Using Curtains and Draperies in Your Home Decor
Curtains and draperies are chameleons. They work hard at blocking light and sound, heat and cold. They're also extraordinarily decorative and add enormous personality to a room. [more…]
How to Connect an HDTV to Your Sound System or Home Theater
Hook up your HDTV to your sound system speakers. Connecting your HDTV television, whether it’s plasma or LCD, to your home theater is easy with this DIY video. The step-by-step instructions show you which [more…]
How to Mount a Flat-Screen TV to the Wall
This video guides you on how high to mount your television and demonstrates how to insert a wall mount that securely holds your LCD or plasma HDTV — no matter how many big your screen. [more…]Considering Surround-Sound for Your HDTV System
The profusion of surround-sound standards is a confusing area in the audio arena. Surround sound is multichannel audio designed to produce spatial audio cues [more…]
How to Calibrate Your HDTV
Calibrating your HDTV gives you the best picture, whether you have an LCD or plasma television. No need for a professional calibration; you can do it yourself. Follow step-by-step instructions in this [more…]
How to Position Home Theater Surround-Sound Speakers
Hooking up surround-sound speakers is step one to setting up a home theater. Knowing where to position your surround-sound speakers — subwoofers and tweeters, wireless or not — makes a huge difference [more…]HDMI Digital Video Home Theater Connections
HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the latest and greatest digital audio/video cable connection and can give you great HDTV resolution. Besides HDTVs, [more…]
Connecting your PC to Your HDTV
You can use your PC as a DVR on HDTV. Hooking up the correct cables to ports from computer to television creates a digital video recorder. This video tutorial provides steps for enabling a PC-based DVD [more…]
How to Connect an Antenna or Cable to Your HDTV
Connecting an antenna or cable to your HDTV is a step-by-step process. Whether your HD television is LCD or plasma, hooking up cable or an antenna is easier with this tutorial’s instructions. [more…]Buying a DTV Digital-to-Analog Converter Box
If you have an older TV — one manufactured before March 1, 2007 — in order to pick up over-the-air digital television (DTV) signals, you'll need to purchase and install a digital-to-analog converter box [more…]
How to Connect a Game Console to an HDTV
Connecting your console to your HDTV is something any gamer can do. Whatever your console — Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation, Nintendo Wii — this video shows how to hook up so you can play on your HDTV [more…]Connecting Your iPod to a Home Stereo
Home stereo systems come in many shapes and sizes, from an audiophile's monster component racks to a kid's itty-bitty boom box. We're not talking about alarm-clock radios, but stereos with speakers that [more…]
Hooking Up Your Stereo to Your PC or Laptop
If you're turning a computer into a music machine, why not just do the obvious: Hook it up to the stereo? If you want to make audiotapes of your MP3s (or even streaming audio concerts) for your car's tape [more…]
Holiday Decorating: Valentine's Day Romance
You don't have to go wild to spice things up for Valentine's Day — romantic decorating doesn't always come packaged in satin sheets and fire-red velvet pillows. No matter what your everyday decorating [more…]
Doing It Yourself versus Hiring the Home Theater Pros
You can handle a lot of home theater setup all by yourself. However, if you want it done right, you may want to bring in some experts to complement your work. If you don't have the right electrical outlets [more…]
Digital TV Basics
DTV stands for digital television, and starting on February 17, 2009, it will be the only television signal on the airwaves. Although the switch to all-digital TV marks an important shift in the way television [more…]
Tuning In to Local HDTV Broadcasts
If the thought of paying for cable or satellite TV service hurts your head, consider free over-the-air (OTA) HDTV. Nearly every household in America can tune into at least one HDTV station [more…]
Entering the World of HDTV
Since the transition to color TV in the 1950s and '60s, nothing has had as much impact on the TV world as HDTV (high-definition TV) and digital TV. That's right, TV is going digital, following in the footsteps [more…]
Holiday Decorating with Tablescapes
Tablescapes are arrangements of items gathered in a grouping on top of a table. They're sometimes called tabletop arrangements. Typically, you can use anything as a prop for a great miniarrangement — for [more…]
Why Are We Switching to Digital Television Signals?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided that, on February 17, 2009, all full-power TV stations must cease broadcasting on their current analog channels and switch completely over to digital [more…]
Surrounding Yourself with Sound in Your Home Theater
Unless you plan on installing a 360-degree Cinema-in-the-Round screen in your home, just like you'd see at Disney World, video plays a rather confined [more…]
Placing Surround Speakers
No matter what the setup of your speakers for surround sound — whether you have two, three, four, or more side and back speakers — your surround speakers play a fundamentally different role than your front [more…]
HDTV Insights: Using a PC for Blu-ray or High-Definition DVD
PC manufacturers are starting to equip their high-end PCs with Blu-ray disc drives. This makes a lot of sense simply because high-definition DVD formats can hold a lot more data than standard DVDs can [more…]
Recording TV Shows with Windows XP Media Center PC
Controlling Live TV is a great thing. When the phone rings (darn those telemarketers) or the dog has to go out, pausing your favorite program seems like a life saver. But sometimes you want to record entire [more…]
Transitioning to Over-the-Air Digital Television Signals
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the deadline for switching over to digital television broadcasts is February 17, 2009. But there's no reason not to switch now. Most of your favorite [more…]
