My Home Theater Equipment Selection

Making a final decision regarding equipment purchases and purchasing can be done relatively late in the build process. In particular, AVRs, TVs, and, to a lesser extent, projectors add features and lower prices over time, so waiting to purchase can be beneficial. Further, one needn't get everything all at once. Initially, I staggered purchases over time and made do with some currently owned items. Then, I slowly upgraded over the first 6-9 months, followed by selective upgrades as new features became available.

This page discusses the rationale for selecting the major equipment items. From a feature perspective, the equipment is up-to-date at the time of this writing, with the glaring exception of the projector still being 1080p.

AV Equipment Selection

AVSelection

Last Updated: 12/10/2024

The equipment list is detailed in the table below. Our goal was to keep the theater low-cost, so we initially had a budget of $10,000 for the original build. The list below contains the current equipment, with several components upgraded to 4K UHD. Some of the original equipment was already owned, so the original cost was closer to $6,000. Adding up the prices in the list below, which includes purchases between now and the original build, we ended up with close to $10,000 for the electronics and related items. The costs of the chairs, carpet, panels, molding, electrical, wood, paint, etc., are not included in this total price.

The reasoning for choosing some of the more critical equipment is provided below.

AVR and Source Device Selection

Denon AVR-X3600—This AVR was purchased in 2020 to upgrade to 4K/ATMOS, replacing the Onkyo NR709. The 3600 does not support HDMI v2.1, but this feature is unnecessary for our viewing. At the time of purchase, this AVR was the least expensive (~$1000) option to enable future migration to 7.1.4 surround sound (with an external 2-channel amplifier). We are using an old receiver to supply the 2-channel amplifier.

Panasonic UB420—Since the old Epson projector did not support Dolby Vision, and even today, many projectors don't support Dolby Vision and/or do tone mapping, the UB420 was a good choice; otherwise, if Dolby Vision were required, the UB820 would be the more costly but much better choice. If I were to purchase today, I’d choose the recently available UB450 with features similar to the UP820. The UP420 replaced a Sony BDP-3700 Blu-ray player, except that we still use this player for regular Blu-rays and the occasional music CD.

Nvidia Shield Pro—The two best-reviewed streaming devices are this one and AppleTV. Both support high-quality video and audio formats from all major services. Arguably, AppleTV has a cleaner and simpler user interface, but I decided to stay in the Google ecosystem and avoid the many (no-name, cheap) Chinese brands.

ART Phono Plus—This seems unnecessary for playing records because the Denon AVR has a phono preamp. However, this preamp has USB and TOS link outputs. I use the USB connection to connect to a Windows 11 PC to digitize vinyl records. Even more impressive is that this unit costs $100 and, despite the reasonable cost, performs well as a preamp (review).

Custom PC—In this theater, we initially used a PC as a video player, DVR, and Blu-ray player. Still, over the last 5 years, all our TV watching has moved to streaming on the Shield, and Blu-ray has moved to a dedicated player, so the PC is now limited to:

General computer stuff. Browsing, Office, etc. (on a big screen).
Some media viewing is more convenient on a PC.
Digitizing vinyl records and managing our audio library.

The PC used an older system that was not purpose-built for the theater and contained an Xeon 24 CPU processor, 32 GB of RAM, 6 TB of disk storage, and a GTX1060. Since the computer is remote, I needed a good wireless laptop media keyboard, and the Logitech K830 Keyboard. Even though this is an older system, it is way more powerful than required for this usage.

Speaker Selection

Speakers were a more complicated purchase decision. Many of the tradeoffs regarding speaker selection were discussed here. The key ones were/are:

The front left, center, and right speakers should be from the same vendor to better match the timbre.
The subwoofer handles low frequencies. Therefore, all speakers' low-frequency response need not be below 80-150Hz.
Small satellites may be from the same or different vendors for the Surround and ATMOS speakers.
The total speaker budget was ~$3000 and was divided as follows:

Front Speakers 30-40%
Surround Speakers ≤30% (this was before ATMOS was added)
Subwoofers 30-40%

Figure 1 Elac Uni-Fi (left) SVS Satellite (right) Note: The Satellite is much smaller than Uni-Fi.

This budget is low for a dedicated home theater. If I were to increase it, I'd prioritize the front speakers and subwoofers. (Bass-lovers likely would flip the priority, and they would not be wrong.)

Elac Uni-Fi was chosen for L/C/R because it was new and well-reviewed at the time of purchase (for example, by CNET). Later, I found that it did not measure as well as expected and was less efficient.
The SVS Prime Satellites were chosen for surrounds, rears, and 2 ATMOS because they are well regarded and small, thus making them a good budget-friendly choice.

Screen and Projector Selection

It was previously established that the projector screen needed to be a fixed-frame 115-inch screen, but a couple of additional details must be worked on before finalizing the screen selection. Because this room is light-controlled and speakers were not placed behind the screen, I did not have to worry about the various ambient light-rejecting (ALR) or acoustically transparent (ATS) screens. However, I still needed to decide on the screen materials.

The primary specification to decide upon was "Screen Gain," a lousy name for a parameter that defines/measures the amount of light from the projector that the screen reflects to the viewer. Screen Gain can be roughly divided into three categories.

Gain between ~0.6 and ~0.9—These are typically grey screens, which could be used when there is a lot of ambient light. The grey screen would make the dark screen areas appear darker, which may be more pleasing. (But I could not understand how useful this is because it also darkens the bright areas of the image. In a light controlled room, this did not seem to make sense.

Gain between 1.0 and 1.3—In this range of gain, the screen provides ample light reflection for light-controlled viewing and reflects the light more uniformly across the viewing area. That is, the light loss from the center of the room to the sides is much less than that of high-gain screens. Generally, a screen with this range of screen gain is a good choice for a light-controlled room. A 1.3 gain provides a slightly brighter screen but a narrower viewing angle.

Gain greater than 2.0—This screen type reflects more light directly back toward the projector, so screen brightness varies more, and for those viewers sitting off axis, the screen is noticeably dimmer. Further, with large screens, the viewer can more easily see that the center of the screen may be brighter than the edges. These types of screens can help increase the brightness of a room with ambient light. This type of screen may also be coupled with off-axis light rejection features, so it is typically best suited to well-lit rooms.

For more information regarding screen gain, projectorcentral.com has an excellent write-up defining screen gain and discussing the tradeoffs between various gains.

Another consideration when selecting the screen is that we'd like to ensure that the screen displays colors accurately (good color uniformity). Unfortunately, many (most?) screen makers do not specify this, so I relied on reviews to judge this.

Carada Brilliant White—This was the screen material selected. It has a screen gain of 1.3. Reviews around the time of purchase suggested that Carada's material was good in this respect.

Carada was a budget-friendly option for fixed screens, but sadly, it went out of business several years ago. If I were to purchase a similar screen today, I'd buy a Silver Ticket screen, which is even more budget-friendly than Carada.

Epson 8700UB—This was a straightforward choice for our projector at the time. With a budget of around $2000-2500 at the time of purchase, this projector or a Panasonic one was the best-reviewed choice. As of this writing, this projector should be replaced as it is only an HD projector (1080P). If the projector choice were made today, the Epson 5050UB would be near the top of the projector list at this same budget. However, direct-view TVs are approaching 115 in. in size and are coming down in price, so just getting a huge TV could be an option to wait for.

Figure 2 Epson 8700UB

Table 1. Detailed Equipment List with Cost and Power

Last Updated: 09/04/2024

Item	Equipment	Description	Cost	Power	Original	Comments
1	Denon AVR-X3600H	Surround Sound Receiver	$1000	660W	No	Replaced Onkyo TX-NR-709 (similar cost)
2	Epson 8700UB	HD Home Theater Projector	$2000	200W	Yes	The main component that is not 4K capable
3	Carada Screen	Brilliant White, 115 in. 1.78	$800	0	Yes	Criterion Frame
4	Panasonic UB420	UHD 4K Blue Ray Player	$250	28W	No	Player does not have DolbyVision. Added later.
5	Sony BDP-3700	Compact Blue Ray Player	$100	9W	Yes
6	Nvidia Shield Pro	Video Streamer	$200	40W	No	Typical Power 10W, Replaced TiVo
7	Win11 PC	Custom PC Xeon2696, 32GB	$1000	250W	Yes	Home Build PC. Replaced WMC PC.
8	Denon DP-300F	Auto Zero-Tracking Turntable	$350	2W	No	Replaced Sony PS-LX520
9	ART Phono Plus	Phono Preamp with USB	$100	2W	No	Connected to Win11 PC for audio capture.
10	Elac UB5	Left/Right Speakers	$250 (ea) x2	0	Yes
11	Elac UC5	Center Speaker	$350	0	Yes
12	SVS Prime Satellite	Surround, Back, Top Rear Speakers	$170 (ea) x6	0	Yes	2 were purchased later
13	Polk RC55i	Top Front Speakers	$130 (ea) x2	0	No
14	SVS SB12-NSD	Sealed Subwoofer	$450 (ea) x2	400W	Yes
15	Harmony Elite	Remote Control	$350	10W	No	Replaced Roomie Remote w/ Global Caché iTach, Xantech ML85K
16	Peerless PRG-UNV	Universal Projector Mount	$150	0	Yes
17	Net Gear GS116	16-Port GE Switch	$100	12W	Yes	2 switches for the whole house
18	M88600	DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem	$150	24W	Yes	For whole house
19	Asus RT AX58U	Wifi Router w/ AirMesh	$130	24W	Yes	For whole house

EquipList

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