Gadget Review: How to Build the Perfect Home Theater System

If you think you need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a state-of-the-art high definition home theater, then you haven't been television shopping in a while. Prices have dropped dramatically over the last several years, so now is the time to update your living room with the newest and best HDTVs. Once you have your new television , you can upgrade your DVD to Blu-Ray, and toss the old VHS VCR and get an HD-capable DVR.

LCD vs. Plasma

LCD screens are brighter, and weigh less than plasma. Plasma still has a size advantage so if you’re looking for something bigger than 60”, you’ll probably be looking at plasma. Plasma also has smoother motion on-screen, and deeper contrast. Plasma screens can get “burn-in,” images which are permanently imprinted on the screen like faint ghost pictures, but newer sets minimize this risk considerably. LCD and plasma screens have about an equal screen life-expectancy of about 50,000 hours.

Blu-Ray

The long-running competition between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray has finally been settled, so it’s safe for those of you who picked Betamax in the 1980s to get a Blu-Ray disc player now. Your HDTV deserves nothing less than the 1080p resolution that a Blu-Ray disc player such as the Sony BDP S300 provides. You don’t even have to worry if you have a huge collection of standard DVDs; your new Blu-Ray disc player can actually upscale the quality of those older discs, making your movies look almost like true high-definition.

DVR

Now you have your HDTV and your Blu-Ray, but what about recording your beautiful high-definition channels when you’re not at home? You don’t have to sacrifice quality with new HD-compatible DVRs, like the TIVO HD 180HR, which have huge storage drives so you preserve every bit of quality without having to schedule your life around your television viewing schedule.