Entertaining spaces

March 1, 2011

There’s an art – or perhaps even science – to creating a home for your new entertainment system.

Bringing all your home entertainment equipment home for the first time can be a daunting prospect. It’ll take a little time for the family to adjust to having this raging beast of a system in the house and your first priority should be to make sure you’re providing a comfortable space for it to live in. Here are some basic pointers for creating the optimum environment for your home entertainment system.

Let’s start with the TV. Conventional thought is that the centre of the screen should be at roughly eye height – that’s eye height when you’re sitting on your chosen rear-end receptacle. The reason for this is really just so you’re not straining to look up as you watch the TV, so the very best way to determine the correct height is to sit on the couch and decide what’s comfortable for you.

An existing TV cabinet might make the choice for you, but if you’re planning to wall mount the TV, Samsung’s ultra slim wall mount will fix it super-close to the wall, so it hangs just like a picture.

Speakers of the house

To position the speakers, follow the standard layout if possible: centre speaker directly above or beneath the TV screen, front two to either side of the TV and angled slightly towards the seating position, rear two at either end of your seating area or just behind, preferably elevated to ear level, and subwoofer on the floor, but ideally not in a corner (which makes for boomy, over-loud bass).

Your room layout and dimensions may affect this, of course, as will the speakers in the pack. ‘Tallboy’ speakers are already tall, so don’t need separate stands, but if you choose a system with all satellites, optional speaker stands for the rear two will be available.

To help you in this, many home theatre systems come with an automatic speaker-calibration function that will adjust all relevant signals to obtain maximum possible performance from the speakers wherever you’ve decided to place them.

Making connections

To connect all your devices together, HDMI is the go: these are one-cable solutions that will carry hi-def audio and video at the same time at the highest available quality, and well worth the investment.

With HDMI connections, Samsung’s BD Wise feature can also do its work, ensuring that all your video and audio – regardless of format – is transferred at its optimum between equipment.

And finally, if you’ve bought a Smart TV, establishing or upgrading to a wireless network will make cross-device communication effortless.