Home Theater Setup
While the best case scenario is
to build a home theater system right into the plans of a new
home or into completely gutting and remodeling a room, for
the sake of this page, we are going to assume that you are
installing your home theater system into an EXISTING room.
First, you need to decide where
in your room everything will be located. No two home
theater rooms are the same. You might want to draw out a
diagram of your room on paper (with your significant other) to
help you decide the best locations for your home theater
components and any other furniture and decor that will be in the
same room.
Your television is the anchoring
point of your entire home theater system. The placement of
everything else will revolve around where you decide to locate
your TV. Consider ambient lighting in the room. Will
you experience annoying reflections on your screen from sunlight
coming through your windows? Hopefully your television has
an anti glare screen that will eliminate this problem.
Depending on the size of your
television, where you will be placing it (LCD
and plasma flat screen TVs look GREAT
mounted on the wall!), and how much audio video equipment will
be connected to your system, you may need to invest in a new entertainment
center, TV stand, or audio rack
to hold it all. Be sure to take notice of where the
nearest AC outlet is. This is where you will connect a Monster
Power Center. The AC power plug from each of your
audio/video components will be connected into
Monster Cable MP B1100
Assuming you've already got all
the home theater furniture you need for now, unbox everything...
If you are setting up a 5.1 surround sound
system, you will need to place a center
channel speaker as close to your television screen as possible, usually
directly above or below it. This will anchor the dialog from your movie
soundtrack and fill in the gap between your main/front speakers.
To the left and right of your television
screen, you will put your 2 front speakers. Some people will have larger
floor-standing
speakers that will also be used for two channel stereo music listening.
Rear surround sound speakers are usually best
mounted to the left and right of your seating area above.
Additional speakers are required to set up a
6.1 or 7.1 surround sound system. The rear center speaker on a 6.1
system goes above you, between the left and right rear channel speakers.
You might also need to invest in speaker wall
mounting brackets or speaker
stands. While most of
your wires will be tucked back behind your television and the rest
of your audio/video system, you will need to figure out the best
way to run speaker wire from the back of your receiver to your
rear surround sound speakers. Depending on your home, it may
be as simple as drilling a few holes. At a bare minimum,
there should be no wires near any walkways or where young children
have access to them. |
Home Theater Wiring
Once you have decided exactly
where everything will be located in your home theater room, then
Depending on your system, count
on investing up to 20% of your total home theater system budget
on your hookup cables. We highly recommend the Monster
Cable brand of audio, video, and speaker cables partly
because of Monster Cable's LIFETIME REPLACEMENT WARRANTY.
Quality cables DO make a difference! Think
about it for a second...100% of
your picture and sound travels through your cables!
Make sure your entire system is
UNPLUGGED connecting any components! You will need easy
access to the back of your gear.
Monster Cable HTIB CV
(Component Video Cables) Kit
You will need component video
cables to connect the video
DVD players use component video
outputs and digital audio cable...
If you've got a separate
DVD player and don't already have one, a digital audio
cable sends a
multi-channel digital surround sound signal from your DVD player
or HDTV receiver. to your home theater receiver.the sound
from a
The most common types of digital
audio cable are optical and coaxial. Be sure that you
speaker wires
flat speaker wire might be a
good choice if you need to run wire to your rear/surround sound
speakers along a wall or baseboards or under the carpet.
You will need a subwoofer
cable to connect your powered subwoofer to the back of your
surround sound receiver.
Once your entire system is
connected properly, turn ON the power on your Monster
Power Center.
|
