you power them properly.

Speaker placement and calibration is the next element of your home theater that you should understand. When the sound track of the latest blockbuster was mixed, the sound engineerer mixed the audio in a specific way to empress upon that audience a specific ambiance and impact. Fortunately, the sound engineerer mixed to a specific standard that you can recreate in your room. In a 5.1 surround sound system, the speakers are expected to be in a particular place to serve a particular function. Modern receivers have come a long way with built in tools to help you calibrate your speakers. Optimally, you would have a professional technician who understands speaker placement configure your room and calibrate each speaker.

Acoustics or sound absorption is the most misunderstood aspect of a home theater, but can be achieved easily with some effort. It is a well-known fact that sound waves bounce around any given room. You can control a lot of this refracting sound and improve the overall experience with strategically placed sound absorbing materials.

One of the easiest control methods is to install thick and/or dense carpet or carpet tile products on the floor. Additionally, you can use large and well cushioned furniture, hang thick drapes over windows, hang tapestries or acoustic panels on the walls or even install a bookshelf with a lot of books.

These points are very basic and should serve as an introduction for getting the most out of your home theater or media room. To learn more about these basic principles and how they might affect your room, please contact the experienced technicians at AV Simplified Solutions.

This year the show marked the rise of the e-readers and Android. Intel brought on their new “super” processors and we even saw an amazing interactive remote control for Windows 7 which is sure to bring some cool new things that we can do with a Windows Media Center PC. Of course there are all the new TVs and more gadgets than you can shake a stick at – some laughable and some amazing—but what interests us the most is home theater.

As I see it, here are the home theater trends for 2010:

More Internet Delivered Content

One of the darlings of this year’s CES was the Boxee, a cube like device that pumps Internet content and digital files to your TV with a social networking kick. This product builds on technology developed for the original Microsoft Xbox (hint: a media player not by provided by Microsoft). Internet delivered content has been trending up for a quite a while. Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, among many others have been setting us up for this. Look for viable content from the Internet to be delivered to your HD flat panel TV this year. Yes, I know, it will be grainy and substandard quality, but there is a ton of it at your finger tips for your ondemand thrills.

3-D on Blu-Ray

It was just 2 years ago that Warner Brothers hammered the nail in the coffin for HD-DVD and now we are preparing the arrival of 3-D. It’s going to happen. The biggest blockbuster in theaters now is the 3-D extravaganza, “Avatar”. There were a slew of 3-D ready Blu-Ray players launched this year at CES. Expect more movies to appear in theaters in 3-D and expect more capable players to be sitting in home theater racks.

HDMI 1.4 Arrives

Bla, bla, bla. Another HDMI revision? Yep, but this one is more refined. Among the advertised improvements: built-in support for network sharing, bidirectional audio (inputs and outputs on a single cable), 3D and expanded resolution (up to 4K ultra high-def), and support for smaller jack sizes. Thankfully, new HDMI 1.4 devices should be backwards-compatible with existing HDMI-enabled ones. Let’s face it, HDMI removes a lot of headaches now that it has stabilized and these updates have much more potential than you might think.

More Integration with your Smart/Super Phones

Maybe the best known advancement is our western lifestyle over the last few years has been the smart phones. We have our navigation system, our network tools, and even our media in our pockets. With the introduction of Google’s Nexus One “super phone” and other Android based smart phones expect there to be a broader appeal and more integration with your home based entertainment. If you misplace the remote control for the media center, have no fear, your phone will come to the rescue. Expect smart integration companies to offer your more solutions than you could ever imagine in the New Year.

Big Movies

By far, what will really push home theater this year will be the content. What is an awesome home theater without awesome content? Have no fear. If you have been avoiding upgrading or adding your home theater, now is the time. The films coming at you this year will require better speakers, better displays, and better transports. Here are just a few of the movies that you don’t want to miss in all their glory sitting in the comfort of your home: “The Wolfman”, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”, “Clash of the Titans”, a new Harry Potter fantasy, and let’s not forget about our favorite monster, “Shrek”. And there will be a Blu-Ray release of “Avatar” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is just around the corner.

It looks like this will be an amazing year for Home Theater in terms of technology and content. Go ahead and stock-up on pop corn.

We ventured down to Atlanta along with 20,000 others to see what we could see. Even with a down economy, the show was strong with some important products being introduced and an urgency to focus on what’s important to homeowners and users.

There were a few products, that we will highlight here, that will affect our product lineup over the coming months. JVC continues to lead the way with some new products in their line of home theater projectors. The JVC DLA-HD990/DLA-RS35 is the biggest news sporting a contrast ratio of 70,000:1 without the use of an iris (many projectors use an iris to artificially escalate contrast ratio). JVC has also done a bit of tweaking on their previously available projectors to improve their performance and value. New to all the models is JVC’s 120Hz Clear Motion Drive, which as the name suggests means the projectors are running at 120 Hz, to decrease motion blur. The DLA-HD990/DLA-RS35 and DLA-RS25/DLA-HD950 get THX Certified. All the models have the HQV Reon-VX chip for the video processing.

RTI (Remote Technologies Incorporated) introduces a new two-way remote control that will knock your socks off. In the first quarter of 2010, RTI will release the new ST-7 Universal Controller which is a sleek two-way remote that boasts a 7-inch capacitive multi-touch screen (a similar screen as the iPhone with an obvious size advantage). RTI remote control systems have been very popular among consumers and custom installers alike because of their ease of use, capabilities, and genuine good looks. RTI is taking that to the next level with the ST-7.

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Visit the CEDIA Expo site to learn more about the Expo.
JVC has more info on their new products.
For more on Chattanooga Home Theater, visit our home page.