Creating a Home Theater with your own PC, TV, and home video equipment
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Creating a Home Theater with your own PC, TV, and home video equipment
by: Roy Edwards
Having a home theater in your home is very popular today and you can have one without spending $10,000 on a home theater setup. You can have a home theater to view video, DVD, news, music video, movies and TV with your own home theater.
Create your home theater with your PC and DVD player for movies and music, and use a low-cost video projector and speakers. A darn good home theater can be setup using a PC, computer DVD, low-cost speakers, and a TV or a low-cost video projector.
In smaller homes, apartments, or condos putting in a large home theater does not make sense. To have a good home theater, you can use PC equipment and get the video, music, news, and TV you want. You already own a PC, use your PC as your system for DVD, movies, music, news, and video in your home theater.
Your home theater will need a few basic items for the PC in order to play DVD, video, music, news, and other TV programs. If your PC has a DVD player installed, then that DVD can work as your video and music source. If not, purchase a PC DVD player for about $30-$40. With your PC based DVD player, you are ready to connect to the rest of the home theater video, music, and TV components.
The other home theater components you need are speakers and video. The speakers are driven by your PC. There are low-cost speakers to provide great surround sound from your PC computer while watching your DVD movies or watching TV in your home theater (see list of components at the bottom.)
If you have a large TV, use your TV as your video and TV display. If not, look at using a low-cost video projector for large video and TV viewing. There are many video projectors on the market that cost less than a small to mid-sized TV.
Depending on how big you want your video and TV display, you can start with a video projector like the Mitsubishi PK-10. It shows movies on a display of up to 40” for about $370. This video and TV can be projected onto a white cloth or an inexpensive video projection screen material.
For a little more, get larger video projection that can be up to many fee of video and TV display. These video projectors start at about $500. For a small home theater, there is no need to invest $10,000 for a video and TV projector.
All home theater components (PC, video, TV, music, DVD, projections, etc) are easy to assemble. With your PC, the other video, DVD, and music components be purchased for less than $500. If you want to watch TV for news, movies, and music video you can add a PC to TV card for $100-$150. This allows you to watch TV, news, music video, movies, and DVD from a TV source through the PC onto your home theater system.
Spend some time shopping and comparing the DVD, video, and TV components and looking at your budget. With a little time spent on research, you can have a great home theater using your PC, TV, and DVD player even if you live in a small space.
PC, Video, DVD, and home theater Component References