As any casual TV shopper may know, venturing into your local electronics store's HDTV section can be a bit confusing, to say the least. Unless you keep up with the ever changing technology and terminology of the industry, you risk making a mistake, or worse - wasting money, when the time comes to purchase your new set.

This article by George Ou should help sort things out. He covers the advantages and disadvantages of:

Projection: Pro: price. Con: viewing angle.
Plasma:Pro: resolution, colour, viewing angle. Con: price.
LCD:Pro: picture quality. Con: expensive large size sets.

George also advises, bluntly, against getting suckered into buying so-called high end cables:

Consumers need to get the concept of "monster cables" out of their minds since they DO NOT apply to the digital world. There is zero difference in quality between the cheapest $12 HDMI to DVI cable versus the $100 gold plated "monster cable".

He also makes available some colour gradient graphics and explains how to use them in testing the colour quality of an HDTV.

This is a great piece for anyone in the market for a new HDTV, and it's especially useful for those of us that may be more than a little confused and/or overwhelmed by variations in HDTV technology.

Also see this previous post on HDTV resolutions.

Here's an in depth article on turning an average basement into a slick home theatre room. The author illustrates his plans with CAD drawings while detailing many, many issues to consider, including the differences between LCD and DLP projectors, mounting and image keystoning issues and the secrets of progressive scan DVDs.

One of the more interesting things in this piece is how the author used the hard paper columns that builders use to pour concrete along with some marble paint to create some faux marble columns for $20.

Australian company Avega Systems are developing WiFi speakers that connect to your wireless home network. The speakers, called "Oysters", play digital audio streamed directly from your computer. Listeners can control, browse and select media from their PC through the Oyster's graphical remote control. The speakers will also accept input from a CD/DVD source and wirelessly distribute the audio to the other speakers in the room. The Oysters also will accept iPods or other MP3 players, via USB port, which will, again, trigger the connected speaker to distribute the audio via WiFi.

The speakers feature wireless connectivity (801.11 a/b/g), support for DTS, 5.1 surround as well as MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC and FLAC digital audio formats.

The unit also has 2 S/PDIF optical connectors and USB port for wired connections.

CNET feature on the Oysters with video.
Company FAQ and spec sheet (Both PDFs)

Although the title sounds like an Ebay auction that offers you 10 foot TVs for $2.99, this howto from Projector Central really does deliver a thorough walk through on constructing a projector screen yourself. The article details, in 7 steps, how you can create a 100 inch, 16:9 screen for $98.50.

Here's the criteria they were after, from the article:

It must be cheap. Total budget for all materials to make a 100" diagonal 16:9 screen, including frame, must be less than $100.

It must be simple and quick to assemble. We did not want to make a lifetime hobby out of making a screen. We wanted the materials to be easy to find, and we wanted to put it together in less than two hours of invested labor.

It must be easy to install. We wanted a no muss, no fuss solution with a fixed frame that we could hang on a wall in a matter of minutes.

It must perform!!! We had no delusions that we could invest a hundred bucks and a couple hours labor and come up with a screen that would match the quality of the Stewart screens we use in the projection labs. But how close could we come? That was the challenge. And as you will see below, the results were surprisingly good.

If the cost of the screen is what's been holding you back from buying a projector, perhaps a frugal DIY solution such as this one will be your tipping point.

Article: Make a 100" Screen for under $100

HomeTheaterBlog has documented a recent LCD television wall mounting and has shared the details for anyone looking to undertake the installation on their own. The installer lists the tools you'll need for the hanging and also covers finding an appropriate mount location, stud finding, cabling issues, etc.

About.com also offers some wall mounting instructions, including tips on handling situations where cables aren't (or can't be, for whatever reason) behind the wall:

We can either place an obstacle under the television, which would look odd, or we can cheat the eye with camouflage. I have a friend who had this very problem, and his solution was to create a molding that would be used as a cover for his cables. He painted the molding the same colour of his wall, and when placed over the cables it looks like part of the wall. Granted, it's raised about 2-3 inches off the wall, but it looks very natural. As far as supplies, small strips of wood (a 1x2 for the sides and 1x4 for the face) cut to the length of the TV to the floor should be enough to make such a piece.

Wikihow.com provides a more orderly and straightforward, step-by-step instruction set, if that's more your bag.

Alan Lofft of Axiom Audio has written this informative article on the do's and don'ts of setting up your first home theatre. Topics covered include cabling choices, speaker positioning, video tuning, connection types and a ton more. Here's a television tip, from the article:

Try this simple visual test to determine if you have your video image too bright or contrasty. Look at any white area on the screen during scenes from live TV or a movie. It could be the white shirt or blouse on an actor or TV host. Are you able to see detail within the white areas? If you can't, then you are likely running the brightness too high, which washes out fine detail in bright areas. So lower the brightness and/or contrast. There's a reason why control rooms for TV productions and telecasts are always dimly lit: it's because video images on the monitors look best in a dim or darker room and the greatest range of colors and tones can be displayed.

Alan's website is also packed full of home theatre information and worth checking out.

According to this article at Beststuff.com, room acoustics are the most important factor in making a truly engrossing, quality home theatre system. The author, Norman Varney, says that a high end audio system can be wasted in an acoustically poor environment and that a decent system can sound great under the right acoustic conditions.

From the article:

Don't believe it? While working at the Science and Technology Center for Owens Corning, we built two identical rooms of average home theater size. Both included the same equipment, set-up and furnishings. One room had acoustic treatment in it and the other did not. I ran bio-feedback tests with a couple of dozen engineers playing the same 'Das Boot' clip for them in both rooms. We found that when subjects were in the room that was acoustically treated, their heart rate and blood pressure increased. Acoustics controlled their emotions. They did not understand why it was happening, or even care, but they all wanted it at home. A similar thing happened when I gave a little acoustic seminar for about a dozen teenage boys. In the untreated room they behaved like teenage boys, but in the acoustically treated room, it was like flipping a switch; they were totally focused on the movie, motionless, involved. So you see, it's real, and it's for everyone to enjoy. It's not just for audiophile geeks like me with golden ears.

Now don't get too carried away with improving your home audio experience or you'll soon find yourself dropping nearly $500 on volume knobs and the like.

Article: Room Acoustics Number One Component

Here's an excellent soundproofing discussion over at studio-central.com. The thread begins with the oft recommended carpet and foam wall technique, which, as you'll read, is a total no-no to some - although it's not quite unanimously opposed. The carpet opponents believe carpet and foam to be dangerous potential fire hazards that, lacking any significant mass, have minimal soundproofing ability - which is hotly debated due to many people adding their anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

The discussion offers many links to different, informative soundproofing resources, including this document called Exposing Acoustical Myths (PDF), which really breaks down a lot of the misconceptions people have about the science of soundproofing a space. Another nice resource is this page that details the different drywall, stud and insulation configurations and their corresponding STC ratings. STC ratings are, according to stcratings.com:

...a single-number rating of a material's or an assembly's ability to resist airborne sound transfer at the frequencies 125-4000 Hz. In general, a higher STC rating blocks more noise from transmitting through a partition.

So, the higher STC the better. Another site worth checking out is Acoustics.com. They've made available an Acoustics 101 overview page, as well as handy project design resources that give detailed tips on designing all sorts of different types of rooms, including home theatres.

If you're renovating and considering putting in a home theatre, you may want to think about soundproofing the area. A quality soundproofing job will both prevent outside noises from entering your listening room/theatre and, conversely, give you the freedom to listen to whatever you like without having to disturb your house mates. Here's a drywall option, called QuietRock, that claims to be able to deliver that level of soundproofing. From the site:

• A single layer of QR-530 is equivalent to 8 layers of standard drywall (acoustically)
• QR-525 requires no power saw
• QR-545 is the only THX Certified soundproofing solution in the world
• 10x more reliable than resilient channel with no resilient channel liability risks
• Use like standard drywall (installs without special training)
• Fire rated. Environmentally friendly. Lab tested. Available in X, anti-mold, greenboard, blueboard, high impact and others

Installation video from the website available here (direct link to wmv video).

Wow. Here's another example of an amazing home theatre room, created by someone who obviously had a vision of what they wanted, and saw it through to completion. It's probably safe to say that the homeowner enjoys his cinema, no? The homeowner, Steve Jenkins, has posted galleries of the entire construction job, from sketch to finished room. Granted, it's definitely not the most subtle home theatre room in the world, but what a cool in-home movie experience it must create. It certainly looks like it would be easy to forget that you're still at home while enjoying your favourite Michael Douglas film.

This movie buff certainly takes his home theatre seriously. This is one of the more grandiose home theatres on the web (in recent memory, anyway). The owner obviously aimed for a true theatre experience, and given what must have been a sizable budget to play with, it's safe to say that he's achieved his goal.

Here's a nice touch, from the site:

One of the things I wanted to do is to provide a true cinema experience for movie showing parties. So I have three DVD players. One is used to show the theater intro (Welcome to the Regency Theater, etc.) which was done by Digital Forge, the other DVD player is used to show a movie trailer as a preview of an upcoming movie, and then the third DVD player shows a DVD if we're playing a DVD that night (alternatively, we show movies on the JVC 400 D-VHS player).

Like the Scarface poster before it, this Reservoir Dogs poster from L.A. Pop Art is created using the entire, handwritten (and legible) script. Add it to your movie poster collection in your home theatre, or give it as a gift to the Reservoir Dogs fan in your life. We purchased the Scarface poster and had it plaque-mounted as a gift for a serious Scarface fan in our family and it proved to be quite the hit. Sometimes it's fun just searching for the numerous obscenities scattered throughout the thousands of words...

ProjectorCentral has a large projector database with an extensive criteria filter that enables you to find the projector that works best in your space. If you're planning a home theatre setup, you'll want to know which projectors will work with your available real estate. Feed the site the distance the projector will be from the wall as well as the desired image size and you'll receive a list of suitable units. There is a plethora of other filtering options available too; price, brightness, HDTV compatibility, PC card reader and so forth. Also worth checking out is the site's top 20 overall projectors.

Engadget has posted a useful step-by-step howto on building your own Tivo-like home theatre PC (HTPC) using MythTV. They list each piece of hardware they used on the way to a successful, smooth install. From the site:

The total for the base system is $988. The addition of the TV tuners brings the grand total to $1126.

This price is probably beatable if you opt for a lower end processor, which will save you some money and really wont cost too much performance-wise provided the tuner cards you choose do hardware encoding. Tuner based encoding takes the vast majority of processing load off of the CPU. That being said, faster is always better when it comes to CPUs, generally speaking, so too severe a drop in clock speed will hamper menu navigation and other features which will detract from the snappy, slick user interface that you want in a PVR. If you're not too Linux savvy and aren't ready to do a manual install, a great way to set up MythTV on a PC is by using KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth is available on a downloadable, bootable CD that aims to make the MythTV installation as straightforward, user-friendly and painless as possible. If your system meets the hardware requirements, the CD will install MythTV onto your system while prompting you for only a minimal amount of configuration questions. If you encounter problems along the way, the KnoppMyth forum is invaluable. The site's admin, Cecil, not only tirelessly develops KnoppMyth, but also personally answers an unbelievable amount of questions on the forum, which, by the way, is packed full of information on getting up and running with MythTV - useful no matter what your method of installation.

If you're in the market for an HDTV, check out CNET's response to reader questions regarding HDTV, and specifically 1080i vs 1080p, source importance, price/value, and some gotchas:

Those of you thinking of running your PC through a 1080p set should be aware that you may not necessarily get to use all that extra resolution--even if you have the right high-end graphics card. For instance, the Sharp set we tested allows you to max out at only 1,280x1,024 resolution while the less-expensive Westinghouse LVM-37W1, along with Samsung's 1080p RPTVs and one series of high-end sets from Mitsubishi, accept true 1,920x1,080 resolution from a PC.

Any Scarface fan on your list would be a happy camper after receiving this incredibly creative piece on Christmas morning. Decorate your basement or home theatre with a poster made using the entire 300 page hand-written script from the 1983 Pacino classic.

So this guy combines an overhead projector and LCD projector panel, throws in a screen and for under $175, he's watching sweet, sweet big screen projected video. See also: Tom's Hardware version.