If you love movies, you’ve probably considered a custom home theater for your Metroplex property – whether in the University Park area or elsewhere. It is the ultimate luxury for home entertainment, creating a cinema experience without the expensive tickets and concessions, sticky floors, and rude audience members checking their cell phones in the middle of the movie. You can actually make the performance of your home theater even better than your local multiplex with the right A/V technology, and in this blog, we look at three upgrades that guarantee you get the most out of your media. Keep reading to learn how these custom home theater upgrades will change how you engage with old favorites and new discoveries.

SEE ALSO: UPGRADE YOUR CUSTOM HOME THEATER WITH KALEIDESCAPE

Dolby Atmos Audio

Sound is essential to giving you an immersive viewing experience. Video exists on a flat plane that comes at you from one direction, but audio can surround your body by filling the entire space of your theater. Surround sound has been around for decades, but Dolby Atmos is the evolution of this technology, taking advantage of the three-dimensional space around the viewer to make sounds appear out of thin air. With a Dolby Atmos-enabled A/V receiver and the proper speaker configuration (which adds at least two overhead speakers to the surround sound setup), sounds emerge with remarkable precision. If a helicopter is exploding above the characters in a movie, you’ll hear it above you. If a character hears the floor creak behind them in a horror movie, you’ll hear it coming from the same direction. This is because the Atmos audio format is object-based, allowing you to enjoy your favorite films like never before. To make the most out of the Atmos viewing experience, though, make sure that the films you watch are produced with Atmos audio. You can find an updated list of Atmos movies here.

4K Ultra HD Projection

For a custom home theater, most people opt for a projector that will give them the large-scale spectacle they would see on a big screen at the cinema. 4K Ultra HD projectors deliver that image to your expansive screen of choice and provide incredible sharpness, adding richness and dimension to the visuals with bright whites, deep blacks, and a full spectrum of color. The ideal home theater projector brightness is between 1,500 and 3,000 lumens, but the exact number you need will depend on the darkness of your space. Your picture quality improves with a higher contrast ratio, and 4K projection allows you to see the finest details on screen.

Kaleidescape Media Server

There are a lot of streaming services available giving you access to different libraries of media, but if you’re a movie enthusiast, you probably have a large collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays that you want to be able to access at any time. Netflix, Hulu, and other film streaming services have underwhelming collections of classic films, and with the ending of Filmstruck earlier this year, streaming options for hardcore film buffs are increasingly slim. Kaleidescape is your light in the darkness, a digital media server that gives you the convenience of those streaming services by allowing you to import your DVDs and Blu-Ray discs so that you can watch them whenever you want without looking for the physical discs. There’s also an expansive digital store, so you can buy and download new releases without having to worry about disc storage. Check out this blog to learn more about the different features of Kaleidescape.

Want to learn more about how you can take your University Park, TX custom home theater to the next level?

Reach out to one of our experts by calling (972) 488-5100, filling out our online form, or sending a message in the live chat window at the bottom of your screen.