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.

 

[Mike Schramm]

I remember going to Suncoast as a kid (14 years old-ish) and wishing I could afford Laser Discs. However, all my family had was a 27" Magnavox and a mono Emerson VCR. Then, in 1999 I asked for a VHS copy of The Blair Witch Project for Christmas. Instead, my mom bought me a GE 1105P DVD player and The Blair Witch on DVD. That is when I really dove head first into home theater. The following Christmas brought a Sony HTIB, the SA-VE315. I was using an old hand-me-down AVR that could decode Dolby Digital. Finally, the following May I purchased a Sony STR-DE535 and I was off and running with a true Dolby Digital setup.

Around this same time I vividly remember going to Barrett's Home Theater and experiencing a demo of the Balrog in Lord of the Rings (YOU SHALL NOT PAAASSSSS!!!!). It completely blew me away. I'm sure that my current system now would put that system back then to shame, but in my head I will never reach the "incredible-ness" of that demo!