Many filmmakers say that what’s on the screen is only half the movie, the other half is to be found in the soundtrack, carefully crafted by talented composers and musicians to elicit emotions of excitement, fear, sadness and joy in the viewer. Once of the major benefits of watching moves on DVD or hi-def formats is the availability of faithful reproductions of the multi-channel sound that can, when fed through a reasonable home system, sound even better than in many modern movie-theatres.

When most consumers go down to the store and pick up a big new flat screen plasma or LCD TV, they may think that they are all set and ready to go. In fact, the sound provided by even an expensive top-of-the-range TV is incredibly limited, providing little or no low-frequency response, producing only a flat, distorted version of the movies music, and generating little or no directionality. If they are good at anything, it is producing clear, audible dialogue, but that’s pretty much it.

Modern movie soundtracks contain so much more information; they contain multiple channels so the viewer perceives the sound to be coming from a particular direction, such as a plane flying overhead, or dialogue coming from left or the right. They also contain low-frequency information, to reproduce deep bone-shaking sounds such as explosions or rumbling engines. To be able to access and hear all this extra information you need a dedicated home theatre audio system.

The basic home theatre audio system consists of an amplifier and multi-channel speaker set. The job of the amplifier is to decode and then amplify the multiple audio tracks present on the disc. To do this, it needs to be connected to the DVD or Blu-Ray player by a data-cable. A fiber-optic digital audio cable (also known as a TOS-link cable) will be needed for DVD’s, but to decode next-generation hi-def audio will require a HDMI cable connection. The HDMI cable also carries the video stream, so most amplifiers will have a HDMI out socket, allowing the video information to continue on to the TV or projector.

In terms of power, a quality separate amplifier be marked somewhere in the 80-100 watt range, which is plenty for watching a movie in the average family home. Beware amplifiers that are built into DVD players, or into a speaker set, they are usually underpowered and will perform poorly. The most demanding audio signals to reproduce are the low-frequency type; so many speaker-sets will have “active” sub-woofers, which have small dedicated amplifiers built in.

Speakers for home-cinema can be purchased in packages of matched sets, or individually, allowing you to mix fronts from one manufacturer with rears from another. In general, purchasing a set of matched speakers is the best option for beginners and will produce a very good sound. Unlike regular stereo speakers, home cinema speaker-sets are generally split into dedicated low and mid/high frequency speakers, with the sub-woofer speaker handling the low-frequency sounds by itself. This works because it is very difficult to detect the direction of low-frequency sounds, so it does not matter where in the room the sub-woofer is placed. By contrast the direction of mid and high frequency sounds is easier to detect, so speaker-placement is key, with left/ right speakers best positioned level with the screen and widely spaced apart, the central speaker positioned directly beneath the screen, and the rear speakers positioned diagonally facing the viewer from behind. This setup is for a 5.1 speaker set, which is all that is really required for proper directionality, although 6.1 and 7.1 sets are available.

Digital Media servers are fast becoming a necessity rather than being a luxury. With each household continuously adding to their pool of photographs, downloaded music and CDs of favourite movies storing, sorting and accessing them has become a huge problem. If they are allowed to remain in computer, they will eat up the precious disk space. Moreover, you will not be able to enjoy your entertainment devices such as home theatre and music system for which you have invested huge bucks and effort. Hence a digital media server is absolutely essential to set up a central digital centre that can synchronise with your devices and feed them media files whenever you want to enjoy them.

The Cirgon Encore Digital Media Server has soon become the darling of all media server reviews. Experts cannot stop singing praises of its low power consumption and highly user-friendly, Linux-based operating system. While most digital media servers easily consume 80 to 90 watts of power, the consumption of Cirgon Encore is well below 35 watts. The system can store 500 CDs or 30,000 photographs in jpeg format or a combination of the two. It comes with a 33-key remote control that has dedicated functions for viewing and moving the photos and a PLAY button to play all the media files. The only issue that media server reviews mention is the slow speed of copying songs from CD, as it first compresses the audio files in MP3 format so that they do not occupy much space. Digital media can also directly be uploaded through USB flash drives, digital devices such as cameras and camcorders and through network connections. Encore can easily connect through internet by automatically retrieving the correct IP address and you can also download media files from the World Wide Web. Encore also let you to crop, rotate and edit your digital photos. An interesting feature is that you can also add narration to the photographs using a microphone. Weighing just 9lbs and looking like a normal CD player, it sits comfortably in any area of your house providing complete entertainment. Do check other media server reviews to get more information on this wonderful product.