Chapter 8: Setting Up Your HT

We're in Chap. 8 but all we’ve got is our HT equipment. Until we set it up in a room we don’t have Home Theater. Here’s what we have to do, all covered in this chapter:

·      Choose the HT location.

·      Control the lighting.

·      Arrange the furniture and equipment.

·      Connect the equipment.

·      Adjust the picture and sound levels.

Choosing the HT Location

If you have a choice of rooms for your HT, it’s probably between the den just off the kitchen and another room farther away, such as one in the basement. If your house is really big maybe it has a media room designed just for HT.

The main problem with the typical den is that it’s a multipurpose room with lots of light and maybe a fireplace right where you want to put the TV. It may not even be an enclosed space, which makes properly locating the surround speakers difficult. And the family may object to your tossing out the sectional in favor of seating that’s right in front of the TV.

One possibility, if you can afford it, is to just put an inexpensive TV in the den for TV watching and playing video games. Then you’re free to locate the real HT system somewhere else where you can control the lighting and the furniture placement.

The room doesn’t need to be large. My media room is 21 by 21, but all the equipment, including the surrounds, is in a 13 by 13 area. That’s because I want the couch close to the TV, as explained in Chap. 2, and because the surrounds need to be reasonably close to the seating position or else the receiver’s timing will be thrown off. As a bonus, there’s a nice space behind the couch that’s perfect for kids’ toys, a home computer, or a piano.

If you must use the den or some other equally awkward space, here are the toughest problems you’ll encounter, along with possible solutions:

·      Fireplace in the middle of the only wall where the TV can go. You might consider sealing up the fireplace and sheet-rocking it over, especially if you never use it or have some other fireplaces in the house. (Helps reduce heating losses, too.) Or, the TV could go in front of the fireplace, although may look ugly with the TV that far into the room. You may have no choice but to put the TV on another wall.

·      Too much light from other rooms, such as the kitchen, or from outside. The outside light problem can be managed easily with blackout drapes. Or, just watch at night. The light from other rooms is more difficult to deal with if it shines directly onto the TV screen. Maybe you can encourage family members to use only indirect lighting when you’re watching a movie, or maybe you can put the TV on another wall.

·      No walls for the surround speakers. This one’s easy: Put them on stands. If you’re worried about kids knocking them over, screw the stands to the floor, put an end table next to them, or just get stands that are very heavy. Some models allow you fill the upright tubes with sand.

·      Competition for the TV. If it’s HT competition—others want to watch a different movie—you’ll have to come up with your own solution. If it’s anything else (ordinary TV shows or video games), just put another TV somewhere else.

·      Poor seating. In some rooms there’s just no way to put the seating in front of the TV, which means both poor viewing, especially on a rear-projection TV, and poor surround sound. The answer might some relatively light chairs that you can move around as needed.

Looking over this list, you might decide that the den isn’t going to work after all and you’re going to the basement. This might give you a chance to design the perfect room, which would look like this:

·      No windows anywhere, so you can control the lighting totally.

·      Good sound insulation from the rest of the house.

·      Completely enclosed space with side walls close enough for the surrounds. Say, about 15 - 20 feet apart.

·      Access to the back of the equipment, either from another room via a hinged panel or a swing-out equipment rack.

·      A way to mount a projector on the ceiling, in case you want to go that route.

·      Tiered seating, if you’re expecting a crowd.

¤ www.htexplained.com/more/htroom.htm

Controlling the Lighting

The quality of the TV picture is greatly affected by glare on the screen, by the level of light in the room, and by the color of the light in the room. Ideally, you want to control all three.

We already talked about the glare problem. You want to eliminate light from outside the HT room, and restrict light in the room so it doesn’t shine on the screen.

If you have a front-projection TV, you want the room to be completely dark, like a movie theater. With the other TV types you do need some ambient light to prevent eyestrain, but none of it should reflect off of the screen. It’s best to put it behind the TV so it reflects onto the wall.

If you have a choice, paint the wall behind the TV medium gray. Ideally, you want it to match a so-called “18% Gray Card” used by photographers to set exposure. Most camera stores sell such cards (the Kodak part number is R-27) for $10 to $15 or so. Take one to a paint store and match it as closely as you can. (If you’re an Ansel Adams fan, you’ll be interested to know that this is the same Zone V paint that Adams was rumored to have sprayed on the rocks at Yosemite.)

The room light should be no more than 10% as bright as the light coming from the TV screen, although it’s tough to know just how much light that is. If you can read by the light, it’s too bright.

The color of the light should be daylight (bluish white). Light is measured in terms of color temperature, and what you want is 6500K. You can get a bulb of this temperature and just mount it in a fixture behind the TV so it shines on the (ideally, 18% gray) wall. One choice is a 24” 20-watt 6500K F20T12/D fluorescent bulb. If the fixture has a cover see if you can get away with leaving it off so it doesn’t affect the color temperature. If you’re having trouble finding the right bulb, check out an aquarium store. (Fish like daylight, too.)

Or, if you don’t mind paying a bit more, you can get the Ideal-Lume, specially designed for HTs from www.ideal-lume.com, for $45.

¤ www.htexplained.com/more/light.htm

Arranging the Furniture and Equipment

If you’re free to arrange things anyway you want, here are some guidelines:

·      The seating should be squarely in front of the TV and not too far away. As I explained in Chap. 2, the distance from the viewer’s eyes should be at most 3 times the diagonal for an analog TV, and 2 times for an HD-ready TV. For example, for a 65” HD-ready TV the distance would be around 10 ft.

·      If you need seating for two or three, you can use a couch. If you need more seating, though, you want chairs that are narrower so that everyone can be as close to the middle as possible. Otherwise, the image may be poor (especially from a rear-projection TV) and the surround sound will be out of balance. You can fit four reclining theater chairs in the same space as a typical couch.

·      If you want seating for more than 4, a front-projection system is best because you can hang the projector from the ceiling, use a big screen, and have two (or more) rows of seats with the back rows elevated, stadium style.

·      There are only a few cables going from the receiver to the TV (possibly only one, a component-video cable), so you have some flexibility in where you put the equipment. It can go next to the TV or on a side wall. The video cables can be up to 25 or 30 feet in length if they have to be. Speaker-cable length isn’t a problem either.

·      Put the center-front speaker as close to the middle of the screen as you can get it and even with the front of the screen. Usually, it goes on top of the TV. For a front-projection system, get an acoustically-transparent screen and put the center-front speaker behind it.

·      Put the left- and right-front speakers on the sides of the TV with their front just a bit in front of the center speaker. If you’ll be watching mostly alone or with one other person who you sit close to, angle the front speakers slightly towards the middle of the couch. High frequencies need a direct path to your ears, so don’t put the speakers on a low shelf or behind any furniture. About the same height as the center-front speaker is perfect.

·      Put the left and right surrounds above your head and as far back as your ears and point them toward the middle of the room. That is, they go on the sides pointed in, not at the back pointed towards the front. If there are walls where you need them, great. Otherwise, hang them from the ceiling or put them on floor stands. Run the speaker cables to them as best you can.

·      The subwoofer is non-directional and can go anywhere it sounds good and is reasonably close to the seating. Against the side wall is probably fine. If it has a downward firing woofer, put in on a hard surface, not on carpet. If you can’t avoid carpet, put something dense under the woofer such as thick particle board or marble.

The non-TV components need to go on shelves of some sort. Typically, you’ll have at least a receiver, a DVD player, a VCR, and a cable or satellite box. Most of the boxes are around 17” wide, 2” to 8” high, and 10” to 17” deep. You need at least 2” or 3” of additional depth to accommodate the cables, the some additional height on the receiver shelf to allow air flow.

You could put the equipment on built-in adjustable shelves if they’re deep enough, but it will be a pain to access the rear to connect the cables. And, you need to change the connections from time to time, so it’s not a one-time event. A free-standing equipment rack is one choice if you don’t care about appearance or you like the industrial look. Either put it on wheels or just locate it far enough from the wall so you can get to the back.

If you’re building the room, consider built-in shelves with access from the back, from another room. Or, get a rack such as the Avtrak that’s made to be built in. The whole thing slides out on tracks and then rotates 180 degrees. Perfect!

Wherever you put the equipment, make sure you have a clear line of sight from it to where you’ll be sitting so the infrared remotes will work. If that isn’t feasible, you can get an radio-frequency (R/F) remote or an R/F adapter for an infrared remote.

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Connecting the Equipment

Speaker Cable and Connectors

About Interconnect Cables

Video Cables

Analog Audio Cables

Subwoofer Cable

Digital Audio Cables

Budgeting and Cabling Priorities

AC Power

Essential Adjustments

Adjusting the TV Picture

Setting Up the Subwoofer

Adjusting the Sound Levels

Other Setup Tips

Remote Controls

©2001, 2002 Marc J. Rochkind. All rights reserved. Send comments about this site to site@htexplained.com.