March 07, 2003
My Home Theater
The Story
I've always been interested in things that light up and buzz. I would have to say that if it weren't for a certain friend of mine, I might not have the home theater that I do, and be this far into debt. He had all the toys that would make a grown technophile drool. He had secured funding for a very impressive video editing/computer setup through a friend of his, for various projects. I grew a fondness for big screens when he acquired a second hand CRT projector. I remember watching a demo tape for Alias (3d graphics software for the SGI) on his 100+ inch screen/bedsheet tacked to the wall and sitting in awe.
Skipping 8 years ahead, I started to have money to dabble in such things myself. After upgrading my speakers to Klipsch 5.1 bookshelf speakers and a Mitsubishi 51 inch television I felt I was set. Shortly after, my brother (who had more money than me) decided to out do the group, and was introduced to Audio Den. This is the local high end audio/video store, where many countless thousands of dollars have disappeared, never to be seen again. After dropping about 5 grand on a pair of B&W floorstanding speakers and Adcom stereo rack equipment, the line was drawn in the sand.
Jumping to present day, I've gone whole hog into doing a home theater correctly. I still don't have a large and correctly dimensioned room as I don't have a house of my own yet. I've gone with a Mitsubishi X250 front projection unit, which does 1024x768 native resolution, and supports HDTV and anamorphic dvd scaling. I've gone with the B&W CDM NT series speakers for my fronts, and I'm using the old Klipsch fronts I had, to handle the rear surround channels. I'm also using a Yamaha subwoofer, although it's not needed very much with the new floorstanding fronts. I setup a Niles IR repeating system that takes remote control signals from the various rooms in the house, and controls the stereo and video output from there. My most recent addition, is my Philips Pronto touchscreen remote control which controls everything and let me build a custom graphics interface pieced together from the user community that this remote has.
Below are pictures of my current setup, click on any of them to view a larger version, or detailed information on that product.
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Equipment list:
|  Da-Lite 80 inch high gain portable screen |  Yamaha RX-V1000 receiver/amp |  RCA DTC-100 HDTV receiver |
 Sony CDP-CX235 200 CD changer |  Sony DVP-CX860 300 Disc DVD/CD changer |
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|  Philips Pronto TSU2000 |
 Sony VHS VCR |  Niles IR repeating system |
