Rooms With a (Sharper) View

During this time of giving, you’re thinking, you might as well give in and give yourself and your family, of course, the home theater system you’ve always wanted. As retailers and discounters are probably telling you, there’s probably no better time to buy. Year-end product closeouts often yield some juicy video gear bargains.

And there is plenty of software, including letterboxed laserdiscs with bells and whistles to spare, that will make your family ooh and Oz at a big-screen TV with maybe, even, Surround-Sound.

When you check out the following possiblities, bear in mind that you often can find components at prices lower than listed suggested retail prices.

BIG SYSTEMS, SMALL BUDGET

Don’t worry about taking out a second mortgage if you want a taste of home theater. Fine VHS-format VCRs with hi-fi stereo sound, units such as the JVC HR-DX62U ($500), are widely discounted to less than $400. Plug in a 27-inch stereo Sony Trinitron, commonly on sale for around $600 and, voila, you have an instant entry-level home theater.

That should leave some leftover Christmas cash for a laser disc player, maybe a no-frills unit such as Pioneer’s CLD-S201 ($535), often knocked down to $400. The affordable price doesn’t mean a lack of quality; the pictures are pristine, roughly 60% sharper than VHS videotape, and the digital stereo sound is CD quality. All that for about $1,400. Not bad.

For a few hundred bucks more you can tune into Dolby Pro-Logic Surround-Sound with an audio-video receiver, maybe the Sony STR-D790 ($380). Spare stereo speakers that have been put out to pasture will work fine for the low-powered surround channels. Or, better yet, pick up a few Infinity E-L surround speakers for $100 each.

MODERATE BUT SERIOUS

Backed with a substantial bankroll, home theater takes on a whole new dimension. Start with a monster monitor such as Mitsubishi’s 35-inch direct-view CS-35MXI ($2,200) or Sony’s KPR-41EXR95 ($2,799), a slim 41-inch rear-projection set that’s designed to fit in small spaces.

And you might as well take advantage of high-resolution big screen by hooking up a Super-VHS VCR. The JVC HR-S4700U is a good S-VHS buy ($795), and the step-up HR-S6800U ($1,000) adds a jog-shuttle control for home-video editing and Hyper Bass sound for booming low tones. Don’t worry about making your current video collection obsolete: Super VHS decks play standard VHS cassettes too.

Mid-range laser disc players usually offer a handful of high-tech extras, including automatic double-sided play, so you don’t have to flip sides in the middle of a movie, and sophisticated curcuitry to enhance the images and sound. The Sony MDP-605 ($900) and Pioneer CLD-D701 ($1,200) are two prime specimens.

Real movie aficionados love letterboxed laser discs, and a new generation of wide-screen TVs showcase them as never before. Wide-screens have the same oblong dimensions as screens in movie theaters--one-third wider than standard, boxy TV screns--so that letterboxed flicks fill the entire screen, without the horizontal black bars. Moreover, some wide-screen TVs, including the recently introduced Philips 34-inch Video Theatre TV ($5,995), are ready to accept high-definition TV decoder boxes when, or if, the film-quality system is finally introduced.

Anyone serious enough to buy connoisseur video equipment will obviously crave comparable sound. That means Dolby Pro-Logic Surround from a high-powered audio-video receiver such as the Onkyo TX-Sv70PRO ($850), a unit that packs 85 watts per front channel, coupled with a quality surround speaker system. The Bose Acoustimass-4 ($600) and Atlantic Technology System 150 ($850) are two of the best.

THE ULTIMATE

For those with unlimited cash, a growing number of companies--including Future Home in Los Angles and Interior Systems in Simi Valley--specialize in remodeling rooms into mini-movie palaces complete with velvet curtains and theater seats on risers. It can cost from about $20,000 to multiples in six figures--and that doesn’t include the requisite video and audio components, such pro-quality gear as the Vidikron VPF 40 HD Auto two-piece projection TV ($18,000) which casts pictures measuring 15-feet diagonally.

Very impressive, but you don’t need a miniature Mann’s Chinese to bring home bigger-than-life video. For example, Sharp’s portable XV-S25OU video projector ($7,500) lets you lug high-resolution 100-inch pictures from room to room. And it only needs 12 1/2 feet of space, from the lens to the pull-down screen, to work its magic.

Speaking of magic, the pinnacle of home theater audio comes from Lucasfilm Ltd., the same high-tech sorcerers who revolutionized cinema sound. It’s called the THX system, a modified, nitro-fueled form of Dolby Pro Logic that conforms to a set of demanding standards devised by Lucasfilm for movie-theater surround-sound.

Clearly, THX isn’t meant for the average videophile. Systems that include multiple amplifiers and speakers range from about $8,500 to nearly $50,000. Technics, Fosgate, Lexicon and Harman-Kardon manufacture THX gear.

THX won’t transform a den into the Capitan, but with your eyes closed you might not notice the difference. Better keep them open, though, to check out the performance of Pioneer’s Elite CLD-97 laser disc player ($2,500), a state-of-the-art unit that packs digital signal processing for video and an optical digital output for audio.