At the beginning of 2004 we took the plunge into home theater entertainment and bought ourselves a complete home theater system. This consists of a 61 inch Samsung DLP television, a Yamaha 1400 home theater amplifier, KEF Q50 front speakers, Polk center and surround sound speakers,  a Yamaha 250 watt sub woofer and a Windows Media Center PC.  The system is rated at about 1000 watts and shakes the room when playing explosions and other action sound effects.

Ian and Beti have become hardened DVD enthusiasts and use the Netflix DVD rental service to keep a continuous flow of DVDs into the house. Ian keeps a database of movies that the family has watched since buying the big screen TV.  We particularly like to watch British TV series to keep in touch with our roots and have enjoyed the complete series of Cold Feet, Coupling, Midsomer Murders, Blue Murder, Inspector Lynley, Murphy's Law, Foyle's War and MI5.

The Media Center PC connects to the servers in the office via Ethernet and is used to play MP3s, show our digital photographs and watch our home movies on the big screen.

Originally the TV was positioned in our fireplace however with the increase in the cost of oil, it has been moved to one side so we can make good use of our excess logs to heat the house and offset some of the oil costs. The system connects to speakers etc via an interface box embedded in the floor to hide all wiring.

Here is a picture of the latest home theater setup