Joe Anstett's Home Theater Page

Home Theater is one of my favorite hobbies. I enjoy being able to watch films at home in their original widescreen format with booming surround sound. It's an ever-increasing spiral -- my goal is to someday have a dedicated home theater room complete with perforated projection screen and theater-style seating. For now, I have improvised and converted a spare bedroom into a comfortable home theater room. My wife and I finished the hardwood flooring, painted the walls a dark gray, and the ceiling black (I also painted my cieling fan blades black and the metal is brass).

My home theater system consists of the following components:

Sony KL-W7000 37" 16:9 Digital Presentation Display

This display was originally inteded by Sony for use in business and medical presentations, but it's right at home for home theater applications. It's a 37" LCD projection system with a 16:9 widescreen display. It can accept normal NTSC television signals (composite, s-video) but the real treat is the VGA input, which is useful for computer DVD playback and HDTV broadcasts. Quality is excellent with even normal TV signals, and superb with progressive DVD, PC and HDTV images (though computer text is a little hard to read from a distance). The display benefits of using a PC with this monitor are progressive display, 3:2 pulldown removal, 16:9 aspect ratio, high resolution, good upscaling, and the ability to set refresh rates that are a multiple of film's 24 frames per second.

Intel Pentium 4 1.9 GHz PC

The PC I use to drive my home theater is a Pentium 4 1.9 GHz machine tailored for digital entertainment. It has a Hollywood Plus DVD card and an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder (with TV tuner and PVR though I don't use it), for DVD playback I usually use WinDVD or Cinemaster.. It also has a digital sound card useful for passing Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound to a receiver. You may ask, "why a PC?". I would answer that a PC is capable of things that ordinary TVs cannot do. In the case of DVD, it can deliver truly progressive (non-interlaced) 480p images in 16:9 aspect ratio at refresh rates exceeding 60Hz. The net result of pairing the PC with the presentation display is smooth, progressive, film-like DVD movie viewing experiences that just aren't possible with traditional TVs. The display gives a very film-like image.

This PC also has an 80 gigabyte hard drive which contains my entire music library in MP3 format, consisting of nearly 9,000 songs. It functions as a server to four Rio Receivers (actually the Dell OEM version) located in my living room, bedroom, kitchen, and den. These boxes plug into an ethernet network and allow me to select anything from my MP3 song library and play it there, without a computer.

RCA DTC-100 HDTV Decoder

This decoder allows me to view high-def broadcasts that are the future of broadcast TV in resolution and clarity that are quantum leaps above traditional TV. The bad news is that even though I live in the NYC broadcast area, there are few choices for HD viewing (I can only successfully pull in WCBS-DT, WNYW-DT, and WWOR-DT), especially after the 9/11/01 World Trade Center attack (since the WTC was home to many of the area's terrestrial broadcast antennae and housed the newly built facilities for WABC,W NBC, WPIX, et al). Even worse, my cable company is refusing to include HDTV signals in its cable feed, so I must resort to using an aerial antennae for my HD viewing. I get the best results, surprisingly, from a $45 Zenith DTV antennae the size of a paper plate. I had sporadic results with my Terk TV-35 antenna. The decoder has a VGA output, not the usual YPrPb component output.

Sony STR-DA2ES 6.1 Receiver

A nice hi-fi receiver from Sony's vanuted ES line, features 100 watts x 6 channels, Dolby Digital EX, DTS ES, DTS Neo and DPL II. 5.1 and 6.1 channel analog inputs, 6.1 channel pre-amp output, dual room capability, component video switching, s-video and composite switching, OSD.

Definitive Technologies Pro Cinema 200 System

Definitive's speakers are excellent home theater fare and sound as good as speakers costing three times the price. The set consists of four ProMonitor 200's (L/R/LS/RS), two ProCenter C2's (front center and rear center), and one ProSub 200L. In addition, I have supplemented the system with two Cambridge Soundworks BassCube 10 powered subwoofers. Response is 28Hz-30kHz, 50Hz-30kHz for the centers. 18-150Hz with a 40-150Hz crossover and 250 watt amp. The subs are hidden behind the recliners.

AV Toolbox AVT-3343 Component->VGA converter

Most high-definition equipment uses progressive component outputs, while my display has VGA input. While my HDTV decoder has VGA output, most progressive DVD players and other HDTV equipment does not have VGA output. This handy little box takes care of that problem. I use this with my progressive-scan DVD player and my X-Box. Technically this is only 480p but I have another converter that will do up to 1080i, but this one is better with 480p sources.

Toshiba SD-4800 Progressive-Scan DVD-Audio Player

Why do I need a DVD player if I use my computer? Well, one, for a backup in case the computer goes down, I still have a way to watch progressive scan DVDs. But the real reason is the DVD-Audio capability. DVD-A is one of two high resolution audio formats that go far, far above the sonic qualities of CDs and even Dolby Digital and DTS. CD is based on 44,100 16-bit samples per second in stereo, which is good but not optimal. DVD-A allows for up to 192,000 24-bit samples per second in stereo or 92,000 24-bit samples per second in surround sound, using a LOSSLESS codec called MLP. CD is lossless but inferior; DD and DTS are better than CD but lossy.

Sony DVP-N500V DVD/SACD Player

Another DVD player, you ask? This one isn't even progressive. But, it is a Super Audio CD (SACD) player. SACD is the other high-resolution audio format, the competitor to DVD-Audio. SACD has the backing of Sony and Philips, and appears to be winning the format war. I got both to cover my bases. Like DVD-A, SACD is better than CD, lossless, and capable of multichannel sound. However, SACD uses Digital Stream Direct (DSD) technology that eschewes traditional PCM and instead takes 1-bit samples 2.8 million times per second. Both DVD-A and SACD are warm and open sounding, plus I enjoy the surround mixes when available. I have heard new nuances in mixes of albums I know by heart. Now I have to ask, where is the DVD-A/SACD car equipment!

Pioneer CLD-D406 Laserdisc Player

My trusty, rusty old Laserdisc player. Dual side play, pretty good video quality. My only complaint is the requirement for an external Dolby Digital RF deumodulator =(. Just about the only thing it's good for nowadays is watching Star Wars Laserdiscs (pre and post 1997 Special Edition butchering), as well as some stuff that isn't on DVD (pre-butchering Roger Rabbit, etc.). I never got that many Laserdiscs, and most of them are out on DVD now. Star Wars being the big exception, and the pre-butchered versions will never see DVD releases. I wanted to get Indiana Jones on LD but Lucasfilm cancelled the release and the old ones are impossible to find.

Sony MXD-D40 CD/MD Deck

Sony's 3 disc CD changer with a Mini-Disc LP recorder built in for high-speed dubbing from CD to MD, plus PC-link for recording from a PC.

Game Consoles:

I currently have the following game consoles attached:

Microsoft X-Box (progressive component high-def) High-Defninition AV pack with Toslink optical digital audio and progressive component HDTV video up to 1080i.
Sony Playstation 2 (VGA converter)
Sega Dreamcast (VGA)