Clearly AV

So you got that shiny new LCD or plasma flat panel HDTV that you’ve always wanted. The next step in actually enjoying your new pride and joy is to have it mounted on the wall in the perfect location. One of the most important things to remember when doing so, especially if you’re mounting the TV yourself, is to pay attention to the maximum allowable weight with the specific wall mounting bracket that you’ll be using. At this point, there would be no bigger tragedy than coming home from work and finding your 50-inch LCD TV smashed into pieces on the floor, all because you didn’t use the proper TV wall mounting bracket and the TV fell off the wall to its demise.

Each wall mounting bracket has a maximum weight capacity listed in the manual that should be followed closely by the installer. It’s not a good idea to go with a mounting arm that is rated for 50 kg if your TV weighs 50 kg. To be safe, always choose a mounting solution which is rated for a maximum weight capacity of at least 50% more than the TV weighs. In the example above, you’d look for a mounting arm which has a maximum weight capacity of about 75 kg.

Also extremely important when determining weight capacities is to realize that the manufacturer’s listed weight capacity is determined based upon the understanding that the mounting arm will be installed correctly i.e., installed into a stud in the wall and not into the drywall or wall paneling itself.

There are a variety of different types of TV mounting brackets. The most common types of wall mounts include: articulating wall arm mounts, pivoting wall arm mounts, flat wall mounts, and tilt wall mounts. Each type of wall mount will feature a different weight capacity, and thus would be better utilized in certain situations. Here’s a quick rundown of each type:

Fully Articulating Wall Mount

Typical weight capacity (kg): 15-75
When you want the most versatile bracket that provides the most choice of viewing angles, you need to look at fully articulated brackets. They can provide vertical tilting of the screen +/- 15º, horizontal swivel of upto 180º around the axis, movement both forwards and backwards allowing you to extend your LCD or Plasma upto 20″ from the wall, some even offer rotation of 360º around the vertical axis allowing you to watch your TV upside down!

Pivoting Double Arm Mount

Typical weight capacity (kg): 15 - 50
This type of wall mounting solution features a 3-hinge design which allows for both a greater viewing angle, as well as the ability to extend the TV up to 20 inches from the wall in some cases.

Pivoting Wall Arm Mount

Typical weight Capacity (kg): 10 - 80
A pivoting wall arm mount consists of a dual-hinged bracket which allows for side to side movement as well as adjustment of the TV’s viewing angle. This type of mounting arm doesn’t provide quite as much range of motion as the articulating mounting arms, but they are typically less expensive.

Flat Wall Mounts

Typical weight capacity (kg): 35 - 100
You can typically mount the biggest and heaviest flat-screens with a flat wall mount. The range of motion is very limited, if at all, and the screen is mounted very close to the wall. The world’s thinnest wallmount is the Peerless Slimline range of brackets at only 8mm deep!

Tilt Wall Mount

Typical weight capacity (kg): 35 - 75
Tilt wall mounts are very similar to flat wall mounts, except for they offer the ability to slightly tilt the screen to achieve an optimum viewing angle. These mounts are perfect for very heavy screens which will be mounted above eye level.

Hopefully these tips will help you to answer the question of how much weight a TV wall bracket will hold. The answer to this question varies depending upon the circumstances, but the information here should help you make that determination for your specific situation.

Once you’ve determined the ideal TV mounting solution, now it’s time to actually mount the bracket onto the wall. Here’s a short video which does a good job of explaining the basic steps that you should follow when mounting your amazing new flat screen. Good luck!

So you’ve always dreamed of enjoying an awesome home theater setup, but you either can’t afford it or you just have no clue where to start? Well for those people who can’t afford to fork-over £5,000 or more for a projector, screen, surround sound, wiring, and every other expense that goes along with purchasing a home theater, there are options out there if you’re on a tight budget. As long as you’re not concerned with having top-of-the-line gear, you can easily get hooked-up with a solid home theater set-up for well-under a few thousand dollars, including the projector, audio, and accessories.

The most cost-effective way to go about creating a home theater/media room at your house is to start with a good quality projector. These days, it’s much more cost-effective to go with a projector rather than a plasma or LCD TV. A projector will also allow you to get more bang for your buck, because it will allow you to have a larger screen for less than an equally-sized plasma or LCD would cost.

Choosing the right projector is essential in creating your home theater setup. There are a few things to look for when shopping for a movie projector such as resolution, lumens, contrast ratio, lamp life, and finally price. A recent trend has made it easier than ever for just about anyone to get hooked-up with everything that they need for their home theater all in one package: the projector, surround sound speakers, movie screen, DVD player, and all of the required wiring. The traditional home theaters in a box (HTIB) don’t include everything that you need to setup your home theater room, but an all in one home theater package with an included projector can provide an easy and affordable solution to your home theater woes.

Obviously if you buy a projector, you have to have a screen to project onto. You can purchase a screen, but that can end up costing you hundreds, or even thousands of pounds - not very cheap. The alternative is to paint a wall with a special kind of screen paint. You can use a product such as Screen Goo or Mighty Brighty screen paint to literally paint your projection screen onto a wall in your home. This method will usually cost about a couple hundred quid to do it right, although it takes a little bit of elbow grease to make the wall completely flat, and to build a black border around the screen. Done right, this method can save you hundreds of dollars on a screen.

Home projection setups will continue to rise in popularity due to their increasingly good quality, cost-effectiveness, and their ease of use. Lets take a look at 5 of the top home projection setups currently on the market. Hopefully this list will show you that it doesn’t take £10,000 or more to finally have that good quality home theater - even cheap people deserve to have a decent home theater!

Optoma TS400

If you can deal without having an HD-quality picture, then the Optoma TS400 will provide the most bang for your buck. While the resolution isn’t high definition, it’s still a decent SVGA-quality 800 x 600 pixels. This projector will accept video signals which range from SDTV, up to 1080i HDTV. You can position the Optoma TS400 anywhere from 3.9-feet to 39.3-feet from the video screen or surface, which will give you an image size of between 24.6 and 306-inches diagonally.

Images quality is very good, considering it’s not HD-quality. This projector is equipped with a 2,000:1 contrast ratio, 2200 lumens, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio, 2,000 hour lamp life, and a built-in 2-watt mono speaker. There’s even an ecomode which helps lower the power consumption by lowering the lumens down to 1760, and it also helps extend the lamp life to 3,000 hours. With a list price of around £499, the Optoma TS400 can turn just about any room in your house into a media room - perfect for watching sports, movies, or playing video games.

NEC NP200

A high definition projector would break the bank for most of us cheapskates out there, but there are alternatives to these expensive HD projectors. The NEC NP200 sports XGA resolution (1024 x 768), which is nearly as good as high definition and much cheaper. This projector also features 1300:1 contrast ratio, 2100 lumens, a 3,500 hour lamp life, and an ECO Mode that raises the lamp life to 4,000 hours. The DLP engine in this very affordable projector provides a high contrast and sufficiently bright image quality in either 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen formats. You can position this projector as close as 3.9-feet and as far away as 39.4-feet. Depending upon how far from the screen that the NP200 is positioned, you can get up to a 300-inch screen - not bad for about £599!

The Epson MovieMate Series of Projectors

Epson has made home theater more attainable than ever with their easy to use MovieMate series of projectors. The MovieMate 50 is a very affordable £699, and it features a built-in DVD player, integrated dual Dolby 5.1 DTS stereo speakers (8 watts each), WVGA 854 x 480 resolution, 1000 lumens of brightness, 300:1 contrast ratio, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio capabilities, and a 2,000 lamp life. The MovieMate 50 is a very popular choice for people who are looking for their first home theater projector system. This projector has a throw distance of 2.9-14.7 ft., and a maximum image size of 150-inches. The MovieMate 50 is built strictly for home theater use and for video games, and it’s 3LCD video technology does a decent job of producing very good image quality - just make sure that the room is as dark as possible to get the best performance out of this projector.

The MovieMate 72 is a bit more expensive (£1,099) than the MovieMate 50, but it’s worth every penny. This projector is a simple plug-and-play type projector, much like the MovieMate 50, except the image quality and performance of the 72 is on a much higher level. Some of the key specs of the MovieMate 72 include a native 720p HD resolution (1280 x 720), 1,200 lumens, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 3,000 hours of lamp life (in theater mode), a throw distance of 2.4-12.2 ft., image size of 30-150″, built-in upscaling DVD player, and integrated audio (4 speakers at 5 watts each). You can even use the MovieMate 72 as a standalone music player to play CDs or an iPod - just connect a subwoofer and you’ve got a complete sound system. The MovieMate 72 is one of the best values for true high definition projectors on the market right now. It’s easy to use, very versatile, and performs very well in terms of image quality and performance.

Mitsubishi HC1500 Home Theater Package

This best-selling home theater package includes everything that you need to setup a home theater. The Mitsubishi HC1500 DLP projector features 1280 x 720 HD resolution, 1,600 lumens of brightness, 2500:1 contrast ratio, and 3,000 hours of lamp life. The projector is capable of displaying a 40-275″ viewable screen, so it will fit just about any room. This projector also features BrilliantColor color enhancement technology for enhanced brightness and color reproduction. This projector displays incredible detail and color reproduction, better than some more expensive models. Inputs/outputs include 1 D-sub, 1 HDMI, 2 RCA video inputs, and 1 stereo mini jack output.

The projector alone runs about £1,000, which is a great price for a HD-quality projector. If you buy this projector as a package, you’ll also get a ceiling mount, a 52″ x 92″ pull-down screen, 25-foot HD cable, and a DVD player - everything you need to get a home theater up and running. The cost of the entire package is about £1,425 - you won’t find a plasma or LCD screen with an equivalent sized screen for under £1,500; Not even close!

Panasonic PT-AX200U Home Theater Projector

This Panasonic projector may be the most expensive one on the list, which may make the real cheapskates cringe, but it’s also the best performing projector as well. As a standalone projector, the street price is around £1,250, but you can also purchase it in a home theater package for about £600 more, which includes a 106″ screen, ceiling mount, a Monster power center, 25-foot HDMI/component cable, and a Toshiba upscaling DVD player. This HD projector produces stunning image quality combined with excellent performance, which makes it perfect for gamers as well as for movies.

The AX200U has an amazing 6,000:1 contrast ratio, 2,000 lumens, 1280 x 720p HD resolution, automatic lighting controls, game mode/cinema modes, and it can make a 100″ screen from a distance of between 9 and 18-feet. The exceptional brightness and imaging speed of this projector make it a winner for both movie-watchers and gamers alike. The Panasonic AX200U has been called the poor man’s 1080p projector, and that’s an accurate description of a projector which outperforms some more expensive 1080p projectors costing thousands of pounds more. So for the people out there who want the performance of a 1080p projector, but can’t fork-over £2,000+ to have it, the Panasonic PT-AX200U is the perfect choice for you.

There are some common mistakes that are often overlooked when installing a home cinema that can easily be corrected with just a little bit of know-how. From the planning stage, purchasing of tv cables, to the calibration of AV components, you’ll find ways to avoid the common mishaps that can essentially turn a good home theatre project into a disaster. Here is a list of 10 of the most common mistakes people make when installing a home theatre and ways to avoid these all-too-common pitfalls.

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