How to make a home theater with your own hands?

The idea to create a home theater with your own hands is very tempting. Especially if you do not have the means to buy it, but there are hands that can do wonders. Suppose you already have certain skills and skills for building a home theater, but where can I get a diagram and at least a superficial assembly manual that would serve as a kind of cheat sheet? The answer is here. We will consider how to make a home theater with your own hands and do not go broke on details.

Home theater: concept and description

Home theater from the point of view of home appliances is a certain connecting element which unites columns, the TV, the projector, etc. in a single whole. It contains the input and output ports through which the peripherals are connected. The complete set of home theaters, which are produced from the assembly line, can be the most diverse: with acoustics, with a DVD-player, a projector or without them. Anyway, almost any home theater you can buy additional equipment with all the necessary functions.

There is also another interpretation of this phrase. Thanks to the ingenious Japanese who invented the mini-system, a home theater made by oneself means a device consisting of a cardboard box and a multimedia device. Therefore, in the domestic Internet space, there are increasing questions about how to make a home theater with their own hands from a phone and a box. To determine which of the devices you want to make, we will consider several possible options.

What do you need to create a home theater?

To make a home theater with their own hands in its classical sense, you need to decide on the bundle. The simplest and most straightforward system should consist of the following elements:

• Devices for watching movies (TV / projector);
• Devices for sound reproduction (acoustic system);
• Source of the signal.

Naturally, all these devices can not be assembled by hand. Of course, if you are an unrecognized genius in assembling household appliances, then everything is possible for you. But for the average user you will need some parts that you still have to buy. We will not run ahead and consider all the elements of the home theater in order.

A TV or a projector?

To determine how to make a home theater with your own hands, you need to select the device through which the image will be projected. There are only two options: a TV or a projector. If the task is to maximally approximate the atmosphere of the cinema to home conditions, then, of course, your choice should be stopped on the projector. On the other hand, a TV with a wide diagonal is available in almost every home, so why buy or make other devices? To make it easier for you to decide the choice, we will bring advantages and disadvantages of both devices.

Projector: advantages and disadvantages

It is impossible to imagine what would have happened if the cinema had shown movies through huge TV sets. Probably, the atmosphere of viewing the film in a specially equipped hall would be completely ruined, and rare trips to the cinema would completely lose all meaning.

Advantages of the projector at home:

• Compactness;
• The size of the projected image is limited only by the size of the wall on which the picture will be displayed;
• High image quality;
• Because of reflected light, the load on the organs of vision is reduced.

Frankly speaking, this equipment has its own shortcomings, which are more numerous in number than advantages. Therefore, the practicality of this device can be questioned.

Disadvantages:

• For a high-quality picture transfer, you need to have absolute darkness in the room;
• Low image clarity when watching some TV channels because of their poor quality of broadcast;
• It's impossible to watch video without audio equipment;
• In projectors you need to regularly change the lamp;
• In DLP-projectors on white areas of the image you can see the dispersion of light (rainbow);
• In comparison with new generation TVs, there is a small viewing angle, low brightness and contrast of the projected image.

Given that the shortcomings of the projectors are really lacking, they are installed only by those people who have personal attachment to this equipment, or the ardent fans of the cinema.

All the pros and cons of installing the TV

It's much easier to assemble a home theater with your own hands when the home has a modern widescreen TV. In addition to this factor, there are a number of special advantages of the TV in front of the projector:

• High-quality, bright, sharp and clear image;
• Lighting in the room does not affect the quality of the picture;
• You can watch movies without speakers;
• Ease and ease of configuration and management;
• durability.

On the functional to the TV there are no comments. With their direct purpose, modern devices cope perfectly. But there are other aspects in which they lose projectors:

• Widescreen televisions are not an expensive pleasure;
• A large load on the visual apparatus in comparison with the projector;
• The TV screen takes up a lot of space;
• Limiting image size to the diagonal of the TV;
• Limited viewing angles.

Choosing equipment is also worthwhile, based on what it will be used for. If you plan to assemble a home theater with your own hands for watching TV, then it's worth choosing your TV. And if the home theater is mainly used to watch films from satellite TV or from Blu-ray media, it is more advisable to purchase or make the projector.

How to make a projector by yourself?

Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to make a home theater with your own hands out of a box and a magnifying glass. In fact, the projector is a fairly simple device, which is very simple to make independently. To do this you will need:

• Shoe box;
• Magnifier with a tenfold increase;
• stationery knife;
• pencil;
• insulating tape;
• clip;
• The device from which the image (smartphone) will originate.

After all the necessary materials are prepared, you can proceed directly to the assembly itself. It includes the following steps:

• Cut out the hole for the magnifying glass in the shoe box. It should be located exactly in the center. To determine where the central point is, you need to connect the corners of the plane diagonally. The point of intersection of two lines is the center of symmetry of the rectangle.
• Install the magnifier in the hole made and fix it with tape.
• We make a support for a mobile phone. To do this, you can use a regular paper clip or the remaining pieces of cardboard.
• We are looking for a place to install the projector. Remember that when working with a projector in the room must be absolute darkness. It is also worth noting that the picture will be fed from the smartphone, so choose a place for the projector, next to which there is an outlet.
• We download a special application on the smartphone, which allows you to manually rotate the image. If this is not done, the projected image will be displayed on the surface upside down.
• Make a hole for the cable from the charger.

As you can see, making a home theater with your own hands from a phone and a usual cardboard box is quite easy. There is no need to spend money on expensive equipment, accessories, etc. to recreate the atmosphere of the cinema at home. If you want to improve the quality of the projected image, then as the source of the picture is better to use a tablet or laptop. The problem can arise only with the search for a lens of suitable size, since the display of these devices is much larger than the screen of the smartphone.

Acoustic system

When old and long-forgotten columns are dusting at home, why not use them to create a home theater sound system ? Many do not know how to make a good home theater 5.1 with their own hands (we are talking about sound) from old wooden speakers, because they need to adapt to modern digital output.

To begin with, there must be an optical or coaxial output in the device that needs to connect the speaker system. This can be a TV, a digital tuner , etc. If there is one, you need to prepare the appropriate cable for it. For a coaxial output, this is an RCA cable with a resistance of 75 ohms, for an optical cable, a fiber optic cable. Then examine the back panel of your speaker system. On it you should see 6 outputs on the speakers (2 - on the front, 2 - on the rear, subwoofer, center speaker) and 3 3.5 mm connectors. To connect a digital device to an old speaker system, you need an audio decoder.

What is an audio decoder?

This device is designed to convert digital audio to analog. As a rule, on the front panel of the device there are three outputs: optical, coaxial and USB. It is clear that from this side there is a connection of the decoder with the TV, the tuner and so on. On the rear panel there are six outputs to the speaker speakers and a video output to the TV. Sometimes, the coaxial output may not be on the front panel of the audio decoder, but on the back.

The process of connecting the speaker system can be combined in a few simple steps:

• Connect the audio source to the audio decoder using a fiber optic cable through the corresponding output.
• Using six RCA cables, connect the decoder to the speaker system.
• Choose the remote that comes with the audio decoder, the required input (optical, coaxial or USB).
• We test the acoustic system and enjoy high-quality sound.

The old speaker system can work for many years to come. And the sound quality in it is much better than in Chinese plastic speakers. Therefore, the age of some electrical appliances is not at all an excuse to drag them to the dump.

Home theater from computer

If you can make a home theater from your smartphone, you can build a whole entertainment center from the computer. Home PC allows you to connect together a game console, a music center and a satellite receiver. If you decide to make a home theater from your computer with your own hands, then you should be prepared for the fact that it's not so simple. First, you need to collect all the necessary accessories that will be needed to modify the PC:

• Personal Computer;
• TV tuner cards;
• Linux distribution;
• software.

Below is a short guide to how to make a home theater with your own hands. At home, you can create a media center from a computer only with the help of special software, for example TiVo or MythTV. The paid software (TiVo) is much easier to install, but then you have to pay for the subscription and additional features of the program, if any. Free software will allow the user to save considerably on converting his personal computer, but to install it, you have to work a little.

Step-by-Step Guide to Convert PC to Home Theater:

• First you need to purchase and install a TV tuner, given the processor's performance. For example, for 2006 processors with a capacity of 600 MHz it is worth choosing a single TV tuner model Hauppauge PVR-150.
• If in addition to the practical application of the PC is still important for its aesthetics, then it is worthwhile to additionally purchase a housing for a future home theater. On sale there are special cases for HTPC (computer for home theater).
• Next, configure the BIOS. In its configurations, you need to set a timeout for the system in standby mode. In the future, this will save electricity and prolong the viability of your PC.
• Download and install the Linux distribution. For example, Ubuntu. It can be found on the web and download completely free.
• Reboot the system and make sure that Ubuntu recognizes the installed TV tuner.
• We install the complete software package MythTV, strictly following the installation recommendations.
• We set up MythTV to start autonomously when the system is turned on.

Thus, you can simply and quickly assemble a home theater yourself. Photo, video, and audio files will now be displayed without any problems on the big screen, creating an atmosphere of the cinema at home.

Mini-cinema with own hands

If you have not yet found a suitable way how to assemble a home theater yourself, then we offer you the simplest and most original version. This way you can even give your name - a homemade movie theater for the lazy. To build it you will need:

• cardboard box;
• smartphone;
• Four screws;
• Two elastic bands for money;
• scissors;
• Scotch.

As can be seen from the set of items, this method allows you to make a home theater with your own hands out of the box. The build process, as a rule, takes no more than five minutes and includes the following steps:

• Glue the edges of the box with scotch tape.
• At the bottom of the box, cut out the window for the smartphone. To do this, attach the smartphone to the center of the box and circle it with a simple pencil. Then cut out the hole through the contour with scissors or a clerical knife.
• From the bottom of one of the sides of the box, cut a semicircle with a radius of about 20 cm.
• From pieces of cardboard make in the inside of the box a frame for the window under the smartphone.
• On the reverse side, screw in the four screws and secure the smartphone with rubber bands so that it fits snugly against the frame.

Home mini-cinema is ready for use. This funny invention was invented by enterprising Japanese, who are famous for their extraordinary thinking. So if you can not make the projector out of the box, you can use it for this device. Especially when you already know how to make a home theater with your own hands without a magnifying glass. You can use it whenever and wherever you want. But it is better, of course, not to get involved, after all, we are not in Japan. In our country, not many will be able to appreciate such a self-made device. Therefore, do not lie in the park with a box on your head - they will not understand.