Affordable Home Theater Setup. Review on DVD in your Home Theater

Before I begin please let me emphasize that I am not an audiophile. However, I love movies. I am not rich either. I have got a large DVD collection; it’s mostly rips and copies. I really cannot afford to buy such large number of original DVDs.

I am always on quest to maximize the fun of watching movies at home. To do full justice to DVD watching experience, the least you need to have is –

1) A good DVD player.

2) A large screen TV

3) 5.1 Sound

These days DVD players are quiet cheap, you can pick according to your liking. I personally have Philips 5106. Not only it’s cheap but it also plays DIVX and XVID video formats in 16:9 mode which according to me is its biggest plus point. I bought it around six months back for Rs 4400/-. Almost all DVD players these days have a picture improving feature called Progressive Scan. You will not be able to use it unless you have a compatible television (usual 4:3 CRT televisions are not compatible).

There is no limit to how good your TVcan be. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend. I really cannot afford to buy a Plasma, LCD or Projection TV. I have a basic flat 29” Sony color television. I bought it for around Rs 26,000/- a year ago. The good thing about this TV is that you can play DVDs in 16:9 mode; there is provision to squish the picture vertically to match 16:9 mode which results in clearer and sharper picture. My advice to you is set your budget and buy accordingly.

The best picture quality is offered by normal CRT television but screen size rarely goes above 29”. Beyond that TV becomes too bulky to handle.

Plasma is most expensive option. It offers picture quality comparable to CRT. However TV life is limited to few years and it may suffer screen burn-in problems.

Projection TV are on there way out. They will be extinct in few years, replaced by cheap LCD television.

These days LCD is considered the best choice. Picture quality was a problem with earlier LCDs, these days they are almost comparable to CRT picture quality.

For best picture quality, connect your DVD player to TV through something called Component Video connection. It’s a set of three wires that connect to Red, Green and Blue sockets in both DVD player and TV. You will not find Component Video sockets in old TV sets.

5.1 sound means 6 channel sound –

1) One center speaker

2) Two front speakers

3) Two back speakers

4) One Subwoofer

DVDs with 5.1 sound could be in Dolby format or DTS format or have provision for both. Personally I prefer DTS over Dolby. To play 5.1 sound, the Dolby/DTS format has to be decoded and then streamed to the six speakers.

Decoding can be done by DVD player itself. Most DVD players have inbuilt Dolby/DTS decoders and provision to connect the six speakers directly to it. You will find many such packages of DVD player plus Speakers in the market (For example from Sony). They are popularly known as HTiB (Home Theater in Box). However this is considered to be a weak home theater solution. Inbuilt decoders in DVD players have a reputation for being bad.

Best solution is to connect your DVP Player to a separate dedicated box for decoding; this box is called AV Receiver (Its sometimes referred as Amplifier by shopkeepers). The connection has to be done by a normal coaxial cable through sockets called SPDIF in both DVD player and AV receiver.

I personally have a set of AV receiver plus speakers called Onkyo HT-S580. Bought it around 4-5 months ago for around Rs 28,000/-. There are comparable solutions available from Sonodyne and Yamaha. Philips has very cheap offerings like HTR-5000 or HTR-2000 that do the job for as less as Rs 6000/-.

Again like TV, you can go as expensive as you like for 5.1 or better sound. Go for Bose if you are rich. As for me, I am satisfied with the home theater setup that I have done in my bedroom. That said, I still long for a bigger television and maybe a separate dedicated room for home theater. No harm in dreaming, right?