"How Much Should I Spend On Home Theater?"

$500 HTIB system or $100,000 custom
built, high performance home theater?

The neatest thing about home theater today is that you can buy home theater on almost any budget.  The closer you want your experience to resemble what you experience in your local movie theater, the more expensive it will be.  High-end, custom home theaters installed in a dedicated home theater room with theater seating and an electronic projection screen and automated lighting can exceed $100,000.

What is HTIB?  A home theater in a box is a surround sound receiver and matched surround sound speakers packaged all in the same box.  Some HTIBs include a DVD player.  Prices generally range from about $300-$2000+, with the most popular price range being $400 to about $800.  See our pick for the best home theater in a box under $500.

If you are not that picky about sound quality and you've already got a TV and will be just adding a home theater system to it, you could get away with spending as little as a few hundred dollars.  Believe it or not, we've seen DVD home theater systems priced under $100!  Buyer beware.

Count on spending up to 20% of the price of your entire audio/video system on all the audio/video cables and speaker wires needed to properly connect it all.  You will also need a surge protector/power center to plug it all into.

Don't forget to figure for any furniture you will need to place your home theater system on.  Almost everyone will need at least an entertainment center or TV stand to put the electronics in.  Flat screen plasma or LCD televisions require a wall mount bracket if you want to mount them on the wall.

Small speakers might need to be mounted on the wall or placed on top of speaker stands.

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A complete home theater speaker system includes 6 speakers.  This is where you shouldn't be afraid to spend some money.  10 years from now, your speakers will probably still sound almost like new, where the rest of your a/v system might be old technology.

Especially if you've got enough room and you plan on listening to a lot of music, we recommend some good quality tower speakers as 2 of the 6 speakers.  These will be to the left and right of your television.

After you've chosen your front speakers, the rest is simple.  If at all possible, buy the SAME BRAND and SAME SERIES (if possible) of center channel speaker and rear surround speakers.  This will ensure that the sound of your surround sound speakers blend well together.

Pre-matched home theater packages take the guesswork out of matching a home theater speaker system.

5.1 home theater speaker systems start

Basic brand name progressive scan DVD players start under $100 and better quality, more full-featured DVD players approach $1000+.

Home Theater TV

Mainstream high definition TVs and HDTV-ready televisions range from about $1000 to about $7000 for the Sony 70 inch TV.

The LARGEST high definition, flat screen plasma TVs sell for more than $20,000, although smaller, high definition ready models can be bought for $5000.  Gateway has been heavily advertising the lowest priced plasmas on the market, starting under $3000.  Although these are just EDTV (not capable of displaying true HDTV picture resolution) the picture will be excellent for DVDs, digital cable, and digital satellite.  You also need to figure the price of any wall mounting hardware or a TV stand.  A front video projector and good quality projection screen can easily run $5000 to $100,000+

Don't forget to allocate up to 20% of the price of your home theater system to audio, video, and speaker cables.  Don't forget a Monster Power Center.

Cambridge