Home theaters are not new; they have been around for perhaps three decades. Many homes have included a home theater in either a dedicated room or a living area for an engaging entertainment experience. But if there's one thing that's a constant, it's that technology moves quickly. With the transition to digital formats for audio and video, technology has moved even faster.

While an older home theater might be perfectly functional, you might be surprised at the improvements in audio and video in just the past five years.  In this timeframe, high-resolution projectors with much more dynamic contrast and color capabilities - exemplified by HDR (high dynamic range) formats – have become widely available and more affordable, and immersive audio such as Dolby Atmos can be found in a wide range of sound equipment.

What’s the best way to upgrade the home theater in your Clayton, MO home? A professional home theater design company can help you navigate a plethora of choices and help you reinvigorate your theater or media room. Keep reading for more.

SEE ALSO: What It’s Like Working with a Professional Company for Your Home Theater Design

Upgrading Your Projector to 4K and HDR

Today's projectors can produce a much sharper and vivid image than ever before. While TVs with 4K resolution are now commonplace, 4K came to projectors a bit more slowly but is also currently the standard for home theaters. On a large home theater screen, resolution does make a difference, perhaps more than viewing on a flat-panel TV. If you have a 120-inch or greater screen, you will appreciate the finer detail. Like the latest 4K TVs, the best projectors also have powerful image processing capabilities that can upscale lower resolution content – be it a TV feed or older movie discs – to near 4K resolution convincingly.

HDR is the other major technology that is making a massive difference in picture quality. HDR is used for both authoring content and displaying it. HDR-capable equipment adds high brightness capability, high contrast, superior color range reproduction, and the ability to produce inky black levels so crucial to portray film scenes realistically. Various HDR standards exist, but the main drivers of quality are brightness capability, color range, and processing power to make it look natural and vivid.

What’s a great way to upgrade your projector? Look no further than Sony. Their ES line brings these latest technologies to bear for superb picture quality. For the ultimate in visuals, the new laser powered VPL-GTZ380 produces an incredible 10,000 lumens of brightness for a picture that simply pops off the screen. Other choices abound for different rooms and screen types as well.

We also recommend complementing Sony's 4K HDR projectors with Lumagen's top-of-the-line video processors; perfect for taking any standard movie you might stream or Blu-ray disc you might own and transmitting only the highest quality of video resolution to your projector. If you want to watch only the highest quality of content, we highly recommend you use a Kaleidescape movie server or dedicated UHD Blu-ray player to fully realize the potential of your system. The video quality is far superior to streaming content, even 4K.

Dolby Atmos and Immersive Audio

The other significant advance in the past five years has been in surround sound audio. Surround sound capability has expanded steadily over the years from the original Dolby Digital five channels and a subwoofer to more than twice as many channels. Today's home theater systems might have up to 15 channels of audio that fully immerses viewers with a 3D "bubble" of sound, adding multiple surround and height channels for sound that is all around you. Dolby was the first to introduce this most immersive format with Atmos, and DTS:X soon followed similar capabilities.

Dolby Atmos and DTS:X capability can now be found in a wide array of home theater audio receivers and processors, another area where technology has moved quickly, and the latest equipment adds features not available just a few short years before. Dolby Atmos can be found in streaming services like Netflix and Vudu, so it’s easy to experience in your theater. For the ultimate in sound quality, opt for an audio processor that features support for these three-dimensional sound formats, such as the ones from Trinnov. Also, make sure you use UHD Blu-ray movies on discs, as they have uncompressed soundtracks that bring out the full nuance and richness of movie effects and music.

Ready to redesign your home theater for a more immersive entertainment experience? Call us today at (636) 939-4474 or reach out on our contact page. We look forward to working with you!