Don’t have time to go to the movie theater or prefer the sanctuary of your own home. Now you can create your own theater known as a “home theater”.

A home theater system has at least 5 speakers, sometimes up to 9, and a subwoofer along with other components that bring you into the action of a TV show or movie by providing real action sound that envelops your senses. Some home theater systems come prepackaged or you can build one yourself, either way there is a lot that goes into deciding what type of system is right for you. Please use this handy guide from www.Number1Direct.com to simplify your shopping experience. You may also be interested in our buying guide on sound formats that explain what the numbers (6.1, 7.1, etc…) are all about and explains the differences with Dolby, DTS and THX by clicking here.

Components of Home Theater Systems:

• Receiver: These are the “hub’ of your home theater systems and mange audio from your TV, HDTV, Blu-Ray players, DVD players and HD-DVD players and sends the signal and power to your speakers (5.1 or higher). For more on receivers, click here .

• Center Speaker: Sits right below or above your television and produces much of the vocal audio from your movie or show along with sound effects that would originate from in front of you if you were actually in the action.
• Front Side Speakers: Sits to the right and left of the television and a wide array for sounds from your TV shows or movies including vocals, sound effects and more. These are the workhorses of your home theater and would be the ones that play a 2 channel/stereo content piece.
• Surround Speakers: These speakers sit on the side of the room and produce all if the sound effects, vocals, and everything else that make a surround sound system what it is. Without these speakers, you really would not have a home theater system.
• Rear Speakers: Just like the surround speakers but would sit behind your couch or chair in the rear of the room and would provide audio that would come from behind you in the show/movie to make you feel like you’re part of the action. A system would need to be 6.1 or higher to have a rear speaker.
• Televisions: For the perfect picture, you’ll need to have a television to match the your home theater component requirements that could be 720p, 1080p, LCD, DLP, Plasma.
• DVD Player: With more and more of your favorite move coming out on DVD, you will want to add a DVD player to your theater. There are a lot of choice to choose from with up-conversion DVD players, Blu-Ray players, Blu-Ray recorders, DVD recorders, and gaming systems like PlayStation 3 and X-Box with DVD/Blu-Ray players built-in.

Number1Direct by Goedeker’s carries a variety of brands of Home Theater Brands like Yamaha,KEF, Sony, Denon, and Audiovox.

How Do They Work?

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) TVs are a newer technology.They are made up of two glass panels filled with liquid crystal. The front glass panel has a grid pattern (template) etched into it so that the liquid crystal can be filtered by light. The crystals act like smart shutters allowing light to pass or to be blocked. The patterns of light and dark crystals determine the image on the TV. The twisted nematic (TN) is the most common type of liquid crystal used in display applications such as LCD televisions, monitors and projectors. This crystal reacts to electric currents in predictable ways,

such as untwisting to varying degrees depending on the voltage of the current to which it is exposed. The main difference between Plasma and LCD technology is that LCD pixels don’t give off light. As with Plasma technology, an LCD pixel is comprised of three sub-pixels in the elementary colors. Because they don’t give off light, LCD displays need white backlighting. The light given off by the backlighting passes through the liquid crystal and is then colored by a filter. Each sub-pixel has the same characteristics; only the color of the filter changes depending on the pixel. The liquid crystal of each sub-pixel can be controlled electrically like a valve; the amount of light allowed to pass through the crystal governs how much red, green and blue is given off for each pixel. Active matrix LCDs employ thin film transistors (TFTs) or tiny switching transistors and capacitors arranged in a matrix on a glass substrate, to direct electric charges down columns to reach a particular pixel. In essence, this causes the liquid crystals to untwist and display a prearranged amount of light generated by the light source – usually a fluorescent bulb located in back of them. By exploiting a combination of red, green, and blue sub-pixels of various intensities (or gray scales), a single pixel triad can reproduce approximately 16.8 million colors.

Advantages and Disadvantages to LCD TVs

Advantages

• LCD TVs include great still image quality as well as being an excellent computer screen with an exceptionally bright picture.
• LCD TVs don’t take up a lot of space, they can be wall mounted and they weigh less than Plasma TVs.
• LCD TVs have a long, practically maintenance-free life.
• LCDs offer higher resolutions than Plasmas of the same size. They also have excellent image stability. In other words, you can sit close without experiencing eye exhaustion.
• LCDs possess a longer lifetime than Plasma televisions, whith a difference of about 50,000 hours versus 30,000 hours.
• LCDs are best over any other flat-panel displays when it comes to computers. LCD monitors are now used for most applications including games, office applications, and photo retouching.
• LCDs operate at much cooler temperatures and cost less per hour than Plasma televisions. The smaller and better transistors found in LCDs give them another advantage over Plasma – higher resolution.

Disadvantages:

• Possible quick delays in pictures with fast movement (size 37 inches and less handle the delay better than the larger sizes),
• Some types of LCDs have trouble with black levels,
• Some lesser quality LCDs have pixel failure.
• The prices dramatically increase with LCD TVs over the size of 35 inches.
• LCD viewing angles cannot match those of Plasma displays. You tend to see some brightness and color shift when you’re sitting at too far an angle from your LCD, while Plasma’s picture remains fairly solid.
• LCDs have lower contrast ratios than Plasmas and are not as good at rendering deep blacks.
• Not as good as Plasmas in tracking motion and fast-moving objects may exhibit what is called, lag artifacts.

Our Top Rated LCD Televisions

Today, there several manufacturers of LCD TVs (Sony, Samsung, Phillips, Haier, LG Electronics, Sharp and many more.)

Sony KDL40Z5100 Sony KDL52XBR6 Sharp LC60E77UN Sony KDL52Z5100 Sharp LC52E77UN

We are more than happy to help you when it comes to help in making this choice (Contact Phone Number: 1-888-768-1710).