It’s easy to caught up in the upgrade and improvement bubble wherein your home theater is in constant flux. This is especially true when it comes to Blu-Ray versus DVD now that HD-DVD is gone. For home theater nuts, it’s a never-ending love… until, that is, you reach your personal home theater nirvana.

The nirvana moment may never come unless you take a step back to realize how good the home theater you’ve built actually is. How good? Try way better than theater quality!

Verification and Testing
We home theater nuts often get caught up in the technical specs such as contrast ratios, black levels, 1080p, Dolby True HD, watts per channel and so on. Marketers advertise about their latest “must-have” technology that promises better picture and sound, be it ultra deep black levels, eye-popping clarity, or HD video/audio.

All these specs and marketing efforts inform us as to which of our home theater components needs replacing to get the latest fad or do-hickey to eke out better performance. All the while, it’s easy to overlook whether or not you actually need it.

One phrase that bothers me most is “future proofing”. The reason being is that “future proofing” simply cannot be accomplished. There will always be innovations that offer better performance and sometimes at cheaper prices. However, home theater nirvana is achievable regardless of new technologies.

Having a home theater that leaves you “wanting for nothing” empowers you to ignore fads, and instead focus truly on needed upgrades or replacements.

If you go to an actual movie theater and study their black levels, sharpness, resolution, colors, and audio quality you’ll find they come much closer to the quality of what a well-mastered standard-definition DVD via an upconverting DVD player provides, while Blu-Ray offers much better video and sound than a movie theater. Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD for that matter) simply offer home theater movie perfection that completely surpasses the movie theater experience.

Alas, home theater is about bringing the theater experience home. Technically, you’re essentially done with an upconverting DVD player and well-mastered movies. Add Blu-Ray and you simply don’t get better. For the average consumers though, upconverted DVDs look high-def enough, and those wanting for more can easily step up. The point here is to step up if you’re wanting for more.

Granted for you cinema tech nuts out there a true film negative is 4096x3122 pixels (4K and even arguably 8K), but once you add: age, print wear, off-focusing, projector issues,  and the difference in apparent resolution due to screen-size/distance, the quality of the image at your standard theater is very much on par with standard DVD at home. But for those who would still debate, it goes without saying that the best calibrated and setup theater easily bests/equals HD which would be 2K (again screen size and apparent resolution negate some of the gains)

There’s some give that film can even go 8K since the medium is completely different it’s scalable without out being lossy like digital. It’s amazing that that all the efforts to go HD Digital when flim has been HD for so long and with much older physical technology

To achieve home theater video nirvana get the following:

1. A Blu-Ray or upconverting DVD player
2. A flat screen, rear-projection, or projector (buy the biggest screen you can afford!)
3. Connect it all with HDMI (don’t overpay! $5-$10 cable from 2-12 feet. I get mine at monoprice.com)
4. Calibrate
5. Enjoy 5-10 years of video nirvana (without even thinking about upgrading)

All you need to do is take the occasional movie in at a real theater and you’ll be strongly reassured how much better an experience your home theater provides. There really hasn’t been an easier and more affordable time in the home theater industry to get absolutely phenomenal picture quality.

The Audio Side of Nirvana
This is the more abstract side of the “nirvana” equation. Most people can hear the difference from cheap to great speakers, but many cannot hear the improvement from great to outstanding speakers. That’s simply the nature of our hearing characteristic. We all have different attenuations and hearing quality/damage, and each of us hear things uniquely different. Hi, I’m Mike and I hear nuances!

One person’s shrill, may be another’s detail. However, we all know when sound is too loud or grating, and usually outstanding home theater speakers can play very loud without being grating or harsh.

Also, many of those new to home theater simply focus all of their money and efforts on the video portion when the audio can account for 50% of the experience in entrancing you into the movie completely. Due to the focus on video, audio usually gets half the budget or less of the TV which is where the abysmal home-theater-in-a-box market comes in.

Sound is all about filling the room with sound, and the larger the room the harder it is for speakers to fill out the room. Add the loud audio levels home theater begs to be heard at and you’ll see why it can be hard for anyone to reach home theater audio nirvana.

That said, those of us with killer systems know how well it sounds. Whether the audio system is $4,000 or $50,000, these high-end audio systems can really crank out the goods. Whether you go with 5.1 or 7.1, it’s simply a matter of choice.

The main reason I haven’t upgraded to 7.1 is simply that my 5.1 surround system doesn’t leave me wanting for more. Even fellow home theater nuts who have 7.1 don’t really touch on the subject of 7.1 concerning my home theater after a demo. That’s not to knock 7.1 at all. I’m illustrating that if you don’t actually want for more, you may not need it.

I would consider my 5.1 surround system an “audiophile anomaly” as it’s geared toward my audiophile nature wherein all my speakers are full range, and are placed with their tweeters at ear height. This allows not only my fronts to create an immense stereoscopic sound field, but my rears also create a very holographic sound field. This “musical” placement offers great center-rear imaging and ambient surround for all seating locations.

Normal home theater setups with more limited surround positioning would likely see a huge improvement in sound quality using 7.1 one to fill in the gaps.

So When Do You Reach Nirvana?
That’s actually a personal decision, but maybe I can help shed some light with my experience. I can easily say I stopped caring about upgraded paths when I realized while recently watching an upconverted DVD that was well-mastered. 

When the movie ended I realized that not once did I think about what it would look like in HD, or getting better sound. Granted for standard-definition DVD to do that it has to be superbly mastered. Having Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and DVD it really stuck a chord with me that as I switch among the different formats that I can still be blown away by an upconverted DVD!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting to give up on home theater, nor to seek the latest and greatest.  It’s just that before you do, you may want to truly sit back and realize how great your system is. I urge all home theater nuts to evaluate their home theaters performance against professional theaters before continuing the endless upgrade path.

I guess this could be summarized simply by saying “enjoy what you have, you may not realize how good it is regardless of any tech spec or marketing spin!”

Happy home theatering!