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Would you like to stretch out on your sofa and watch your favorite movie as if you were in a theater? Enjoy all the best that cinema has to offer without waiting in line to buy tickets or even setting foot outside your house? This is now possible thanks to a new concept in home entertainment that is beginning to take hold in Spain. It's called Home Cinema.

The goal is none other than recreating the feel of a movie theater in your own living room. How? By adapting all the elements of a commercial movie theater so they fit in a room of a private home: from the screen on which we watch the actors, to the sound of the film that grabs us in the most action-packed scenes or moves us in the romantic ones.

The screen
The main element of any system is the movie screen, and these days television is the undisputed king of this realm. Cathode-ray TVï¿½s are still the best buy in terms of the number of features they offer, but in the future they will probably lose ground to other technologies such as plasma or LCD, especially when the prices of the latter come down and become affordable to a wider public.

As for the best television set for watching movies at home, without a doubt it is the flat-screen, panoramic model with the latest digital technology offering a perfect picture and fantastic sound. Good examples are the latest 36-inch models made by companies such as Sony, Philips, Thomson, Panasonic and Loewe. These TV's bring together picture quality and sophisticated design and are sure to be the center of attention of any living room they occupy.

DVD
The second element of a home cinema system is the source of the picture and sound, in other words, the device that sends data to the screen. Today the best possible source is a DVD player, the natural substitute of the traditional VHS player. Unlike VHS, which produces analog picture and sound, DVD offers much better quality because both are digital.

DVD technology is based on optic disks which are the same size as a CD but which can hold 24 times as much data. This is because DVD's are recorded on both sides and each side has two layers for storage.

Such a design makes for a wealth of advantages such as digital sound tracks (Dolby Digital and DTS) that allow you to enjoy a movie through six separate audio channels; watching the movie in one of eight languages and choosing subtitles in 32; or extra material such as interviews with actors, documentaries on how the special effects were done.

These features have prompted the industry to support DVD wholeheartedly since the technology's inception. Indeed, these days virtually every consumer electronics manufacturer offers a DVD-Video player. They include Pioneer, Philips, Sony, JVC, Samsung, Yamaha, Kenwood, Grundig, Thomson and Panasonic.

ï¿½Because of stiff competition, you can now get a DVD player for as little as 150 euros (25,000 pesetas). Furthermore, one of the main setbacks of DVD - not being able to record - has been overcome with the recent release of the first DVD player-recorders from Philips, Pioneer and Panasonic. Now the only problem is price; these systems cost around 1,500 euros. But when they become more affordable, DVDï¿½s will definitively replace VHS.

The last element for turning a living room into a makeshift movie theater for a few hours is sound. Some people may settle for the audio that comes from the TV set itself, which has improved greatly in recent years.ï¿½ But it simply cannot compete with a set of speakers connected to an A/V or multi-channel amplifier that boosts the signal sent by the DVD and distributes it over at least six different audio channels: two in the front, two in the back or for special effects, a central channel for dialogue and a subwoofer to strengthen low-pitch sounds.

This way it is possible to feel how a train roars up from behind (the so-called effect box), shows up on the screen (front speakers) and ends up exploding in a thousand pieces at our feet thanks to the subwoofer. All major audio equipment companies have been forced to keep up with the times and offer speaker sets that satisfy the increasingly tough demands of audio and video users.

The market now features speaker systems designed for Home Cinema use that are truly incredible and quite affordable. The manufacturers include such legendary names as Bose, B&W;, Infinity, Jamo, JBL, Kef, Mission and Monitor Audio. Many are sold along with a DVD player/amplifier at reasonable prices. These are the so-called home cinema systems, also offered by most major consumer electronics companies. They make watching top-quality cinema at home possible for any kind of budget. You can buy one of these systems for as little as 500 euros.