Thanks to the boom of home theater over the last 15 years, families across America are enjoying an unprecedented movie experience at home. While many of us gear geeks out there gripe over issues with new display technologies and various trends in audio and video, it’s good to step back and look at the big picture. Quite simply, many people are in a state of “home theater bliss” and that’s a great thing.

After getting your home theater where you want with components, wiring, and setup comes the best part of home theater nirvana: no longer worrying about all that stuff and simply enjoying the fruits of your labors (that is, if your tweaking/upgrading bug has run its course).

There’s a general push not just by the computer industry, but also broadband providers, to provide services wherein a PC is used to provide content and control the experience of a home theater. In essence, the goal is to replace all the components that make up home theater with a computer that would handle all the functions aside from the display and speakers.

With the vacation season now in full swing it’s great to get away. While you’re all out and about enjoying different places, or hanging out with distant friends, there’s plenty to keep you busy while on vacation. When it comes time to watch a movie on a normal TV at the hotel or vacation house it can become quite clear that you’re going to have to cleanse your home theater palette when you get home.

Over the last year, and especially over the last few months, shopping for a new big screen TV has changed dramatically. The once venerable CRT Rear-Projection technology has been very much removed from the marketplace even though it offers better picture quality and cheaper prices than the new digital technologies such as Plasma, DLP, and LCD.

The main presumption is that surround sound and big screen TVs are high tech items that only men are really interested in, but the truth is that women love home theater too. Take the Consumer Electronics Association’s numbers that over 50% of consumer electronics shoppers are women and you see that home theater isn’t gender bias and why should it be.

Audiophiles are a quirky bunch. Being one, I know the path of audio nirvana and how it takes you over, and only by experiencing the musical nuance and appreciation that comes with such snobbery does one know or “get” what it is that us audiophiles are talking about. It’s why we’re willing to shell out major cash for audio systems that pump out the best possible sound quality, and research every setup tweak and enhancement possible to eek out the most performance from our high priced audio systems.

I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to people’s homes to see them have the most awesomely capable system components and TV, just to have the seating location ruin the whole experience. It’s not to say their seats are uncomfortable (some are), but rather just placed awkwardly in relation to viewing the TV.

DLP technology has evolved over the last few years to become a great force in digitally driven TV display technology. While LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) promises color fidelity comparable to that CRT driven displays and a much higher resolution of 1080p, companies such as Intel have failed to make LCoS a consumer reality. DLP, in the meantime, has been evolving and through that time companies have reduced DLPs shortcomings to make it into a very promising technology for home theater displays, projectors, and commercial theater use.

With the continual cheapening of many consumer electronics components to extremely low prices, consumers should be wary this holiday season. The old adage of “you pay for what you get” couldn’t be truer today. In the late 90s it was hard to actually find a piece of crap component due to the demanding home theater hobbyists refusing to buy anything that was rated as garbage. Now with the influx of home theater hobbyists spanning across more and more people, the cheapening of the lower end of consumer electronics is in full swing, and an ill-informed consumer may not know what they’re really getting.

With the plethora of options and technologies when buying a big screen TV it may come a surprise that consumers purchasing smaller direct view TVs in the $700-$1600 range actually face a much tougher decision when buying a TV.

As far as picture quality and cost of maintenance go, CRT driven rear-projection TVs still reign supreme. Despite all the new technologies such as DLP, Plasma and improved LCD technology, CRTs still provide color quality and black level that the other technologies don’t come close to reproducing.

For all but the last few years, consumer electronics TVs consisted of continuously better products coming forward, and advances in new technologies bringing about better video quality than before. Today, with so many different technologies available, it’s hard not to go into the old mindset that the newest technologies are the most superior, but it’s not necessarily so.

As most any home theater enthusiast can attest, getting the perfect home theater goes well beyond just buying the equipment and setting it up properly. After the initial setup begins the hardest part of the final setup process, getting the best possible performance by tweaking speaker location, getting better cables, improving room décor and seating, and properly calibrating the audio and video settings.

It seems everyone has an opinion or two about home theater these days. In overhearing others speak, and reading magazines unrelated to home theater attempting to offer ill-advised nuggets of home theater knowledge, I’ve become more than upset at the rampant misinformation being spewed out into the consumers’ minds.

It’s been a year since the 3rd generation iPod was released coupled with a new version of iTunes that uses the new AAC MP4 format and incorporated the much written about and successful Apple Music Store.

Nothing can dramatically improve the sound your home theater produces more than high quality speakers. Yet, in the age where disposable home theaters cost a mere $300, paying over $400 or more for just one speaker may seem like a waste, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The image quality of DLP projectors in the $4,000-$7,000 range has become comparable enough to the image of CRT rear projection TVs that the advantage in size and scale far outweigh any of DLP’s video shortcomings. The ability of home theater enthusiasts to truly bring the big screen home has finally become a viable option.

For many people looking to build a home theater, music comes first… not movies. For those audiophiles or “up-and-coming audiophiles” out there the main goal of the home theater system is to produce music at it’s best, with whatever budget they’re on.

With 2003 came the explosion of cheap “budget priced” home theater electronics, and the trend is likely not to go away. Consumers can now get into home theater with much more bang for their buck than ever before, but with it comes both the good and the bad.

With all the emphasis on flat screen TVs that look cool, but offer no difference in size and actually offer less picture quality than today’s CRTs, you’d think that Plasma and LCD flat screen TVs were the only technologies offering a different way to view TV.

Home theater enthusiasts will attest that it is a great time for home theater. Equipment quality has improved tremendously, and innovation is pumping out at an extraordinary rate with most changes taking place in the realm of video technologies and formats. This staggering number of new technologies is a technogeeks heaven, but a general consumer’s nightmare.

There is HDTV broadcasting out there, and more than you’d think. Much of primetime TV is offered in HD by: ABC, CBS, NBC, WGN, PBS, Fox, and various other local channels. Also available via satellite or cable, are HD versions of HBO, Showtime, ESPN, and Discovery as well.

The biggest danger to your home theater is not kids stuffing VCRs or DVD players with as many foreign objects available or scratching the screen of the TV. Although these are vital concerns for the ever-watchful parent, the culprit capable of destroying all your gear in one fell swoop is the electricity that powers it all.

Plasma is finally coming of age and has become a viable option for many home theater enthusiasts and to those who are just simply drawn to its physical design. Many consumers are still waiting for Plasma’s price to come down, but truth be told, the prices might not drop by much below $2000.

HD-DVD will start popping it’s way out within a year, and what would a new DVD format be without the industry format war. On one side, you have the blue laser people who want to use an entirely new laser that writes and reads data lines that are much finer than the current DVD format. On the other side, are those who want to utilize the current DVD format’s laser combined with new compression technologies to fit more data on the current DVD format.

It’s been one month since Apple changed music distribution forever by launching its iTunes Music Store in line with brand new iPods supporting larger storage and a sleeker design than previous iPods. Most important is that along with both products comes the new AAC MP4 format which offers CD quality sound at MP3 file sizes.

Imagine a format that has all the storage convenience of MP3, but sounds just as good as standard CDs. That format is MP4, and it’s available now.

Many a prediction has been made the Compact Disc is on the way out with MP3s, digital copying, and wireless music formats looming overhead. The death of the compact disc is a bit far fetched with millions of people in possession of huge libraries of CDs in what is considered by many the perfect audio format and standard.

For those of you out there with HDTVs, the time has come to start considering your options on getting HDTV broadcasts into your home. To many home theater enthusiasts, receiving HDTV broadcast have been long on the waiting list, and now with most major metropolitan areas able to receive all or many local channels in HDTV, the days of waiting are over.