Verticle TV & Music

Bringing the cinema home

home cinema systems are more than a simple TV/video set-up. Instead they are strictly speaking, an attempt at recreating the experience of actually visiting a cinema theatre, providing enhanced audio and visual quality in a domestic environment.

Of course not all aspects of the cinema-going experience are that desirable. Only the most obsessive and dedicated amateur cinema manager would recreate cramped seats, sticky floors and groups of strangers talking too loudly. Home cinema is simply an attempt at creating the same kind of immersive, powerful experience of a 20 foot cinema screen with surround sound speakers in a much more convenient, comfortable and familiar environment.

Today, home cinema systems are fairly common. The huge growth in popularity - and the dramatic drop in price - of hi-fi sound systems, surround sound speakers and widescreen televisions has helped transform the living room TV into something capable of delivering a rough approximation of the original experience. Coupled with the availability of high quality recording media such as DVD's or Blu-Ray disc's, the home cinema has arguably never been more popular.

Still most of these set-ups pale in comparison to the high quality efforts made by the most enthusiastic advocates of home-cinema.

For most people, a home cinema is likely to be a mish-mash of separate components (Dvd Player, TV, Sound System, games console, etc) brought together over time and on the basis of cost rather than quality. These component systems will be far different from the truly custom-built home cinema, which will have the very best of each system –input devices, audio and visual output and most importantly (yet least acknowledged) the processing systems of surround sound recorders,home cinema amplifiers and visual signal receivers. Crucially, they're also the most likely sets to possess a HD projector - allowing them to recreate the size of the cinema screen as well as its quality.

This technology - of HD video and surround sound audio within reach of most consumers - is a far cry from the beginnings of home cinema in the 50's, when portable movie projectors could play 9mm film and for the most part, only without sound. Even by the 70's, when monoaural sound and Super 8mm film made an introduction, home cinema was an awkward and expensive affair.

Things improved slightly by the late 70's with the introduction of the VCR, which killed the consumer market for 8mm film though its only real benefit was the added ease, rather than an increase in quality. Throughout the 80's VCRs would drive home cinema, until the introduction of DVD video and Dolby Digital in the 90's.

These innovations allowed domestic set ups to recreate surround sound and high quality video if the right equipment was used and to a great extent, made home cinema an affordable investment and past-time for the average person. The situation has only improved since then, with the price of HD equipment dropping dramatically and the introduction of even more audio channels to create a more cinematic feeling.

About the Author

HiFix is the internet shop window for some of the world's greatest Hi Fi products like hi fi speakers, hi fi equipment, hi fi accessories, hi fi headphones, home cinema systems & many other hi fi systems from top brands like denon hi fi, sennheiser headphone, Mission Speakers & wharfedale speakers at affordable prices.

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