What got you into home theater… what ignited your urge to want a home theater?

[perceval]

About 40 years ago.
I made friends with some clerks at our local hi-end shop. They introduced me to Thiel, even though there was no way I could afford them. I got hooked to good sound.

They also had a movie room, with the WOW! THX reel playing all the time. I must have seen it over 50 times in that place. I knew I wanted something somewhat similar.

It started a quest of good sound, and movie nights.
Ended up, at the time, with an Audiolab integrated, powering a set of Mission 700 series. The warmth of the Mission was the perfect companion to the analytical Audiolab.
A NAD CD player, a Sony DVD player and the Yamaha add-on, forgot the model, it had the decoding for 5.1 movie tracks, and a power unit for center and surrounds, and a mains plus sub out to connect to existing setup.

I also scored the biggest Sony CRT TV that would fit in our room at cost, with the help of a insurance friend, and built a DIY furniture to accommodate all of that.

And that was the start of a wonderful journey.... still ongoing with DIY speakers now.

 

[HiFi Dream]

My dad practiced the piano 1-3 hours a day and I played in Wisconsin youth symphony so I appreciated live music. We also went to the movies almost every weekend, the 17” black and white CRT had 4 channels and I was the remote. He had an awesome reel to reel player that sounded amazing. I always wondered if they could be combined and just knew that audio/video had to be better. My friends got a color TV and cable and that was amazing. We went to American TV and they had huge projection screens which we couldn’t afford. The excuse was we had to get a TV to fit the same cabinet the old one was in. . .

Flash frontward to college and I’m on foreign exchange going into the Sony Center in Berlin which was overwhelming and I saw projectors. We also experienced in a special room hidden away, black glass walls and ceiling with white neon in the corners dimly lighting the elevator, hall, and room, a high end stereo debuting a new format they invented that had as much info on the blue ray disc as a movie but it was just audio. It was so realistic my hair stood up. I asked how much the system was and he said it wasn’t for sale and it was all custom built. I asked him to guess and he thought it was about $150K and I started researching and saving from that day forward. I now that the biggest best stereo and video system I’ve ever seen or heard . Just watched the playoffs on it last night and the players are 1ft on the screen and the sound makes you feel like you’re there. It’s a great hobby!

 

[GarryH]

I started with 4-speaker stereo when I was in my early teens (1970)
It just grew from there, a TV and a 5.1 AVR, then 20 years ago, into a JVC projector with a 135" screen and 7.4.2 which I have now.

 

[blekenbleu]

I had been using Hafler matrix surround for listening to orchestral LPs, but
Hi-Fi VHS and specifically "GhostBusters" suddenly differentiated watching TV from watching movies at home.
This fairly quickly evolved to a dedicated room for laserdiscs suggested by "WideScreen Review" and 5.1 surround,
watching on a ProScan 16x9 CRT, then Pioneer Elite RPTV..
Those are long gone, but still use my Lexicon MC-1.

 

[BClarkeVA]

Listening to a surround sound (5.1) recording of a Phil Collins concert at a dealer. I had been into 2 channel hifi for years, vinyl and a pretty good system. The enveloping sound (and image on a 48 inch plasma screen) captivated me and I determined to have a similar capability at home.