Is Home Theater Any Good in Tiny Spaces?

Most of people do not live in mansions with dedicated home theater rooms.  Nope, the majority of us spend our days and nights hunkered down in smaller spaces.  And for urbanites and university students, "smaller spaces" translates into "shoe-box size."  University students and city dwellers in particular are often confined to dorm sized studios, or one and if you’re lucky, a two bedroom apartments.  If  that sounds like you, I’ll betcha that you probably view your television shows and movies in your living room, and probably even in your bedroom.  
 

The problem is that living rooms and bedrooms have traditionally not been the ideal choice for setting up a home theater.  More often than not, the living room or bedroom in smaller homes is cluttered with lots of other stuff that get in the way of home theater gear (Think: dining tables, desks, chairs, computers, that empty box of pizza you should have thrown out last week) .   Most folks in this living arrangement don’t even bother to consider installing a home theater because they assume, for good reason, that they simply do not have the space for it.  True audiophiles and home theater purists would generally agree with that assumption, but the good news is that as technology advances and home theater becomes more mainstream, we are beginning to see a convergence between consumer grade and near-audiophile grade performance.

What’s more – manufacturers realize that the real money to be made in home theater sales is not to the classes but rather to the masses.  The majority of people do not live in designer homes with home theater rooms, and the trend among manufacturers of home theater gear has been to design equipment around the mainstream population’s space restrictions.  

A few years ago, I would have scoffed at the idea of integrating a home theater setup in a dorm, small room, or bedroom.  Today, however, the idea is not so far fetched.  In fact, one can have a pretty decent setup, albeit with some minor performance limitations.

Your home theater design and solutions options for a small room will be limited, but the bottom line listening and viewing enjoyment can be quite good, and for very little money.

When considering a home theater for your dorm, bedroom, or smaller living room, you must keep a couple of integration points in mind:

1.  Television size
2.  Speaker location

Let’s dig in to the importance of Television Size first…
 

Television Size

Bigger is not always better.  I repeat, bigger is not always better (Unfortunately, nobody ever told that to my ex-wife). In fact, in smaller rooms, a smaller set is often the better choice from a viewing quality standpoint.  

In home theater integration, it is important to consider what’s called "Optimum Viewing Distance."

The optimum TV viewing distance is correlated to the size of your television set.  In other words, if you have a large screen, you’d want to sit further away from the screen than if you had a smaller screen with the same resolution, in order to realize the same clarity and picture definition

Many people considering home theater tend to shop for the largest screen that their budget will allow, when in fact, a smaller screen would provide a much more enjoyable viewing experience (and save them some dough too).  A little bit of planning is neccesary when contemplating your TV purchase.  

I stated earlier that the optimum viewing distance is directly correlated to the screen size, but there is a caveat to that statement.  There are other factors to take in to conseration, such as resolution (720p vs. 1080p), refresh rate, contrast ratio, etc.  But in a nutshell, a good rule of thumb to stick to when planning your TV purchase is the "2 to 5 Rule."

The "2 to 5 Rule" simply states that for optimum viewing, the nearest seat to the TV should be no closer than a distance equal to twice (2x) the screen width.  The furthest seat from the TV should be no further than five times (5x) the width of the screen.

What this means is that while you may be tempted to spring for the 52" LCD for your bedroom or dorm, your room would have to be big enough that  its dimensions would allow you to sit between 104" (8.5 ft.) and 260" (21.5 ft.) from the television. 

This is because big televisions have bigger pixels than small televisions.  When you sit too close, you will begin seeing pixelation in the image.  Pixelation is no fun for anyone!

Sound System & Speaker Locations

For small rooms, the most practical solution for the sound and DVD portion of your home theater system is to go the all-in-one "home-theater-in-a-box" route.  A lot of dudes like the idea of going with separate components and high-end speakers, no matter what the size of the room for the application.  That notion can be problematic because gear that is designed for larger rooms may perform optimally at levels that would be excessive and unenjoyable in small rooms.  Remember, bigger is not always better.

Home-theater-in-a-box or HTIBs, are usually the simplest and cheapest way to get a decent home theater experience in your small room.

HTIBs come in all different flavors, but the most common configurations are 5.1 systems and 2.1 systems.  5.1 and 2.1 simply refers to the number of sattelite speakers + the subwoofer.  A 5.1 system, for example, comes with 5 speakers and 1 subwoofer.  A 2.1 system has 2 speakers and 1 subwoofer.

With 5.1 setups, the speakers include two (2) front speakers, two (2) rear surround speakers, one (1) center channel, plus the subwoofer.

2.1 configurations include two (2) front speakers plus one (1) subwoofer.  

The emphasis of 2.1 systems is convenience over performance.  A 5.1 system will provide you with a truer and better quality home theater experience, however, if you’re lacking available space for speaker locations, a 2.1 will be a better answer.