The Hottest Ticket in Town

You can start melting the butter now. This story is going to make you and Orville Redenbacher very happy. Way back in the late Forties, when growing families huddled around small boxes that looked like radios with strange windows in the front--back when the highlight of a night's entertainment was watching a man juggle some plates--most folks thought that was as good as that new thing called television would get. It would be a nice little novelty. But with fairly fuzzy picture quality and with the sound coming out of a three-inch speaker, that newfangled box would never be able to rival the movie-theater or concert experience. And for a very long time, the detractors were right. If you just wanted to watch something, you turned on the TV. If you wanted to experience something, you had to buy a ticket.

Even as TV got bigger screens, color and more sophisticated programing, the movies came back with wider screens, Dolby Stereo Surround Sound and fabulous epics dripping with expensive special effects. Would television counter? Could television counter? Could that special feeling of the theater experience ever really be brought into the home? Well, do we have some good news for you. It's time to break out the popcorn and the Raisinets. Your living room is about to become a lifelike stage for everyone from Kathleen Turner to Tina Turner. And this new home theater won't necessarily cost you a fortune.

The best place to start is the sound. A three-inch mono speaker just can't do justice to Star Wars or Indiana Jones. Actually, it's surprising how much you miss even on ordinary TV programs. A good speaker system (or two) will reveal highs and lows you didn't know were there and will significantly improve the intelligibility of dialog. The easiest way to add speakers is to route the TV sound through your stereo system. If you have one of the new monitor/receivers--with audio and video input and output jacks--or a separate monitor and TV tuner (à la Sony's Profeel), you just plug the audio outputs into a set of auxiliary or tape inputs on your receiver or amplifier. Failing that, you can use the audio outputs on your VCR and set its tuner to the channel you're watching to get the sound through your audio system. Many VCRs are still mono only, though. If yours is among them, you will probably want to use a Y adapter to run the signal to both channels of your amp or receiver. It's not true stereo, but it's good sound.

If you have neither monitor/receiver nor VCR, you still have alternatives. A Y adapter with one leg terminating in a miniature phone plug and the two others in pin (phono) plugs can route the output of a TV headphone jack to your amp. The total investment required for this scheme is just a few dollars. An altogether different approach is to put (concluded on page 164)Hottest Ticket(continued from page 154) the sound source right into receiver. A full-blown example is Jensen's AVS-1500 audio-video receiver, which incorporates a complete cable-ready TV tuner for use with a separate monitor and high-fidelity loud-speakers. More modest (but appropriate if you want to use a conventional television set) are Technics'; three audio video receivers, with audio-only V.H.F. TV tuners. All four of these products come outfitted for mono-TV reception, but they also have multiplex output jacks for connecting an external stereo-TV decoder box, so when stereo TV comes to your neighborhood, you'll be ready for it.

What if putting your audio and video systems together doesn't make sense--if one has to go along one wall, the other along another, or if you want your main video setup in the bedroom? No problem. The same tricks can help you create a dedicated audio system for your video gear. This has been greatly simplified by the recent introduction of powered video speaker from such companies as Infinity, NAD and Proton. These snuggle right up against your monitor or TV set and take line-level signals from its audio outputs or earphone jack. Amplifiers built into the speakers provide the necessary power. Infinity's models are particularly interesting because their height can be adjusted to match that of your TV set or monitor--a unique feature so far and one that doesn't wreak havoc with your decor.

Passive nonpowered video speakers also are available from the same companies, as well as from B&W, Polk, Boston Acoustics, Jensen and Frazier. (Many monitors and monitor/receivers come with speakers of some sort, but they are often not up to component quality.) These require external amplification from an audio amp, a receiver or the small power amplifiers built into most monitor/receivers. What distinguishes video speakers from audio speakers, by the way, is that they are magnetically shielded to prevent picture distortion. You can use regular hi-fi speakers, but if you don't want to look at people with blue faces, keep them a couple of feet away from the screen.

As good an idea as high-fidelity TV sound is, the main attraction of good audio is what it can do for the sound tracks of optical video disc (laser discs) and hi-fi video cassettes, which are capable of a digital compact disc, much less stereo TV (whose sound quality is somewhat below that of FM radio). Feature films on these media take on an impact that simply has to be heard to be believed.

The latest VCRs and video-disc players, together with good speakers, can take you most of the way there, but to get it all, you need Surround Sound. All Dolby Stereo films have surround tracks that normally go along for the ride when the transfer is made to disc or tape. (They can also be carried by stereo TV broadcasts.) These surround channels can be extracted with an appropriate decoder and routed to speakers at the sides or back of the room. Their effects can range from more realistic ambience to helicopters flying over your head. Decoders are available from SSI (Surround Sound, Inc.), Aphex, Fosgate, Audionics and Pioneer, and there is reason to believe that some manufacturers will begin building the necessary circuitry into their monitor/receivers.

Of course, sound is by no means the entire story of home theater. Picture quality is also important. Here, too, help is on the way. Improved picture tubes and advanced video circuitry are providing clearer, sharper images, with more accurate color than ever before. This is most apparent in component monitors and monitor/receivers, but the technology pioneered in these premium products gradually trickles down to lower-priced equipment. VCRs are undergoing a similar evolution. Later this year, the first Super Beta decks will hit the stores, offering 20 percent higher video resolution than conventional decks without any loss of compatibility. This still is not as good as what you can get from broadcast or laser discs, but it is a clearly visible improvement. And don't worry if you already have a heavy investment in VHS: Manufacturers allied to that format are hard at work on a similar system.

Other fascinating developments are on the horizon. Toshiba, Zenith and perhaps others will introduce the first digital television sets this year. These take the incoming signal and convert it to digital codes, which can then be manipulated to enhance the picture and provide special features and effects. Among the possibilities are freeze frame, the ability to zoom in on any selected portion of the picture, small inset displays for monitoring channels other than the one you actually are watching and ghost cancellation. Eventually, such sets will be able to interpolate additional scanning lines, creating a smoother picture with higher subjective resolution. This will be especially beneficial for large screen projection TV, which now can be annoyingly grainy at short range. Digitally enhanced projection TV combined with high-fidelity Dolby stereo Surround Sound and high-resolution video sources could revolutionize the way we think about television--and redefine the relationship between video and the movies once again.

"Of course, sound is by no means the entire story of home theater. Picture quality is also important."