9. Getting Blinded by the Light

If you love your TV, you must do one thing right away when you get it home from the store. Immediately reduce both the brightness and contrast levels for the display. TV makers ship them out set at levels designed to look good on brightly-lit showroom floors. Unfortunately, these near- super-nova levels are bad for the TV and make for bad performance once you get them home, with washed-out color and eye-popping brightness.

10. Making a Big Mess

Okay, assuming you've avoided all of the above traps and have managed to create a good sounding system with a great picture, you may still have one problem: your wires are strewn all over the place. Aside from the fact that those who live with you are going to want to string you up, you could be compromising the future performance of your system by not neatly bundling your cables and properly securing all components.

"When you look inside a quality electronic component, you can't help but notice that the wiring it is neat and carefully run," says Menacker. "If not, it would be noisy, have poor sound, or a low quality picture and probably wouldn't be very reliable. Sloppy, incorrectly run wiring that is poorly terminated will devastate the performance of any system. There are specific techniques that must be followed to insure proper performance."
You'll find some major rewards if you spend the extra time and effort to set up your home theater system properly: better performance and a longer life for your electronics.

Following a few simple rules can make a big difference in how much enjoyment you get from your home theater. As for the good-looking women, well, c'mon, we're not miracle workers, right?

Hire a Pro or No?

One of the toughest things for people to figure out when creating a home theater system is whether or not they need professional help. No, not counseling, which your significant other might try to send you to if you cover their living room with cables and remotes, but professional audio/video installers and designers.

One rule of thumb is where you buy your gear. If you're shopping at retail, can read the directions and plug a few things in, a pro is probably not going to drastically improve on your system's performance. You would be well advised to buy a copy of Digital Video Essentials or the Avia Guide to Home Theater, two DVDs that can

help you get the most from your system in terms of audio and video performance. If you can set up a PC and get it running by yourself, you can probably cope. If on the other hand, you feel uncomfortable operating anything beyond a remote, most large electronics chains, including Best Buy and Circuit City, will come to your home, for a fee, and set up your new system. A warning, though, most major retailers contract out for this service and the quality varies. If you do need help, your best bet tends to be someone you hire and can find when things go wrong. But don't expect an installer to come running if you tried it yourself and made a mess of things.

If you are buying big-buck products from specialty retailers, you will probably need a lot more expertise to get the most from your new toys, and in some cases, to get them to properly work at all. Just like you wouldn't take a Ferrari to Jiffy Lube, you need a pro to make your Krell or Runco work right. "To get the best out of today's complex electronics there is no substitute for experience, proper system design, training and the correct diagnostic equipment for set up," says Terry Menacker, president of Overture Home Theater, Wilmington, Del., a retailer and installer of custom home electronics.

If you're considering a high-end ($100,000 or more) full-blown home theater installation, you'll want to consult a local custom audio/video installer. Check out ElectronicHouse.com, the Imaging Science Foundation or the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA). Each one can provide you with a list of trained installers and/or technicians.

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