Everybody talks about having New Year’s resolutions that are
supposed to make life better. But if you want your home theater to really shine
in 2017, then it’s time to make a New Year’s resolution to update how you watch
and how you listen so as to have the best experience possible.
The Television
The flat panel TV changed how we watched television by bringing a widescreen image
into the home. This was later accompanied by the Full HD resolution that blew away ordinary
tube-based TVs to add detail and more colors to the images being displayed. Now
there are 4K televisions which have 4X HDs resolution to
really bring the movie theater home. Add being able to have a curved 4K TV or an OLED 4K TV and the choices for which television
will best suit your needs and decor are huge. As is the ability to get a really big TV that can take over a wall, if you
don’t want it standing on a cabinet in the living room or bedroom.
The Sound System
Sound always accompanies a picture, and to make the home theater
experience exciting the sound has to be vibrant and loud. The bad old days
forced viewers to listen to their TV’s speakers and that was that. But today
there are many more choices: you can set up a sound bar in front of the TV which has all of the
speakers inside a single chassis or which combines with a wireless subwoofer or which has new technologies to enhance the sound even further; you can
connect an AV Receiver to a series of stand-alone speakers
to create surround sound; you can even connect a pair of wireless headphones for private listening for those
times when having it loud just won’t fly. Any of these choices will provide a
powerful sound field to make watching even more enjoyable.
The Playing of Content
Streaming a movie may seem convenient, but for the confidence of being able to play
what you want whenever you want, having your own movie library can’t be beat. DVD players and Blu-ray players are now commonplace. But should you
want to watch 4K movies on your 4K TV, you’ll need a 4K Blu-ray player, which is backwardly compatible
and able to up-convert non-4K discs to make them look even better.
The Seating
Piling up on the couch is an easy way to get everybody together
to watch (and less a problem now since today’s TVs have wider viewing angles), but investing in
studio seating chairs is worth considering if comfort is your goal. These seats
are designed for home use and make a Lazy-Boy look weak. They even have cup
holders. Another route is to look at specialized “gaming” chairs which are also
designed to bring comfort to those planning to sit for hours at end. Having
special chairs for your home theater also makes the time watching seem more
special too, and to do this right it might be wise to get in touch with a
professional installation company, for example Just One Touch, to help you get and set things up
just right.
The Lighting
Movie theaters may seem to be absolutely dark, but they’re not
and your home theater shouldn’t be either. Look to small LED lights that can be
placed strategically throughout the home theater so as to minimize glare while
providing discrete pools of illumination. After all, people will need to get to
the kitchen for more snacks during movie-time, so making sure there’s no
accidents is important.
Making New Year’s resolutions is good, but making your home
theater the go-to for you and your family is better.