TVs & Projectors

My first brush with home theater was in a large, dedicated room equipped with a top-shelf cathode-ray-tube (CRT) front projector, a Faroudja video processor, a 100-inch (diagonal) screen, and a killer sound system. Subsequently, I've measured every home theater experience against that one, making me a tough customer to please.

Anyone who's set up a home theater system knows how much work is involved. Once you find the right TV and speaker system, you need to round up a stack of components, including a DVD player, a video recorder, and, perhaps, a satellite receiver. Then you have to spin a frightening web of wires to route all of those signals through your A/V receiver or preamp/surround processor.

Television is something we all know and love -- sometimes without good reason. Critics routinely argue that shows like Temptation Island and WWF Smackdown! have pushed us several steps down the evolutionary ladder, but people still watch them. One thing that has evolved is the technology for displaying video images.