Another thank you to Shawn from Graytek for this guest blog post and the excellent information he has provided on planning for your home theatre! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out his first guest post: 3 Expert Tips to Plan Your Smart Home.
Home theatre rooms, whether they are a dedicated space, or a system in your family room are a great way to entertain guests, host events or just get the family together. There is so much out there in terms of brands, price points and approaches to creating a theatre room.
One of the top questions we get is: Projector or a large flat panel display?
Projectors are going to give you the biggest image possible, and with a good screen can also give you an amazing picture that will rival any flat panel TV. What you want to consider is ambient light, and if you are going to be using your theatre with a lot of light in the room. If you have big windows and a lot of natural light, go flat panel TV, natural light will wash out a home cinema projectors image a lot more than a flat panel TV, affecting image brightness, colour accuracy and contrast. If you have controlled light, and plan on viewing movies with some lights on, you can still go with a projector, provided it has a decent lumen rating (brightness).
The 3 other main items to consider when building and budgeting for a home theatre room are:
1. Performance: Consider both great picture and equally as important, great sound quality. You need both for the movie to be impactful, not one over the other.
2. Comfort: Consider good seating, something that doesn’t exhaust you after 15 min, seating that can accommodate a drink or food tray. Factor in room temperature and climate control for this room.
3. Ease of use: One held remote control to operate the theatre with easy to read buttons and back lit buttons.
If you haven’t considered and/or budgeted for these 3 items, chances are your theatre won’t be used much.
Typically, when I hear about a theatre never being used, or disappointment on how it turned out, it’s always because one or more of these items were not put into consideration. No one wants to sit in a room that gets to stuffy and hot. No one wants to sit on uncomfortable seating that may be positioned wrong in the room. No one wants to juggle 6 different remotes, remember all the steps that need to be taken just to watch a movie!
A lot of people will focus on the performance aspect and only budget for that, which is a major part of the Theatre experience as a whole, but not the only item that needs to be considered. Considering all 3 main factors will mean your theatre experience will be much more enjoyable!
