1. The Room-(the most important element of any home theater)
2. Seating
3. Screen
4. Front Projector
5. Theater Interior & Acoustics
6. Speaker System
7. Equipment Racks or A/V Furniture-(Where to put all the equipment?)
8. A/V Receiver or Separates(individual Preamp/Processors and Amplifiers)
9. Source Equipment-(i.e. Blu-ray Player, Game Console, HD Cable box, Karaoke Anyone?)
10. Control System (One remote to control it all)
11. Networking Equipment (Routers, Gigabit Ethernet Switches, Ethernet-Over-Power,etc) to supply robust network connection to your a/v devices and control system
12. Power Management-(Power-line Conditioners, Surge Protectors,Pure-Sine Wave UPS Systems)
13. Cables & Interconnects
14. Installation Labor/Programming/Calibration

The budget for your home theater will be divided amongst these categories.  These categories may vary slightly depending if your building a new theater or simply outfitting an existing room.  If your building a home theater as part of new home construction, then there are areas related to the construction of your room that you will also need to consider.  In this situation, I highly recommend seeking out the services of a professional consulting firm like Kasabe Designs to help guide you.  They can help make all those decisions  and oversee the project to completion to ensure your theater is built right.  They also can potentially save you thousands of dollars and help you avoid the disappointment of not getting the experience you were expecting. I can’t stress how important proper planning is to any home theater project regardless of budget.

No matter what your budget may be, it is important to make well thought out decisions regarding products and services you choose to complete your home theater.  It is also important to take a holistic approach to your system design.  The goal is to choose components that compliment each other and, most importantly, compliment the room they will be installed in.  In fact, every decision you make should be made with the room in mind.  Depending on what you envision for your home theater or what you have seen of how you want your theater to look  or sound like will help you to determine how much your willing to invest in your home theater. The great news, nowadays, is the cost of systems components as drastically come down, while the technology has exponentially improved.  It is now possible to design fantastic system for very little compared to just even a couple of years ago.

In upcoming blogs, we will explore more, in depth, each category and discuss how to choice the right components to begin your home theater.