There are few things more manly than building a home theater. After all, what’s the point of owning extremely manly movies without being able to watch them on an extremely manly TV, paired with an extremely manly audio setup?
Unfortunately, manly jobs like cops, firefighters, and lumberjacks don’t pay terribly well. So, we’re going to talk about how to build a manly home theater on a manly budget for the manly recession.
The first thing you should do is come up with a manly budget. How much you can afford to spend will determine how much you can spend on each component. Personally, I’m a big fan of spending some up front to get started, then adding more as time goes on.
Now, for the purposes of our manly home theater, we’re going to make a couple of assumptions.
- Bigger is better. That means getting the biggest TV, speakers, subwoofer, etc. for the money.
- Aesthetics are secondary to performance. If given the choice in between tastefully designed speakers with crappy sound, or earthshaking towers that look like ass, we’re going with the earthshakers.
- Surround sound is a must. Maybe not right off the bat, but eventually you’re going to have a minimum of five satellite speakers and a subwoofer.
- HD is a must. That means Blu-Ray, Xbox 360/PS3, and some kind of either HD Cable or HD Antenna.
PART ONE: MANLY BUDGETING!
So, let’s get started. First thing’s first: what’s your budget? Take that budget, and cut it in half. One half will be your TV, the other half will be your theater.
PART TWO: MANLY TV SHOPPING!
Now that you have a budget, let’s talk about your TV. Right now, there are three pretty manly competing technologies for flat-panel TVs: LCD, LED, and Plasma.
LCD:
- Pro: Cheapest, works well in bright rooms, brighter than Plasma
- Con: Doesn’t accurately reproduce blacks
- Best For: Television, video games, high brightness rooms
Plasma:
- Pro: Produces exceptionally deep blacks
- Con: Higher power consumption
- Best For: Movies, sports, dark rooms
LED backlit LCD:
- Pro: Combines LCD brightness with Plasma blacks, in a thinner package than either, with less power consumption
- Con: Significantly more expensive than either Plasma or traditional LCD, unlikely to change in the near future
- Best For: Everything, as long as you’ve got the money
I recommend keeping an eye on local big box stores or Amazon for sales and deals. If you wait until early in the year, manufacturers are often introducing new sets, so last year’s sets can be significantly discounted. Avoid Black Friday deals; they tend to be selling inferior products at deep discounts.
Some good brands to consider: Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, LG.
PART THREE: MANLY TV CABLES!
An important thing to remember, along with your TV, is that you’re probably going to need some kind of input cables. Probably HDMI, for your manly input sources.
DO NOT BUY CABLES AT A BIG BOX STORE. THEY ARE RIPPING YOU OFF.
The $25 HDMI cable? Yeah, you can buy that for $5 on Amazon or Monoprice. Saving money; that’s manly.
PART FOUR: MANLY AUDIO!
So, you have your manly TV all picked out and purchased. If you’re short on cash, this is a good place to pause for more funding, because the next part you can do in two or three steps.
There is no HDTV manufacturer that includes speakers as good in their TV as a pair or more of discrete speakers. It doesn’t exist. Even bargain basement bookshelves sound better than most TV speakers. That being said, you can deal with TV speakers for a while if you have to.
Now, let’s say your manly bank account is flush with your saved up manly cash. You know the other half of your budget? Get ready to spend it. The nice thing about audio is that you don’t have to spend it all at once, and you can spend not a whole lot and get great sound.
The problem with audio is that the internet is chock full of people that can claim to hear distortions and frequencies that are physically impossible for humans to hear. The most important thing about speakers is to hear them yourself. After all, you’re going to be the one listening to them on a regular basis. Go to high end audio stores and give a few pairs a listen. Bring your own source material, like an iPod or something similar.
Now, a lot of people don’t know how to spend money on audio equipment. Let me break it down for you: 40% or $400 (whichever comes first) on a receiver (but not less than $250), 60% on speakers. Of that 60%, here’s how you should allocate that money, in terms of that priority: 1) Center Channel, 2) Front Speakers, 3) Subwoofer, 4) Rear Speakers.
Here’s the reason why: the Center Channel will be reproducing dialog in everything you watch. If it sucks, you’re going to end up being really disappointed. Your front speakers will, if you wait inbetween components, be your only speakers for a while, and eventually your main speakers. Your subwoofer is going to drive your Low Frequency Effects, or LFEs. This is the rumbling bass that makes manly movies, well, manly. Finally, your rear speakers. If you have to skimp on something, skimp here. Don’t bother spending a ton of money on them; they’re going to be reproducing a limited amount of sound.
If you don’t want to spend all of your money at once, here’s my recommendation: Receiver and Front Speakers, Subwoofer, Center Channel and Rear Speakers.
Now, for your front speakers, you have two choices: towers or bookshelves. Towers are big, full range speakers that are floorstanding. If you’re not buying all your components at once, I’d recommend these first. They’re more expensive than bookshelves, but you’ll get better sound. If you’re buying all at once, you can go either way. Be aware that towers will generate more sound than bookshelves.
For your rear speakers, get a pair of small bookshelves.
For your center channel, get the best one you can afford. Do yourself a favor and try and match the brand and series on your front speakers and center channel. There’s this thing called phase-matching; speakers with different cabinet shapes and made of different materials will sound slightly different, so you want to match speakers together based on their sound. The easiest way to do this is to buy front and center speakers from the same manufacturer.
As for subwoofers, you can save a lot of money if you do your homework and buy online. Speakers are very, very subjective, but subwoofers are not. Subwoofers are, generally speaking, either good or bad. The best subwoofers are “musical”, which is to say that the accurately reproduce bass in music, rather than just “boom”. For a home theater that will be mainly movie and TV watching, “musicalty”, or Sound Quality Level (SQL), is less important than Sound Pressure Level (SPL), or “boom”. That being said, you don’t want something that’s all SPL and no SQL. Subwoofers start around 8″; I would recommend at least 10″, with 12″ preferred. The ladies will back me up on this.
Now, once you have your equipment, you’re going to need cables.
PART FIVE: MANLY AUDIO CABLES!
DO NOT BUY CABLES AT A BIG BOX STORE. THEY ARE RIPPING YOU OFF.
The $25 component audio cable? Yeah, you can buy that for $5 on Amazon or Monoprice. Saving money; that’s manly.
PART SIX: MANLY CABLING!
This is where you get to connect and run cables all over the place. First off, lay out what cables you need. As previously stated:
DO NOT BUY CABLES AT A BIG BOX STORE. THEY ARE RIPPING YOU OFF.
Your first decision is how to connect your TV and audio system together. Depending on your sources, you can either connect all your devices to your TV, and run your audio through your home theater, or use your receiver to manage all your sources.
If you’re going the first route, you’re going to need an optical audio cable. Basically, it transmits audio information via lasers. Lasers: manly.
If you’re going the second route, you’re going to need to make sure you have a receiver that can do 1080p repeating. Otherwise, you’ll get some sources in HD and others not. You want EVERYTHING in HD. Then, you can hook up your TV and receiver with an HDMI cable WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT BUY FROM A BIG BOX STORE BECAUSE THEY ARE RIPPING YOU OFF.
After that, it’s easy. Just plug stuff in. Make sure you remember which side of the speaker wire goes to which side of the pole on the receiver. Black to black, red to red. Most wires are marked with a stripe or something on one side.
PART SEVEN: MANLY SETUP!
So, you have a brand new home theater with a giant TV and 5.1 surround sound that sounds so good it can bring lesser men to tears. Now you need to bring average men to tears, and that means setting everything up. Manly men are only allowed to cry at the end of Rudy, Old Yeller, and Brian’s Song, and also if something happens to Lil’ Sebastian.
Most TVs give you the option to change your picture settings. I would recommend checking out sites like avsforum.com to find out what settings are recommended by professional calibrators for your TV.
As for setting up your sound, make sure that you’re using all 6 speakers, and not just two of them.
You’ll also want to set up things like Netflix, Hulu, etc. that you may be able to stream from your TV.
PART EIGHT: MANLY MOVIES!
If you’ve followed my advice, you have a home theater that can make even average men weep. Now, you need to show it off. That means some full HD content. I prefer 1080p through Blu-Ray, but that’s me. Some prefer all digital through an Apple TV or Xbox 360 or PS3. That’s a personal decision, and manly men make their own decisions.
Here are a few titles I own in Full HD:
– Transformers Trilogy (Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon)
– Lord of the Rings Trilogy
– Iron Man & Iron Man 2
– X-Men First Class
– Thor
– Avatar
– Gladiator
– Batman Begins & The Dark Knight
– Inception
– Star Trek
– Tron Legacy
– 300
– Watchmen
Now those are some manly movies.
MANLY CONCLUSION!
/grunts
BONUS MANLINESS! MY MANLY HOME THEATER
TV: Panasonic TC-P50G20 50″ 1080p THX-Certified Plasma HDTV
Receiver: Pioneer VSX-820-K
Blu-Ray Player: Sony BDP-S460
Front Speakers: Pioneer SP-FS51-LR 130w Tower Speakers
Center Channel: Pioneer SP-C21 Center Channel
Rear Speakers: SP-BS21-LR 80w Bookshelf Speakers
Subwoofer: BIC America F12 12″ 475w Subwoofer
