Installing Your Dream Home Theater This School Year

1. Installing Your Dream Home Theater This School Year Ready or not, here comes the school year! Once the kids are out of the house and back in class, it might be time to finally remolding your home. Updating any room can be a wonderful way to entertain your creative side, spend time together with your family, and add value to your home. All of us have things we’d LIKE to do but, out of respect for our wallets, we have to take baby steps towards our dream home. Dreams are important but realistic goals get the job done! When you are ready to begin updating your home for the Fall, make sure that you have clear goals so that you can make forward progress, instead of creating more work or costing an unnecessary amount of money. One of the easiest ways to make a quick change in your home is to update your home theater. This can quickly make your home look more modern. Plus, what’s better that watching your favorite TV shows or movies with your kids when they come back from school? If you want to upgrade your home theater, here are some easy changes you can make to achieve your goal. First, you can change your TV for a projector! TVs are great but if you want epic entertainment what you need in your life is a projector. There are many choices when it comes to screens but size is the most important. While a projector gives you much more control over the scale of your shows and movies, keep in mind that every projector creates limited light amount. When the image is bigger, the overall brightness is lower. Alternatively, if you would like to keep things “old school,” a flat screen television is always a good idea. Second, installing surround sound to your TV or projector can take your viewing experience from average to extraordinary. Surround sound is a technique used for enriching the sound quality by adding additional audio channels from speakers that surround you in a 360° radius. Don’t underestimate the power of incredible audio! Imagine being able to watch a movie and listen exactly what is happening all around you. When you setup your surround sound properly, you can immerse yourself into whatever you’re watching. Adding theater seating can make a dramatic change to your home if your goal is a visual change. If you are interested in replacing your couch with actual theatre seating, there are some things you might want to keep in mind. For example, there is such a thing as too many seats! Cuddling under a blanket is off the table if you fill your home theater exclusively with individual seats. If you are aiming for an individual cinema experience, make sure each is as good as all the others. In term of video and audio performance, it is hard to setup a “no bad seats” situation. This is because you

2. need to put seats away from the surround speakers and the walls. If you have seats too close to the walls they end up with the heavy bass behind them. If the seats are too close to the surround system, you will be uncomfortable with the loud sounds and there will be nothing you could do about it. Lastly, a great finishing touch comes when you add a light control system and a universal remote. A lighting control system may seem overly fancy but it can make a huge difference. Good quality lighting can make a huge impact on the way your home looks, as well as your home theater experience. In case you do not already know, installing light controls in your home gives you the ability to regulate the level and quality of light in any given space for specific situations. You can have a bright, beautiful room while chatting, a low light to calm everyone in at night, and a dim setting that keeps you from running into things during a film without compromising the visual quality of the movie. Controlling light properly will not only enhance the experience but it also helps you save energy by using light when and where it is needed most. In your average home, most light controls are a simple on/off switch, rather than a dimmer. This means that whether it's the middle of the day or it's nighttime, your lightning is the exactly the same. Through dimming, you can control the quantity of light to fit specific tasks, moods, or situations. This not only will help you improve experiences, but it will also save wasted energy in the process. If what you are looking for is simplicity, a universal control could make a big difference. Right now, in your living room, you likely have a lot of appliances, each one with its own remote control. Not only does this create clutter but it also gets confusing and frustrating! A properly setup universal remote can allow you to have the functions of that handful of remotes in one ready-to-go package. Customizing your home theater can help improve your home’s look and encourage your family to spent time together on your own terms. All of the above projects are wonderful opportunities for your family to set things up their way. However, if you are not do-it-yourselfers, there are plenty of wonderful options around San Antonio, Texas that can help you upgrade your home this Fall. Mimi’s Audio & Video helps install home theater systems, mount flat screen TVs, and setup surround sound systems.