Video:What Is a Home Theater Receiver?
with Curtis BabbitA home theater receiver acts as the hub for all of your entertainment devices. Watch this About.com video to learn how home theater receivers work and why one may suit your living room set-up.See Transcript
Transcript:What Is a Home Theater Receiver?
Hi, my name is Curtis Babbit, on behalf of Hear No Evil, Westminster, Colorado to discuss what is a home theater receiver for About.com.
A Receiver is the Home Theater's Hub
A home theater receiver is basically a device that does a number of different things. It has amplified outputs for all the speakers in a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system. 7.1 or 5.1 being basically the number of speakers in the system. It has video processing and video switching for all of your sources. DVD, Blue Ray, video cameras, iPods, anything that has a video signal. Basically acts as a large switch, so when you change any sources it will output to the speakers, and output to a video monitor, be it an LCD, LED, Plasma tv, projector, it doesn't matter, it will do any of those things.
Also has, in most cases, room correction equalization, where you hook up a microphone to a receiver and basically does a test of the room to see what frequency ranges are, louder or softer, and makes those adjustments within the receiver. So it is a very versatile piece. Also has HDMI which is on most new units and will do high definition video to 1080p.
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