Intro to Home Theater

If you're reading this article, you're probably either an audio video enthusiast, a home theater fan, or maybe just someone who enjoys movies. Or maybe yet, you're a person who just wants to have the best home theater system amongst their friends for bragging rights.

Whatever the case and no matter what your experience level, these articles will teach you not only the ins and outs of home theater, but also how to talk about it the right way so you don't get embarrassed when you're talking about it with employees at Best Buy.

To begin, let's first talk about what a Home Theater system is. In simplest terms, it's a bunch of electronic equipment put together to help you experience various forms of media. These forms of media can come from various sources such as a football game, a movie on DVD or even a concert on a CD. When you're putting together your system, you should really make it your own. Choose the equipment that suits your needs because after all, you're the one who's gonna be using it. When you're considering putting together a Home Theater system, you're basically talking about 3 things.

The 3 Basic Components of Home Theater:

Picture - What you will use to view your content.
Audio - What you will use to hear your content.
Input/Source - What you will use to provide your content.

Most of these sound obvious, (no pun intended), but just to make sure we're all on the same page, let's briefly touch on all of them before we go more in depth with them later.

	Your picture is usually provided by a television. Nowadays you have your work cut out for you when deciding which t.v. to purchase with the invention of HDTV (High Definition TV), LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), and Plasma amongst others.
	Your audio isn't only the speakers providing the sound but also the box sending the sound to your speakers called a receiver. This model of receiver and speakers is usually referred to as a surround sound system. Again, this will be detailed later on.
	And finally there's the input or source which essentially determines how clear your picture and sound will be when sent to the multiple components of your system. Your source is where your movie or music originates from and could be a satellite, digital cable box, or a dvd or cd player. Furthermore, how those components connect to your system determine how well the original quality of the source is maintained when finally output to your respective components.

When these three different parts to your system are addressed and handled correctly, the result is a Home Theater system perfect for your needs! But of course, nothing matters if you don't connect everything together correctly!

Continue on to the next article to learn all about the various connections that are housed in standard home theater equipment.