Home Theatre

"Hi-Fi for the eyes and ears."

It all started when I set out to buy a CD player and a receiver. I was quite proud of my new toys, which included a Dolby Pro-logic capable receiver. This, in conjunction with my Hi-Fi VCR and a few extra speakers I had lying around would make for some pretty fine movie viewing -- or so I thought.

I made the fatal mistake of telling some co-workers at the time about my new toys. Little did I know these co-workers were big into home theatre. One of them said, "You know Mark... You're not going to really get the benefit of all those speakers and Pro-logic receiver unless you have a laser disc player." I coulda' killed him. But now the gauntlet had been thrown down! I had to meet the challenge set before me.

And so began my real adventure into home theatre. I immediately set about to acquire a reasonably priced laser disc player (realizing full well that this is an oxymoron; there is no such thing as a reasonably priced laser disc player!).

"What is home theatre," you ask? (Egad! Heathens!) For the uninitiated, this might help: in my travels I found a pretty good home theater resource center as well as a more in depth explanation. (Bear in mind that each of these sites want to sell you something and that I am in no way affiliated with them other than as to have found them on the Web. The info about home theatre however, is nonetheless good). I also found someone else's short list of Home Theatre Resources on the Web. Might as well have a look!

My laser disc collection is modest. I tend to only buy movies I've already seen, and then its movies that make particularly good use of surround sound. (Science fiction and Action movies are good examples because there's usually lots of non-dialogue in them, i.e. space ships whizzing by or bullets ricocheting off nearby rocks). Although, I do own more "dramatic" films, too.

At the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000 I made some improvements to my home theatre. I replaced my 20" Philips TV with a Sony 32" WEGA TV (pronounced vay-ga). What a difference! Read about it on my toys with plugs section. I also bought a Pioneer DV-525 DVD player. This is an awesome DVD player for under $300. It plays DVDs very well, and offers a host of features you wouldn't expect to find in a player at this price point. Notably, it has outputs for all manner of inputs that you might have, including component video, which my WEGA accepts. So the picture quality is tremendous.

In July 2001 I added a Sony SVR-2000 (TiVo) to my setup. It has revolutionized the way we watch television. Some might say we watch more TV than we used to. But that's not the case. We watch TV more efficiently now because we are not required to watch programs in the order in which things were recorded as we were with video tape. The TiVo definately qualifies as a toy with plugs.