Brief overview of Home Theater Systems and Reviews

Product reviews are a good place to start your search for home theatre system. If you’re just starting to find out about them, consider these points of interest for the novice buyer.

The primary manufacturers include Panasonic, Sony, Bose, JBL, Yamaha, Samsung, Onkyo and many lesser-known companies. You’ll find others, as their are many new competitors in the home theatre market, but quality is assured with the Big Name’s that have been in the market for years.

CNET.com provides reviews on most of the products on the market today, as does Consumer Reports. It would be impossible to review all the entries into the home theatre market, or to even list them. But if you’re just looking for some basic information on manufacturers and their fundamentals, look no further.

First you’ll want to decide whether you want a bundled system, one which includes everything you need to set up a home theatre system, or whether you want to purchase your components separately. If you already have HDTV or a DVD player as your starting point, you may skip past a bundled system, adding components to your existing hardware.

If you are starting from scratch, the bundled systems are reliable for compatibility, and take some of the guesswork and assembly issues out of the equation. Of course, if you are considering a bundled package, your budget immediately becomes the primary consideration.

If money is no object, then Panasonic, Sony, Bose, JBL and Yamaha offer high-end quality that competitors strive to match. Onkyo is working hard to be competitive in quality on their high-end line, and Samsung also offers a good value in a quality-to-price comparison against it’s more-established, and pricier, competitors.

Audiovox tends to emphasize price over quality, but their high-end units still compare well with the competition. If you familiarize yourself with the specifications of the most expensive units, it will be easier to find favorable comparisons when your emphasis is more on price.

You’ll want to compare features on all the bundled products within your price range, but it’s relatively simple to do by visiting the many merchant sites that sell these products. Often, they will supply comparisons between their products, and the specifications of the bundled packages, as well as the individual components.

It may be confusing at first, but after comparing features like watts-per-channel and video resolution specifications, you’ll find that your own price-range will eliminate most of the products, and you’ll be left with a list of packages that suit your needs and budget. (You might also find that assembling your own mixed system is a better value after all, since individual components can be offered at sale prices, sometimes in limited supply, that make them attractive as well).

But if you don’t have the expertise to make sure all your components are compatible and will result in the quality you expect when assembled, the bundles are certainly easier to shop and compare. Take into account that Blu-ray technology is expected to be the industry standard for playback hardware in the next few years, and that DVI is expected to be replaced by HDMI on the audio side. HDMI has backward-compatibility with DVI audio, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility with older audio systems if you spend a little extra to get it.

Products that are expected to become obsolete in the future will be offered at bargain prices, so your choice should also take into account these factors which will determine whether you are buying a long-term solution for your home theatre needs, or the next outdated system that will need to be replaced once technolgical advances determine whether movies will be available in that format.

Most of the high-end manufacturers have already decided on their preference for Blu-ray technology, so expect to see dramatic price reductions in their older models. Specifications don’t always tell you the whole story about your purchasing power as it pertains to hardware, so ask questions about the choices you will be asked to make, and their compatibility with each other.