To create your own home theater, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars for a high-end home theater system built around a high-definition (HD) video projector that projects movies onto a 100-inch screen that retracts into the ceiling. You could devote thousands of dollars to a room-rumbling surround sound audio system tricked out with megawatt amplifiers and as many as seven five-foot-tall speakers. For added measure, you could install plush theater-style seats and a faux ticket booth to complete the movie-theater illusion.

Home theater, however, went main-stream long ago, and by early 2006, a bare-bones entry-level system with all the necessary audio and video gear cost less than $250 during special promotions. You’ll spend even less if you already own one of the necessary components.

At a minimum, all you need to create a home theater is:

• A TV set with a minimum 27-inch diagonal screen size,
• A hi-fi/stereo VCR or DVD player capable of delivering surround sound,
• A product such as an audio/video (A/V) receiver, DVD-receiver, or other device incorporating a surround sound decoder and amplifiers, and
• At least four speakers: one on each side of the TV and one to each side of your seating position and a subwoofer.

All new home theater systems also add a center-channel speaker above or below the TV screen to lock dialog onto the screen. Behind you, you can add one to two optional back-surround speakers, which integrate with the front and side-surround speakers to complete the illusion of a 360-degree sound field. An optional subwoofer delivers thunderous bass.

Household Penetration
All told, the percentage of U.S. households owning a CEA-defined home theater system more than doubled during the past eight years to 36 percent in January 2006, up from January 1998’s 16 percent, CEA consumer surveys show.

The sources and quality of surround sound content have likewise grown. A decade ago, a limited amount of video programming was available in basic matrix Dolby Surround on prerecorded VHS videotapes, now-obsolete laserdiscs, select analog TV stations and analog cable systems. Today, matrix-surround soundtracks are also commonly available through these sources and through direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services, digital cable networks, and local digital TV (DTV) stations.

More sophisticated forms of surround sound – delivering 5.1 and 6.1 discrete channels of sound – have also emerged in recent years to deliver more realistic surround sound through such digital video sources as DVD-Video discs, satellite TV, DTV stations and digital cable systems.

Whatever the surround format, the keystone of any home theater system is the TV, and a high-definition TV (HDTV) is the video display of choice for the ultimate video experience. HDTVs deliver crisp, movie-screen-like images through various display technologies, from flat wall-hanging plasma and LCD displays to rear projection TVs using digital light processing (DLP) technology.