A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to convert half of my basement into a HTPC theater.

After spending many hours online doing all kinds of research, major remodeling, my dream finally became reality.

Why a home theater instead of just a media area with a large TV?

Once you have experienced a nice home theater, you will have little desire to ever visit a regular movie theater again. (The last time I was given free movie tickets, I gave them away.) For starters, you do not have to leave the house, stand in line, wait for the movie to start, and have to deal with crowds, over priced popcorn, and poor seats. There are no little surprises such as sticky seats, heads blocking your view, or rude people (at least that you can not ask to leave.)

The picture is always in focus, the quality is always great, and the sound is awesome, the seating is comfortable, and you always have to best seats in the house. Plus if you have base shakers, your seats rumble during the action scenes!

A home theater gives new meaning to "There's no place like home".

What I am hoping to do on this site, is to make it a repository for the knowledge that I gained, from both what I learned online, but also for the "college of hard knocks".

I hope to cover subject from the basics of HTPC, audio, video, construction, wiring, props, to neat items like base shakers. (Also known as textual enhancers.)

I have added links to this site to a couple of utilities that I wrote, and a free one from elsewhere. These are utilities that I use as part of my setup, and in the case of the "Theater Setup" online tool, used to build my own theater.

I do not claim to be a professional, and I certainly do not know everything. Chances are that somethings that I assume to be truths are not, or you may have a better solution. That is why I am entering this information online in a blog style format, to encourage discussion and feedback.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I can try and give you my two cents worth, but hopefully more importantly, other in the know can give their thoughts also.