Home Theater

Saving Shows to DVD with Windows XP Media Center PC

One thing that Media Center is missing is a module that lets you create, or burn, your own DVDs. Why would you want to create your own DVDs? Well, here are a few reasons: [more…]

Placing Your Center, Left, and Right Speakers

An audio or home theater system generally includes the center channel speaker, the left and right front speakers, the surround channel speakers, and the subwoofer. [more…]

Troubleshooting TiVo Sound Problems

When TiVo's on track, it's a dream machine, automatically trimming away television's nightmares, leaving only the pleasant and enjoyable. Underneath its magic, however, TiVo is, quite simply, a computer [more…]

Plugging into a Whole-Home Network

For most folks, the installation of whole-home wiring isn't something that they want to do as a casual project. If you don't have a whole home wiring system in place and can't put one in, don't freak out [more…]

Choosing and Installing a New Sound Card

Mac computers include built-in sound capability that can knock your socks off! Therefore, Mac users can skip this article. For PC users, the sound card is the core of your computer's audio power. The sound [more…]

Your HDTV: Projecting a Good Image

When most people think of HDTV, they think of big screens — specifically, projection TV systems. Projection TVs offer the most bang for the buck in the HDTV world [more…]

Clearing the Static on HDTV Types

When you're trying to pick out the right HDTV for your needs, the available products break down into three major product groups distinguished from each other by their display technology and cabinet type [more…]

Adding Subwoofers in the Mix

Most subwoofers have floor-based enclosures with active speaker systems (that is, with built-in amplifiers) for driving the low bass frequency ranges. Your biggest decision when choosing subwoofers for [more…]

Mounting a Thin TV Display in Your Home Theater

One of the bigger advances in TV displays in recent years has been the depth of the units — displays are getting thinner and thinner. Instead of just plunking your new display on top of a table, consider [more…]

Home Theater Basics: What's "Electronic Content?"

Grabbing music and video off the Internet probably isn't a new topic for you. But when you get right down to it, knowing a few high-level concepts about [more…]

Integrating PC-Based Gaming into Your Home Theater

Although most people think of console gaming as something you do in the living room (or home theater room) and PC gaming as something you do in the home office or at a desk somewhere, in fact PC-based [more…]

HDTV Insights: Creating Virtual Surround Sound

You need at least 5 speakers for real surround sound in a viewing room, but your brain can think you're surrounded by speakers when you aren't.

For example, the folks at Dolby Labs have a couple of systems [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…]

Creating MP3 Files from Your Own CDs

Creating an MP3 file from your own CD is a two-step process: ripping and encoding. [more…]

Feeding Video into Your Home Theater

You can get movies (and TV shows and other video content) into your home theater system in many ways — such as plugging into a cable or satellite TV system. For most folks, however, watching a movie means [more…]

Choosing a Computer for Home Audio

Because any new desktop computer or laptop can play music, you don't need to worry too much about what you get. In general, get the best one you can afford. However, keep in mind that with all the technological [more…]

Understanding How Speaker Drivers Work

Audio speakers are relatively simple devices. Basically, you have an enclosure (typically a box) into which speaker drivers are attached. The drivers are the round elements that many people call the actual [more…]

Introducing High-End Home Theater

The idea that you can move up to the high end when you're buying components and setting up a home theater may see a little vague to you. Everyone's got his or her own definition of [more…]

Considering Projection HDTV Design

Projection HDTVs have two distinct formats: [more…]

Understanding the Different Pole Positions of Speakers

Although you'll most often find two-way (woofer and tweeter) and three-way (woofer, tweeter, and midrange driver) speakers on the market, you'll also run into speakers with more than one set of speaker [more…]

Changing TiVo's Phone Number and Dialing Options

TiVo must phone its headquarters every day or so to grab your latest show listings. It also needs to phone its headquarters when you first set it up in your home. Unlike a teenager, TiVo doesn't need its [more…]

A Battle in the Home Theater: High Definition DVD Formats

In February 2008, Blu-ray emerged as the winner in the high-definition DVD format war, when rival Toshiba gave up on its HD DVD format. This article offers previous coverage on the beginnings of the format [more…]

Picking Out — and Pricing — Home Theater Equipment

Home theater is truly for everyone — regardless of the size of your house or apartment, your economic wealth, or your taste in movies. And home theater probably means something different to everyone. It's [more…]

Setting Parental Controls in TiVo

When television entered the house in the late 1940s, networks wouldn't consider running a show unless it was appropriate for the entire family. In today's world of cable and satellite programming, that's [more…]