Home theaters have never been more popular. People have gone crazy over watching movies these days and have turned watching movies into quite the pastime. As far as hobbies go, just watching movies and maintaining your own home theater is not very expensive to do, once you get the theater part put together.
Before thinking about building a home theater, make sure you are going to be able to dedicate a space large enough to justify having it. The basement is always a good spot, especially if it's not finished off yet.
Go to a discount fabric store and get some dark red velvet material and construct pleated curtains that can go around the room. This will actually give it a theater feel, and it's cheap. Make sure to block off any windows with cardboard and duct tape before hanging the curtains, or light will get through. You'll want to make the room as dark as you can get it. Paint your ceiling black, or staple up some black material as nice as you can. If you can afford a new drop ceiling, get the black acoustic tiles. If the floor is paintable, paint it black or lay cheap black stick on tiles. Or you can use dark colored throw rugs.
Just for starters your going to need a projector and that's going to be the most expensive part. Look on e-bay or criagslist for a good used one, people are always upgrading and are will to let their old one, which usually isn't that old, go for cheap. A real good quality projector can be bought for a couple of hundred bucks if you look around or follow the auctions.
Decent surround sound systems can be bought new for not much money either these days, or you can turn to the used market on this as well. When it comes to your screen, if your really strapped for cash, a nicely painted sheet rock wall, painted white will do for a while. However, you can actually build a screen for less than $100 that rivals some that cost over a thousand. It can be done by simply building a wooden frame wrapped with black fabric, and then attaching photographers seamless roll paper to the back. Take your time building it and the quality of the image will outperform most anything you could buy.
Whether your budget only allows for less than $1000, or if you can spend $5000, make sure you put in some comfortable seating, even if its only temporary, and upgrade later. The seating is a big deal, as you could imagine.
No matter how you plan to build your home theater, or what your budget will allow, just remember, by building it yourself, you can save a huge amount of money. Before you do anything, kick around the ideas mentioned here, and pick up a cheap book on home theater design. This will ensure you do everything right the first time!
The author loves his home theater that he put together on a budget, but he had a little help. You can get that same help at his blog page http://designahometheater.blogspot.com/
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