7 Steps Of A Dedicated Home Theater

There are countless ways and devices to enjoy entertainment these days. From bringing your favorite drama series in your family room with your massive 4K TV to catching a few minutes of that next episode by streaming Netflix from your mobile device – there is a wealth of options to choose from to get you daily dose of entertainment.

What if there was a way to even further enhance your entertainment experience? How much better would it be to experience the big game as if you were actually there, with life-size action and impeccable quality?  What if you could emulate a true cinema-like audio visual experience to enjoy the hottest action and drama movies?

That is exactly what a state-of-the-art dedicated home theater will allow you to experience. The best part is, you have full control as to whether your new additions are top-of-the-line, million-dollar investments or simply transforming an existing room into something great with a modest budget. The choice is all up to you!

Here are 7 of our recommended steps to prepare for your very own dedicated home theater.

Step 1 – Design Your Dream Room

Before you do anything, its first time to plan. In this step, you need to weigh the pros and cons of each installation type, determine your budget and how that will affect some of your decisions. This way, you can come up with a realistic gameplan. While it’s possible for you to complete your dream theater all by yourself, we recommend that you work with an AV expert like Port City if you can to ensure that you don’t miss any important steps along the way. If you’re thinking about a new construction project, the most important thing is to plan with your builder from the very beginning, just like you would with any expert. However, if your plan is more along the lines of remodelling an existing room like an extra bedroom, basement, or attic, you will want to determine the general layout to figure out if any structural adjustments may be necessary.

Step 2 – Pre-wire for Centralized Equipment

To ensure your home theater installation goes as smoothly as possible, ensure that the final product is clean with no exposed cables showing anywhere. Your theater should also should be planned for all of those non-visible wires be centralized in one location for easy access and maintenance if necessary. This clean design also allows a smooth implementation of your theater’s components such as receivers, projectors, speakers, lighting, and whatever else your theater may have.

Step 3 – Choose Right Projector and Projection Screen

Another widely important thing to take into account when building your home theater is that your picture quality is sharp and in high definition. The last thing you want after making substantial investments into your home theater is fuzzy and grainy screen quality. The two pieces of equipment that will be responsible for this are the projector and projector screen. At one point, screen sizes could only be made so large before the picture resolution began to suffer from being overextended. Luckily for you, advancements in screen technology have been making leaps and bounds recently. Other important things to take into account when thinking about your screen quality are how the natural light coming into the room may need to be adjusted or how the room’s dimensions will affect the projector placement and distance from the screen.

Step 4 – Seating: Comfort vs. Function

Whether you’re all cozied up watching our favorite romcom or tense at the edge of your seat enjoying the latest action movie, your seating a definitely a crucial part of your movie-watching experience. And if you want to, you can even outdo your local movie theater in this department. From casual sofa arrangements to leather recliners to high-tech seating with vibrational technology, you can really go all-out while customizing your seating, while also ensuring to keep a perfect balance between comfort and function.

Step 5 – Acoustics and Speaker Selection

Besides video, audio is another important aspect of the theater experience to take into account. This feature is something you don’t want to skimp out on. For specifics, a 5.1 Surround Sound System can do fine for smaller rooms while for larger rooms you might need to look into something more akin to 7.1 or even 7.2. To match your speakers, you need to make sure your receiver/amplifier equipment is high-quality and powerful enough to keep up with the performance you expect. Also be sure to take the acoustics of your theater room into account; for optimal performance, at least half of your room should be covered in sound-absorption material such as a carpet or acoustic panels.

Step 6 – Personalized Theme Decor

To truly make a memorable media room, you’ll want to consider a cohesive theme that really brings everything together. You’ve probably seen a few themes others have gone for with their media rooms – Star Wars themes or Art Deco aesthetics. Choosing the theme for your media room is a fun way to make the media room truly your own. You can customize as much or as little as you’d like, from custom cabinetry to special carpeting; it’s all about what you want for your theater. Just keep in mind that you don’t overdo things to impact the functionality and purpose of the room.

Step 7 – Program Media Controls

Nothing is better than to be able to sit down in your plush new theater and, with the touch of a button, start the movie and adjust the lighting and volume accordingly to your preferences.  Typically, well-thought out dedicated home theaters will have some level of automated control programming that will make the experience much more seamless. An automation system like Crestron would be able to automate the entire audio-video sequence and tie in the perfecting lighting for the desired mood. Pre-programmed remotes can also be implemented to simplify things a little more for even the most non-technologically inclined family member.

Dedicated home theaters are truly a delight to have. If you’re considering building or remodeling to make your very own media center, our highly-trained team at Port City would love to help.

Contact Port City today for a free consultation.