Building Home Theater

SmurfOnABoat

Distinguished
Dec 26, 2011
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You need to be a little more specific. What do you want it to do, how many speakers do you want to run.

Basic setup:

AV Receiver
2 Front Channel Speakers (Left and Right)
2 Surround Backs (Left and Right)
1 Center Channel Sepaker
1 Subwoofer (or 2)

This is a 5.1 or 5.2 surround system

Or another option:

2 Front Channel Speakers (Left and Right)
2 Surround Speakers (Left and Right)
2 Surround Backs (Left and Right)
1 Center Channel Sepaker
1 Subwoofer (or 2)

This makes up your 7.1 or 7.2 surround system. You will need digital AV cables (ex HDMI) from your Source (ex. Blu-Ray player) to your receiver (or HDMI directly to your TV and optical audio to the receiver, if your receiver is not an Audio/Video receiver or not capable of video pass-through) and if you do use your receiver then another Digital cable from your receiver to your TV. The AV Receiver must be capable of full digital surround modes (Dolby D, DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby-HD etc....)

That is your basic home theater setup.

Or you can buy a Home theater in a box, but if your looking for a great system for hours of use, I would not go that route. Those are usually for people on a budget, or who just simply don't feel the need to build a higher end system.

I can help you further, just need to know exactly what your looking to do, and how much you are looking to spend.
 
av receiver
speakers
sub
speaker wire
source (device sending input to ht)

...in general you dont want to go any less than a 3.1 system. front left, front right, center and a subwoofer. ideally you should have a 5.1 which includes the rear left and rear right.

i would highly suggest using the speaker "wall plates" for cable management as you can hide the cables under the floor.

i would also suggest using bannana clips on the receiver end since it makes things nice and neat.

you need to figure out your budget. about 1/3 of that should be mony for your receiver, the rest for speakers and subwoofer (unless you plan to do a 3.1 system now, and add the 2.0 rear speakers later on).