Creating an Outdoor Home Theater

Outdoor Home Theater What images come into your mind when "home theater" is mentioned? You'll most likely think of darkly lit rooms, surround sound speakers, giant televisions and big projector screens.

Home theaters are so popular nowadays that homeowners prefer their house plans to include a home theater. But did you know that there is no set rule that a home theater must be exclusively put indoors?

For those occasions when you're entertaining many guests or the weather is fine, an outdoor home theater may just be the answer to a livelier, more fun get together.

An outdoor home theater isn't really a permanent thing, simply because you have nature and weather to contend with. However, if you're up to giving your family and friends a great movie watching experience, you can try setting up an outdoor home theater system just for the occasion. Your patio or your backyard is a good place to set up an outdoor home theater system.

So how do you set up an outdoor home theater? The first thing you need to consider is the screen for the outdoor home theater. Before you start protesting that you don't have the money to buy a screen for an outdoor home theater, you can keep your wallet in your pocket and you need not look farther than your closet.

* Find a crisp, white bed sheet that's big enough.

* Secure the sheet on a fence or against a wall. Make sure that it's secure enough that it won't get overly wrinkled by the slightest wind.

* If you don't have a white sheet you can use or it's simply too windy outside, you can buy an inexpensive portable outdoor screens.

Your outdoor home theater needs a DVD player and a video projector:

* For about $400, you can get a good quality video projector. This may prove to be a good investment if you plan on regularly inviting family and friends to watch in your outdoor home theater. Otherwise, you can rent one of these out for a day or two.

* You can use your existing DVD player or you can buy an inexpensive one just for outdoor home theater use. The latter would save you time from unhooking the DVD player in your indoor home theater and then hooking it back up again after using it. For less than $100, you'll be able to find a DVD player that will do a good job.

The next things you need for your outdoor home theater are the power sources, which will enable you and the others to see and hear the movies:

* You can use the receiver you already have or you can buy a basic two-channel stereo receiver.

* If you have big, old speakers, take them down from the attic and use them for your outdoor home theater.

So now you have the screen, projector, DVD player, receiver and speakers. Now you need wires and cables to hook them all up together.

* Connect the DVD player's component video cables to the projector.

* Connect the DVD player's two analog cables and the speaker wires to the receiver.

* You'll most likely need an extension cord and power strip that has extra outlets so you can plug in all your outdoor home theater components.

You may want to keep your outdoor home theater components in one central unit, such as a cabinet, shelf or wide enough table. To make it a pleasant viewing experience for everyone, grab comfy chairs suitable for outdoors like lounge chairs.

So you see, home theaters are not just for indoors. You can watch movies with family and friends in an outdoor home theater.

Eric Love is The Home Theater Guy and he writes daily about all aspects of home theater | home theater systems. Click here to find out more about Custom Home Theater.