Home Theater
The home theater is up and running. We've enjoyed it quite a bit. To help break it in, I had several friends over for Game 1 of the World Series. Even though FOX didn't broadcast the games in HiDef, they did broadcast them in widescreen format. Everybody seemed to enjoy the experience.
When the Chiefs played on Monday night (ABC has done a great job of pushing out HiDef content, including MNF), the game was absolutely stunning. The ABC HiDef format just seems to really shine on my home theater projector.
Last night, I watched a little bit of Monsters, Inc. The colors were bright and beautiful. Very enjoyable.
I would say the most stunning experience I've had in my new home theater was watching the new Lion King DVD with its Home Theater Sound Mix. The sound engineers did a great job remixing the soundtrack to match most home theater applications (smaller rooms, etc). I think more DVD's will be doing this in the future. Taking a soundtrack that was engineered for a large theater with lots of people into a small home theater isn't quite the optimum solution. You will find that the studios don't use the rear speakers quite as heavily as you would think. But folks watching at home expect to hear lots of sounds from their rear speakers. The Disney mix did a great job of filling the room with sound without muddying the soundstage. Great use of the rears.