No cinema at home
We might like to watch TV around here, but we’re far from ready for the home theatre revolution. A series of circumstances led us to within dreaming distance this weekend, until the realization struck; we live in our house, and turning it into a cinema just doesn’t work.
The first brick in the wall came with a report that our DVD player might be dead. Symptoms; none. No lights, no sound, no action. Of course it was still plugged in, so I did the math and headed off to the best place around to purchase low-end electronics: the tire store. For the very reasonable sum of thirty dollars plus tax minus fun money I was back home before supper was off the table. As such things never happen in a sequence that makes sense, I realized that we had a second “dead” player upstairs, but there was no way that I felt like going back and doing the shopping thing again. I’d been behind an elderly couple shopping for a TV and I wouldn’t want to know that they were still in the decision process. Remember when the tire store was a place to buy tires?
A “cannon” as they’re known locally (a digital video projector) was home for the weekend for storage, so there was piece number two. If we could only find an appropriate wall for projection. You see, our living area is outside the recommended dimensions for a theatre, and the couch points the wrong way. Works for the dog to watch TV, but not much else.
Then came the question of a sound system. I’ve read enough to be familiar with 2.1 and 5.1 and 7.1 and to have done the math; we don’t have anything like that. Off to the other cheap discount store where a set of 2.1 speakers (think tiny desktop pieces with a fake woofer) were purchased for use in a classroom next week. Piece number three.
We’re in line for a perfect storm. Setting up the pieces left me with the Simpsons playing too loudly on the TV, a projector beaming a logo onto the front window in a manner reminiscent of Batman and people trying not to stumble over the cables on the floor. Even the dog was on full alert. In a matter of minutes, the Hallowe’en special would start, and we weren’t in anything that resembled a home cinema. One of the sons headed off to a friend’s house, where HDTV was installed and the rest of us just “sucked it up”. Maybe in the future.
