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Looking for some suggestions
on how to get more from your home theater system? Here are ten that will
definitely improve your experience at home.
#1. Adjust Your TV/Display
Most TVs sets come out of the factory with brightness and other settings
that are much to high to display an accurate image—instead they're just
designed to draw attention to themselves on a showroom floor.
Unfortunately, most of these settings never changed when the TV/display
is brought home. Some people actually hire dedicated video professionals
to perform sophisticated calibrations on their equipment to address these
problems, but you can get away with buying and running one of several
DVDs (such as the Avia
Guide to Home Theater, Joe Kane's Digital
Video Essentials, etc.) that are designed to help you properly set up
your equipment. You'll be amazed at what a difference they can make (even
if they do look a bit dull at first).
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#2. Cables Count
While you don't have to buy the most expensive ones, investing a few
dollars in cables to replace the inevitably cheap ones that come bundled
with your home theater equipment is a good investment.
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#3. Get Organized
Except for the simplest of systems, the back of most home theater systems
quickly turns into cable spaghetti if you're not careful. If you ever add
a new component or need to troubleshoot a problem you're having with your
system, you'll be really glad you spent a few extra minutes when you
first hooked everything up keeping things organized.
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#4. Go Digital
Digital audio connections are required to listen to multi-channel Dolby
(or DTS) digital audio so you
need those to take full advantage of a 5.1 speaker-equipped home theater
system. In addition, digital video connections can make an impressively
large improvement in picture performance. If you own an HDMI (or DVI)-equipped
display, invest in one of the inexpensive HDMI-equipped DVD players and you'll be knocked out by the quality
difference you can enjoy.
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#5. Not All Progressive Scans Are Created Equal
Even if you have a progressive scan DVD player (or another progressive
scan-capable source), you might find that you'll get a better image by
setting it to output interlaced video and have your display (or a
dedicated video line doubler/scaler) produce the progressive scan image
for you. Try it out to see what works best for you.
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#6. Take Control
Nothing's worse than a great system that's so confusing to use that no
one else but you knows how to turn it on and enjoy it. Invest the time
and money in a universal remote control (or program the one you have) so
that all the necessary elements can be turned on and off and switched to
the right settings in an intuitive way. In addition, while buying
components for your system, looking for extra control connections (like
RS-232 serial ports or USB). While you'll pay a bit more initially,
you'll be glad later when you to try to get your system under better
control..
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#7. Invest in a Multi-disc Changer
If you have lots of CDs and DVDs, organizing them can be a real pain. One
efficient way to keep them all available and ready to use at any time is
by investing in a large, several hundred disc CD or DVD changer. They can
take a bit of effort to first set up-by typing in titles, artists,
etc.-but once the first effort is made, you'll really appreciate the
convenience.
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#8. Buy Good Speakers
The importance and value of good speakers cannot be underestimated and
yes, you can hear the difference with more expensive speakers. A good set
of matched surround speakers will make an enormous difference on your
system. In particular, don't chintz out on your center channel speaker.
Virtually all the dialog and lots of other important elements in surround
sound movies, TV shows and even multi-channel audio (e.g., DVD Audio or
Super Audio CD) is fed to the center channel, so it needs to be one of
the best speakers in your system.
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#9. Multi-Channel Music
Once you have a 5.1 (or better) speaker system in place it seems a shame
to only use it for movies, right? Well, with the DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD (SACD) format players and discs out there now,
there's no need to. These multi-channel audio standards will literally
surround you with high-quality audio by offering a 5.1 music mix that
features very high resolution (up to 24-bit, 96 kHz sampling rates)
digital audio. You’ll need a universal DVD player in order to play
all these discs at their full fidelity, but it’s a worthwhile
investment, particularly for serious music fans.
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#10. Get HD
Once you've seen how great high-definition television looks, you'll not
only be hooked; you'll find it hard to look at standard definition TV.
High definition is worth the investment. Of course, you'll need a high-definition (or HD-capable)
display, but you'll need that for the future anyway….
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