An essential part of any home theater is a surround sound system that successfully immerses you in “sound all around.” For example, when enjoying your favorite Star Wars movie, you want to feel as if you are right there on the bridge of the Millennium Falcon with Han, Chewy, Luke, and Leia, or riding piggyback with an Ewok on the forest moon of Endor. True surround sound does that for you, due to the strategic placement of various types of speakers in the room. All of the various sounds from the movie soundtrack are fed into different channels of your system, making it possible to direct those sounds to your ears in realistic progression from any location in the room. Just think about all the sounds entailed in such a movie – from the roar of a speeder to the hum of a Light Sabre, to the chatter of Ewoks and the howl of a Wookie, it’s all distinct - yet blended - by a state-of-the-art surround system.

Your home theater system consists of numerous components that must work together flawlessly to create the WOW effect that you crave.

Im glad to bring you the third session in our AV 101 series, “What the Heck is 4k UHD and HDR and do I Want It?” As I have mentioned before in the AV101 article series, there are a ton confusing terms and acronyms in the audio/video industry. This can make it extremely difficult to understand what you are buying and what you need to get the best performance out of your system. Today we are going to try and explain another set of terms and what they mean to your Home Entertainment experience; 4K, UHD and HDR.

Welcome to the second session in AV Enthusiast’s AV 101 series, What is a Smart Home? We hear the term “smart home” thrown around in the media, in web articles and on the news. It is used when talking about energy efficiency, home automation and convenience. These are all correct, but are only parts of what makes a home “smart” Today we will try and help you understand how all of these things can be combined to offer you a connected home environment that offers convenience, flexibility, and an enhanced lifestyle in an easy to use interface.