DIY Network

Starting the Construction Work on the built-from-scratch home theater begins. From "Home Theater" episode DHTW-103

The seating, speakers and projector layout is complete, and now it's time to start the construction of the home theater.

Host Corey Greenberg, a technology expert, and engineer Mark Midyett begin the construction process in this episode of Home Theater Workshop. In the last episode, DHTW-102, the layout was designed, the speaker placement was decided, the seating figured out and the perfect spot for the projector was found. Now it's time to get down to business creating an eye-popping, technically impressive home theater.

Note: All construction methods for this project have been chosen to create the "best" sound and picture quality.

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Getting Started

• Corey, Mark and the homeowner, Peter Moore, wanted to take advantage of the unfinished walls and ceiling to make running the wires (figure A) easier. In this particular situation, the installers generally run a bunch of wires at once since they all start in the same place--the location of the equipment racks.

  One batch of wires will deliver audio to all the speakers. Mark recommends using 12-gauge cable (figure B) for the left, center, right side and surround on the right and left side, even though two sizes down--16-gauge--is acceptable.

• The subwoofers are powered, which means they take a low-level signal and have the amplifiers built into them. So the wire (figure C) you should run into them will look much more like the wire that connects your CD player to your surround-sound system receiver.

Figure A

Figure B

Figure C

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