Boy, Times Sure Have Changed

There once was a simpler time when all you did to get good television was to take that black cable that came out of the wall and hooked it up to your TV. We never really cared about what that black cable was attached to, but we all knew that it was attached to some sort of antenna on the roof. Turn the dial on the black box that sat next to the TV so you could get the best reception, and voila! You were watching TV.

Remember the audio? How simpler could it have gotten? Dolby digital and DTS weren’t born yet. No speaker wires to hide, no speakers to position correctly throughout the room… we were just glad to hear anything out of that 6 inch speaker hidden inside the TV.

Times sure have changed… now you have to make sure your HDTV is 1080p, your satellite dish is pointed in the right direction, and check to see if you’re on Video1 or Video2.

With the explosion of the HDTV market, the cost to own one of these babies has dropped considerably. The manufacturers became smart and started bundling these HDTVs with the “theater in a box” which basically gave you all the parts to build your own home theater.

Of course, when you buy a “home theater in a box”, the cables that you get are “for the masses”, which basically means someone at the factory sat down one day and came up with the average cable lengths needed to satisfy the majority of customers.

So, that 3 foot HDMI cable that came with your system will probably be long enough for the majority of their customers, but not for everyone… what if you wanted to install your components further away from your HDTV than the 3 ft cable would allow? What if you just hung your plasma on the wall and wanted to put your components tucked away in the corner of the room?

So this is a good starting place. Let’s supposed you have to go above and beyond what you thought you might have to do… you need to buy new cables, but don’t have a clue what they’re called or what they’re for…