With all the decisions to make, getting everything together to build a brand new home theater can be a duanting task. It can be easier than you thought after a few tips to get you on your way.

More often than not you'll start building a home theater by making additions to gear you already have. The hard decision to make for your overall plan is to decide whether to build around what you have, or replace the whole thing with a well integrated system.

The benefits of building an entire system from one plan, and using the gear you currently own for other things is that you'll be able to get the peak performance from the system by integrating components that work together better. Granted this varies among the different types of gear you have. DVD players can be pretty standard within different price ranges, but speakers can be the hardest items to integrate, especially when on a tight budget. Building a system from scratch will result in better integration, and may save you money in the long run.

TVs
TV are without a doubt the most important purchase for a home theater. This is the core of any home theater since it's what brings the big screen home. The TV should be what you dedicate the largest portion of your home theater budget to. Whether you go with a state-of-the-art widescreen rear projection HDTV or a standard 4:3 direct view set the general rule of bigger is better usually applies.

TVs usually start out the base for many home theaters and are usually the component that you can most easily integrate into any home theater. With widescreen presentation via DVD you want to start off with at least a 32 inch TV. The TV dictates how far away you must sit, and thus dictates the type of sound system you'll need to project sound into the room.

For more info on TVs see: On Gear: TVs

Receivers
Receivers can be a pretty easy purchase decision to make. Even budget receivers today offer surround sound processing for Dolby Digital and DTS. Spending more money on a receivers gives you a little more power (watts), more inputs, but most improtant... better sound quality.

To find out the minimum requirements you will need from your receiver plan out how many peices of gear you plan to hook up to it. Allow for future upgrades as well such as new game systems and so on. Having four inputs is about as low as you want to go. Any less than four inputs can be extremely limiting to the upgradability of your system.

For more info on receivers see: On Gear: Components: Receivers

Speakers
Next to the TV your speakers will be where you spend most of your home theater budget. Speakers are the hardest home theater purchase to make with so many choices available. The best thing to do for those on a budget is not to integrate a surround system with your current speakers.

It's best to have cheaper speakers that all sound the same versus having a mismatch in sound quality. The other option is to integrate slowly and do without until you can get everything to match. More often than not, people that try to integrate speaker systems end up spending more in the long run as their original speakers force them to buy more expensive speakers to match.

Many subwoofer/satellite systems that are more than competent for music and movies can be had for around $1200 from manufacturers such as Paradigm, PSB, and Definitive. Take this into account when considering your future speaker purchases.

For more info on speakers see: On Gear: Speakers

DVD Players
A DVD player is very close to the receiver in respect to what you get at different price points. You usually spend more on a DVD player to get better sound quality and a progressive scan output for HDTV compatible TVs. Other than that, your DVD purchase should consist of simply purchasing one that fits into you budget.

For more info on DVD players see: On Gear: Components: DVD Players

Starting up a home theater can be a lot of fun and very rewarding if you take all these considerations into account. From demoing speakers and TVs to bringing them all home. Ahome theater can be a great addition to any home, and great fun to improve upon in the future.