Home Theater Hacks

Preface

It would be hard to argue that any invention has affected more people in the 20th century than the television. That might sound ridiculous when you think of achievements such as the polio vaccine, or mapping the human genome, but then again, you don't see a lot of DNA models sitting in the armoire in people's dens and living rooms, do you?

Once TV hit it big, movies quickly followed. Soon, Friday night at the movies was as much a national pastime as baseball! At some point, though, some lazy couch potato figured out that if he (and we all know it had to be a man with a death grip on the remote, right?) could get these movies to show on his television set, potato chips and bathroom breaks were no longer a problem. And thus, home theater was born.

Now, some 15 years later, a 13-inch version of The Matrix just doesn't cut it. If you don't duck when guns go off, you're laughed at and ridiculed. The good news is that big TVs, expensive speakers, and gadgets galore are available in three of four stores (at least) in every town in the world. The bad news is that even if you drop six months worth of cash, you might have just a really big, really loud version of that 13-inch setup. Home Theater Hacks tackles these problems head-on, finally providing answers to all the questions you can imagine—and a whole lot you can't!

This collection of advice, tips, tricks, warnings, and screaming admonitions reflects the best wisdom in the rather significant home theater community. Just getting ...