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 started and want to know what TV to buy? We cover it. Comfortable with computers and want to use your home PC for playing DVDs? We'll show you how to get resolutions better than $1,000 commercial DVD players. Seasoned pro looking for a new challenge? Learn to wire up your own super-high-end power and speaker cables. Whatever your experience and whatever your interest level, you'll find something to pique your interest and push the envelope of even the highest-grade home theaters. So, what are you waiting for? Let's get to it.

Why Home Theater Hacks?

The term hacking has a bad reputation in the press. They use it to refer to someone who breaks into systems or wreaks havoc with computers as their weapon. Among people who write code, though, the term hack refers to a "quick-and-dirty" solution to a problem, or a clever way to get something done. And the term hacker is taken very much as a compliment, referring to someone as being creative, having the technical chops to get things done. The Hacks series is an attempt to reclaim the word, document the good ways people are hacking, and pass the hacker ethic of creative participation on to the uninitiated. Seeing how others approach systems and problems is often the quickest way to learn about a new technology.

There is hardly an area where this is truer than in home theater. For years, there have been two options: spend a little money for a mediocre system at your local chain store, or pay a professional tens of thousands of dollars to do things you can't even pronounce, let alone understand. As long as there have been home theaters, though, there have been those few who have cracked open their TVs, pulled apart power cables, and been determined to figure things out. Finally, the best advice and wisdom have been brought together in one place, and only a Hacks book can get that information to you without all the mumbo jumbo that created this problem in the first place.