Home Theater Under $500 (tips and tricks)

Step 4 Putting it all together.

Cables... not a subject to be taken lightly. A crummy cable (especially run a long distance) can ruin quality. Monster brand cables are great, but your mostly paying for a flashy looking product, you can get the same quality out of store brand cables. Personally I went to a local radio shack as they were going out of business and got a crapload of their cables for 80% off. However buying cables is expensive, and in my case, the cables I needed to run to my projector had to be longer than what was offered at local stores. So another alternative is to make your own cables.

Making your own cables requires and entirely separate instructable. I'm sure they exist, but I am currently in the process of making one myself. If you know what you are doing, its cheap and easy to go to radio shack and buy $10 worth of connectors, and $10 worth of cable and hook it all up.


due to my projectors distance from the controls, I opted to run 1 cable to it and use an external selector box, my projector had audio controls built in, which I opted not to use, partly to save on cables, and partly because I did not trust its quality.

For best quality, S-video is must. I would spend the extra few dollars on it.
As a general rule of thumb the longer your run a cable, the more signal loss you experience, so try to put all your components as close together as possible.


cables $35 to $150

Comments

[Padawan Maker]

Here's a High Quality Cable Making Guide.