Home Theater Components - Receivers, Displays, and Projectors

If you want to build a home theater system or go out to purchase one, it will pay to know the components that go into the system. We can group the components into three main headings:

1. Displays
2. Players
3. Speakers

Receivers make up a group of their own, because they are the hub that each device gets connected to. Therefore, we'll look at them separately. For the rest, I will explain the devices under each category.

The AV (Audio Video) receiver is the main device that you will use to connect all of your home theater components. Therefore, it is important to go for a high-end, more sophisticated device in order to prevent signal losses by the receiver and to be prepared for more connections in the future.

Currently, it is important to have as many digital connections on the AV receiver as possible. If you have or plan to have a flat TV or a digital display in your home theater setup, do not go for any AV receiver which does not have HDMI output and input. In addition, consider TOSLINK, S/PDIF audio connections as “mandatory” and do not settle for less.

Plus, to take advantage of the various sound effects in DVDs, High Definition content and games, your receiver needs to have Dolby and DTS technologies. Dolby Digital is the most common feature in AV receivers, but there are already new standards such as Dolby Digital EX, DTS ES, TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Thinking ahead, go for a receiver that has a TrueHD and/or DTS-HD feature.

There are also Digital Signal Processing (DSP) effects that simulate the sound heard in many places such as stadiums, halls, arenas and operas. These effects are produced by the DSP chip, by applying equalization effects, echoes and balance changes.

Now, we'll turn our attention to the various types of TVs available for home theaters:

• Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TVs
• Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) TVs
• Plasma TVs
• Light Emitting Diode (LED) TVs
• Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) TVs

We will go for a more detailed description of each of these home theater components, including the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

This technology dates back to World War II, the invention of the RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging), where there is a tube that is charged in positive and negative on each side with an electron gun at the back. The gun fires electrons, the tube changes the route of the electrons by its positive and negative charges, and the electrons emit light when they hit the fluorescent screen. For monochrome screens, the light emitted is different shades of gray. For color screens, there are three electron guns for red, green and blue, which in combination form the other colors.

With wide screen shows (the 16:9 ratio) increasing in number, CRT displays are beginning to lose their popularity because there is a large blank area on the left unused on the screen. Add this to the fact that the human eye can handle a wider horizontal angle than a vertical one, the 16:9 ratio is more suitable for viewing. On the other hand, CRT manufacturing does not allow the screen to be wide. The falling prices of LCD TVs has brought CRT TVs to their knees.

CRT TVs are offered at a fraction of the purchasing price of LCD and Plasma TVs, and therefore still have a higher selling rate. But note that CRT TVs cannot process digital signals – they can only process analog ones.

Rear-projection TVs also belong to this category.

Continue to the next page where we discuss LCD, plasma, and LED TVs.