Building Your Home Cinema

The world of consumer electronics has always been bewildering and constantly changing, so it’s no surprise that most people have trouble when trying to set up their home cinema. Thankfully, though, putting it all together isn’t actually as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Inside your living room or converted garage or loft, you could have the perfect home cinema up and running with ease.

And if you haven't converted your garage, you could get started today by getting a free quote from garageconversionquoter.co.uk. Garage and loft conversions are one of the most cost-effective home improvements you can go for in the current housing market, because not only do you get the benefit of more space now without having to move, but also when the market picks up again and the time comes to sell, your house’s value will have drastically improved thanks to the extra space you’ve created.

The Visual

A good cinema starts with the screen. You’ve got a few paths you can go down here, and the end result is going to be determined by three things: your space, your taste and your budget. The first big decision to make is whether to have a television set or a projector. There are significant advantages and disadvantages to both – in particular, projectors are more troublesome to fit and set up and can be noisy, but you’ll be able to get a larger screen size, and they don’t suffer from narrow viewing angles which some larger flat-screen televisions are plagued by.

The Audio

Some Home Cinema magazines will tell you that you need an ever-expanding array of speakers – remember when it used to be just the two? Now you need a centre speaker, two rears speakers, and a ‘subwoofer’ for the bass sounds. This is known as ‘5.1 surround sound’, but surround sound systems have begun appearing in the consumer market with 7.1, 9.1 or even 11.1 configurations. What the hi-fi manufacturers don’t like to tell you is that even cinemas only actually use 5 distinct speaker channels, so you can save yourself some money and plump for the standard 5.1 system without losing anything.

Another thing a lot of people don’t realise when placing speakers in their home cinema setup is that rear speakers, counter-intuitively, are designed to be placed at the sides of the room. Ideally, the five main speakers should form a circle around your sofa, with the two rear speakers at the 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock positions.

The Room

Experts in video will tell you that bright colours in your home cinema will affect your perception of the colours on your television, so you should decorate in dark colours. Experts in audio will soberly inform you that, whilst thick curtains and a good solid sofa will help, there is only one device that can help you ‘fix’ problematic acoustics in your room: a sledgehammer. Both of these viewpoints are worth taking on board.

Here at Home Improvement Quotes, however, we think that there’s only two things you really need to get the maximum enjoyment out of watching a movie with your family, all together in a warm room after coming in from the winter cold: a really good, comfortable sofa, and a nice hot cup of tea.