Home media room - how to justify having one in your house

It is quite obvious that anyone who has doubts about their immediate financial situation should stay away from major home improvement projects, whatever they might be. For the rest of us, here are a few ideas that should help justify upgrading to a better movie/sports watching experience at home.

1. A lot of people would like to have a larger TV screen. I believe it is a mistake to get the biggest set you can afford and plop it in the focal center of whatever room you use to watch TV all the time. Here is why. At this point in time we have a great discrepancy in the quality of television signals that we feed into our TVs. There is Blu-ray, HD broadcasts, regular DVDs, SD digital broadcasts, regular cable channels, VCR tapes etc. The problem is that although Blu-ray discs will look good on pretty much any size TV screen you have, blowing up the picture of a regular SD cable broadcast would reveal extremely low quality (compared to Blu-ray). The simplest way to deal with that is to avoid watching such sources of the screen that is too large. This, in my opinion, justifies creating a separate media room where you will only watch high-quality content.

2. Human psychology is such that we get used to everything. It is a very simple fact that once you start watching everything on the biggest TV screen you can get very soon this will not feel special to you at all. Imagine if you spent several hours at the movie theater every night watching everything from movies, to nightly news. This would get old very soon. I believe that home movie experience is something that must be cherished and kept as something special. Using a huge TV or a projection screen for all your viewing needs will quickly cheapen this experience. So, the solution is to have a home media room and (also important!) not to use it too much.

3. This is perhaps a minor point, but things like that do add up on the scale of the entire countly. The bigger the screen, the more energy it consumes. If you are watching a news report about energy crises and global warming on a "65 plasma TV you are not a credit to humanity (unless you are strangely interested in Katy Curic's dental work). Limit the use of a bigger screen for special occasions. You will be happy you did (see above).

Architectural speakers (inwall speakers) - pros and cons

If the design you chose for your media room is miles away from the ordinary techno look of today's electronic devices, something you might want to do is conceal the speakers. This is achieved by using so called architectural speakers (or inwall speakers, which sounds a lot less sophisticated somehow). These speakers can be easily recessed in the walls and cabinetry. Sometimes they can even be painted, completing the illusion that the sound is coming from the walls. Architectural speakers are manufactured by some of the leading brands, so techically there is no need to skip on the quality of the sound in your home media room (read below, however). Now, add to this the fact that inwall speakers greatly reduce clutter and you pretty much have the pro side of this argument. How about the cons?

• It is not easy to install architectural speakers. Holes must be made and cords have to be laid down. Once the deed is done you cannot move these speakers. You better be sure that they are exactly where you want them to be.
• In a traditional speaker the enclosure ("the box") is carefully designed to resonate just the right way thereby improving the performance of the device. Architectural speakers have to rely upon the surrounding material of the wall, so the sound is not always ideal.
• Loud sound coming from the inwall speakers can resonate through the walls (and the halls!) of your house. This may even end up in some objects hanging on the wall to rattle or shift.

So, while the manufacturers are trying to find workarounds for these issues, why not use a combined approach, and install some speakers in the wall, while leaving a few in their natural state, so to speak?

ButtKicker home theater subwoofer - audio connection to the action

When a self-respecting (and proud) owner of a home room wants to show off his media room the weapon of choice most usually happens to be in the category of "movies where stuff blows up." Certainly, most modern home theater systems have adequate subwoofers that can shake the floor a bit. But is that going to be enough for you? No buts about it. It won't! You need the very best of what modern ground shaking technology can offer. You need a tremor in the box, an explosion in a can - ButtKicker BKA300 or something comparable. For about $300 this little gadget will reproduce the lowest of the low when it comes to audio frequencies. A wireless design makes it very easy to install in any media room.

See also:
Architectural speakers (inwall speakers) - pros and cons

10 most common home theater mistakes

A little do's and don'ts tutotial:

Media Room Must Have's

• Large screen TV. The size depends on the room. There is a tendency to use projection systems, but I personally do not like the quality. Plus, using a projection system significantly reduces your lighting options for the media room. Besides, there is additional maintenance involved - you have to replace those bulbs from time to time! Plasma TVs generally are considered a better choice for home theaters, because they tend to provide better blacks, but modern LCDs are catching up very successfully. Also, try to get a 1080p model. You will not regret it later.
• Comfortable media room furniture. Armchairs, love seats - what have you. I implore you not to use the seats that emulate as closely as possible the seats you encounter at the movie theaters. Why? Unless you can obtain the seats from a demolished theater which somehow have a great sentimental value, stick with what's most confortable!
• A refrigerator. Yep. No matter how close the kitchen is you can always have a little fridge to keep your drinks cool. Just make sure you don't get a noisy one. You can even turn it off for the duration of the movie, if you wish.
• A surround sound system. A home media room simply would not make sense without one. The have come down in price a lot!
• A Blu Ray player capable of streaming Netflux, Hulu Plus etc. Getting cheaper all the time!

That's all folks! What I mean to say is that you don't have to overspend to have a nice home theater experience. You can certainly have a basic setup for under 5 thousand dollars. You can even go lower than that. All it takes is finding a spare room.

The 1 million dollar media room

1 million dollar media room:

Home media room: storage idea

In my opinion, the very concept of a home media room (home theater room) derived from the time-hallowed tradition of having a whole room in the house dedicated to books, that is having a home library. Such a room necessarily demanded some space assigned where you can enjoy the books: with desks, armchairs and other kinds of comfortable seating solutions. Now, remember that books are properly considered to be media, just as movies and music (which you should know if you ever used media rate to send books or CDs by USPS). It is natural then to also have special storage in your media room to house your collections of CDs and DVDs. There is a small complication, however.

Firstly, DVD and CD covers are usually quite colorful, much more so than book covers. This creates unwanted distraction even when the light in the media room is turned off. Also, because DVDs and CDs generally do not differ much in terms of their size this results in rather monotonous looking shelves of boxes, a problem hardly alleviated by the presense of boxed sets.

Secondly, a decent home theater requires good accustics. Numerous plastic boxes are not likely to achieve this.

What's the solution? It seems as if you really want to have enclosed shelving. If possible, these storage units should also have additional padding, to prevent the sound from getting trapped the room, causing dinny sounds and undesited reverb.