Home Theatre System Buying Guide in India

Nothing is more important than your family and no one will be ready to spoil the time of watching TV altogether in the home. So, on these types of occasions, you must be provided with rich sound quality to enhance the TV viewing experience. 

Home Theater System Buying Guide

Your TV may deliver good video quality,  but that may not be the best one to offer a great sound experience. So customers need an additional installation of an audio device to their TV. This is to enhance the sound quality. 

Home theaters are one of the kind of devices that can bring you a beautiful audiophilic experience. It can emulate the movie theater experience. Home theaters are also known as Home theaters that come in countless number price ranges. Customers need not be worried about their budget as they can choose from any of the categories they like. 

-> Soundbars Buying Guide

Types of Home theater audio systems

There are four basic types of home theater audio systems:

  • Home-theater-in-a-box system – comes with five surround sound speakers, a subwoofer and a disc player/amplifier.
  • Soundbars – it’s a lengthy thin bar consisting of several loudspeaker drivers. 
  • Component system – An audio/video receiver, speakers, and any source components
  • Component separates – these can take the place of the receiver with preamplifier / processor and power amplifiers.

How to buy a Home theatre system

Here are some of the key points to consider before buying a Home theater for your home.

Home Theatre Display

TVs: Your home theater will double as the place where your usual watching is done, you’ll be satisfied with a large 4K TV. It’s much easier to turn on a TV when you just want to watch your usual TV shows or to watch a news broadcast.

The next reason to choose a TV is about absolute visual quality is more prime to you than large display size. OLED TVs and high-end LED TVs can produce a higher range of vibrance, making them the better choice for HDR visuals.

Finally, if you are creating a home theater on a budget, an LED TV is going to be a great option than a Projectors. At current rates, you’ll get top models of LED TVs. If a TV is the better idea for your room and you’re worried that it won’t be big enough, you can also find your Home Theater with some serious screen size.

There are different companies with a few 85-inch LED TVs on the market today.

Home Theater Projectors: The finest theater experience is simply possible at your home, which is a really big display-choose projector. With a projector, the limitations of screen size will be on how large of an open wall you have in your home.

Many starter-level projectors can project an image up to 300 inches in diagonal, that’s a screen the size of the 60-inch TV. People who run a projector in their home will settle on a screen between 100 and 150 inches.

Before you buy the biggest TV or projector screen you can afford, check out the wall size and determine what the ideal size is for your room.

Speakers

The speakers also play an iconic role in delivering good audio performance. While 

some home theatre products come with bookshelf speakers, some of them come with floor standing speakers. Mainly, home theatre systems advance with 5.1 channel or 7.1 channel speakers.

Here, there is a subwoofer that produces low frequencies and others are satellite speakers for the front, center, and rear channel speakers. In your home theatre setup, you can have the speakers placed on the floor or you can place the four satellite speakers on each side of your room.

Connectivity

  •  HDMI

The connection ports and the number of options obtainable on an A/V receiver are the key factors. They are slightly older versions of A/V receivers that come up with HDMI 1.3 ports, the newest models are coming with HDMI.

HDMI ARC that not only clarifies the need of having a different S/PDIF for audio connectivity but also gives the pliability to stream the audio data. Preferably, look for an AV/ receiver that has at least 3 HDMI input ports so that you can connect multiple devices at the same time or each at a time without disconnecting others, such as a gaming console, Blu-ray / DVD player, laptop, etc.

  • HDMI 3D pass-through

HDMI pass-through means the audio and visual streams passing through the A/V receiver are unprocessed. The receiver will only pass that stream to the display or TV. Thus the receiver can’t process the audio. HDMI pass-through doesn’t allow the passing of HD audio.

For that, we have to depend upon Optical audio, which supports only DTS (Digital Theatre Systems) and DD (Dolby Digital). In the case of 3D pass-through, the 3D signals need higher bandwidth comparing with the ordinary 1080p signal.

The recent version of HDMI 1.4 is 3D-ready. A/V receivers with 3D pass-through allow the 3D signals and pass that to the TV via HDMI out. Moreover, it doesn’t mean that the A/C receiver converts 2D to 3D. For that, you would need to connect a Blu-ray player to your TV.

  • Surround Sound 

The vast range of surround sound options can be quite prodigious. Many of the latest A/V receivers can run over Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks from the TV broadcasts, Netflix, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, etc.

Dolby DTS-HD and Dolby True HD are also supported by the new updated home theatre system, that allows you to enjoy a pure and sound experience at your home. To add more push to your music listening experience, some home theatre systems also come with a set of equalizer presets.

Other Things to Consider

Lighting

A home theatre is about creating a good viewing experience.  It is important to create a good ambiance inside your home theatre. To limit the distractions, ambient lighting is your best choice. Control light from outside which gets into your theater, and also don’t make your theater room modulation black. Watching TV in a completely dark room can cause a strain on your eyes. 

Your home theater should be very dark, but with controlled timbre lighting. Typical home theater lighting consists of dimmable wall sconces or accent lighting built into a soffit. Another used option is an adjusting backlight behind your TV or projector screen. These kinds of lights are easy to install and can be even controlled from your smartphone.

Other than accent lighting, all other sources of light should be eliminated. That might be as simple as shutting off a ceiling light or require taking steps to completely block stray light from surroundings.

Seating

Seats play a considerable part in enjoying your viewing experience. Seating comfort and view angle are very important in a home theater setup. Comfortable seating helps convert your room from just a ‘TV room’ to a beautiful home theater. Home theater chairs are a very nice choice.

Push-back seats are the ideal choice. They allow us to change our seating angles and also adjust to the view of the screen from different angles. The classic recliner is big and comfortable with its footrest. Now some new recliners models have built-in cup holders, integrated LED lighting, and even massage functions.

Arranging your seating in rows gives all viewers a head-on view of the screen when watching with family or friends. And if you’re serious about seating, consider building a home theater riser for the second row of seats.

Wall Color

For creating the ultimate viewing environment for movies, it’s worth considering the color of the walls and ceiling in your home theater. Walls should be painted mostly as dark as possible, to decrease the reflection of light.

Most people probably aren’t good with painting an entire room black, so use whatever dark color you are syncing with something like a navy blue or deep red is a good choice, even making a luxurious feel to your theater.

If you are running a projector inside your home theater, your ceiling should also get painted with a darker color. A light-colored ceiling will reflect light from your projector, which causes a reduction of the contrast and overall quality of the projected visual. Also, be aware of your placement of any reflective products in the room. 

POWER PROTECTION, CABLES, AND REMOTE CONTROLS

Power protection: Protect the home theater from nature and or sudden blackouts and or power surges with line conditioners and surge protectors.

Cables: You need to confirm that all the cables the manufacturer has made for the home theater are available for you when you buy them. Lack of even one cable can bring down the whole performance.

Remote controls: Always choose a product with a universal remote control system. Having separate remotes for a single function will make you helpful.

Budget

Your budget depends upon your needs and the purpose of the home theatre system. In many cases, people put up a lot on setting up the home theatre room, interior designs, and visual setup. Moreover, the speakers and amplifiers are avoided by many.

The size of the room and speaker placement are other things to be considered. If you have a small-sized room, you can go for a home theatre package that uses small bookshelf-sized speakers. If you got a bit spacious room, you select a 7.1 setup with a pack that comes with either a bookshelf or Tower speakers.

You Might be interested in:

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. What brands make the best home theater systems?

You can either mix up components of different brands or buy a product from a specific brand. We prefer sticking up with the same brand for all the components as the quality change can be identified by the user. For the home-theater-in-a-box system, all the components will be from the same brand. Recommended speaker brands are  Bose, Sonos, Klipsch, SVS. Buy a world-class JBL Synthesis system if you have that much budget to spenD FOR A HOME THEATER.

2. What is the ideal wattage for running a Home theater? 

The performance of a Home theater will be drastically affected by the power it consumes. Mostly, a high-power home theater sounds great even at a lower volume. 

You have to make sure that the minimum wattage recommended for your specific speakers is up to the mark. A minimum of 125 watts per channel is the best while considering the best performance output.

3. How do you make your rear speakers wireless?

You can do that by using a wireless adapter to add typically wired speakers to the rear. Or you can buy a speaker with optional wireless capability for the surround speakers.

VERDICT

In this article, we have provided you with every detail required for buying a home theater for making your TV viewing experience fantastic. The magic that a home theater brings to your home is not so small. You can make a theater within your house itself.

Check out all the points that we mentioned above before buying a home theatre. We have also mentioned some of the top brands ruling the home theatre market. Choose your product wisely and don’t waste your money.