TVs & Home Theater: Expert Guides and Resources

It's time to cut the cord (the cable cord, that is). The world of online streaming is positively teeming with services that offer everything from anime (see Crunchyroll) to zombies (see Shudder). However, outside of the standard TV and movie fare that you find on the likes of Netflix and Hulu, what most of us really want is stuff to keep our kids entertained, our sports cravings satisfied, and our thirst for news quenched.

USB is a serial bus standard that allows you to connect peripheral devices to a PC. In a home theater, USB can be found on the back of many computer-like source devices, such as MP3 servers and PVRs. Following are some details on USB connections and devices: Most printers, external modems, handheld computers, portable MP3 players, and other PC peripheral devices connect to PCs via USB.

Audio Transcript To mount your flat screen TV and make sure it stays on the wall, you have to have to pick the right mounting kit for the job. Most are anchored into wood studs, but many include special anchors for concrete, drywall, metal studs and so on. Just remember, your anchors need to hold 5 times the weight of what you're putting on the mount.

Audio Transcript Before you can watch anything on your HDTV, you need to get a TV signal into your television. The most common way is via an antenna or cable box. Since most over the air television stations broadcast in HD signal, you can get high definition versions of most network shows using a good old fashion, rabbit ear antenna — if you live in a city or metropolitan area.

Audio Transcript Systems are different, but here are the general steps to connect your HDTV to your home theater or sound system. First, check your HDTV unit's input/output ports. Usually at the side or in back. Input jacks receive signals, output jacks send signals from your HDTV to your system. Now, check your audio amplifiers input/output ports, they're usually in back.

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the latest and greatest digital audio/video cable connection and can give you great HDTV resolution. Besides HDTVs, HDMI is being included in a variety of devices these days, including DVD players, cable and satellite set-top boxes, Media Center Edition PCs, and the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console.

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 deck, this is probably a good idea. Also, if your band wants to convert a demo tape into MP3 format for posting on the Web, you can reverse the hookup — that is, run the sound out from your stereo into the microphone jack of your computer.

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. The purpose of the center speaker is to provide highly localized speaker information; it's coming from the center of the screen. There's a high correlation between what you see on the screen and where the sound comes from.