Home Theater

When purchasing my projector I needed a pretty good audio system to go along with it. As I researched the internet for prices I decided to go with the Onkyo 780 Home Theater in a box. It came with seven bookshelf speakers and a 10" subwoofer. It is 780 watts of pure power. I also decided to change the wires to THX monster cables, a spool of 18 speaker cable from radio shack and 14kt gold banana clips. My husband ran the cable on top of the wall in order for the wire to be hidden. After everything was connected I turned on the system. It was just like being in the movies literally.

Guide to Buying A Home Theater Projector

When I first decided to buy a projector there were things that I needed to know in order to buy one to fit my needs. I had to check for the price range that suited my budget ( I was only working with $1000), the size of the room, the type of projector I needed (DLP or LCD), was the projector going to be mounted , lumens(how bright the projector is),ambient light (would the room be completely dark), was this for a home theater and the projector screen.

The first thing I did was research price. A good budget projector that I purchased was The Sharp XR10x which I paid $899 for at Costco. This projector is a high resolution Dlp projector which is XGA and has 2000 lumens. It also is HDTV compatible , portable and I could mount it or place it on the table.

There are 2 types of projectors for home use.The first is LCD and the second is the DLP. I will tell you what they both stand for:

LCD (liquid crystal display) projectors usually contain three separate LCD glass panels, one each for red, green, and blue components of the image signal being fed into the projector. As light passes through the LCD panels, individual pixels ("picture elements") can be opened to allow light to pass or closed to block the light, as if each little pixel were fitted with a Venetian blind. This activity modulates the light and produces the image that is projected onto the screen.

DLP ("Digital Light Processing") is a proprietary technology developed by Texas Instruments. It works quite differently than LCD. Instead of having glass panels through which light is passed, the DLP chip is a reflective surface made up of thousands of tiny mirrors. Each mirror represents a single pixel.

I chose the Dlp because it was the cheaper one at the time of purchase. I also got a great warranty with Costco. I was allowed to take it home and try it out. If I did not like it I could bring it back for a full refund, no questions asked.

I had to also upgrade my cable box for an HDTV box in order to get HDTV from the projector. I chose a fixed frame projector screen which I mounted to my wall. I added
black velvet curtains in my room to keep out the ambient light. Since my room was 22 ft. long I decided to mount my projector to the ceiling.

The picture quality was beyond anything I could imagine. The colors were vivid and seem to pop out at you. I had no fading of color. The projector fan was also very quiet. I connected my computer to the projector and it looked better than my LCD monitor. I also connected the PS2 to the projector. Playing video games are phenomenal.

This was a year ago. I could not be more satisfied.