The term “home audio” usually refers to any kind of audio electronic devices made for home use, such as home stereos and surround sound receivers. The most popular purpose for a home audio system is the reproduction of a movie, and that’s why the primary field of home audio is “home cinema”.



A home audio system usually offers all the components you need to enjoy both a video and audio experience. For the audio reproduction the system has a few speakers. Most of these systems are 5.1, meaning that they are composed out of a subwoofer, a center channel and 4 satellite speakers. Thanks to all of these devices you will have a full and rich audio experience with all of the sound ranges, from a deep and powerful bass to clear high sounds.

For the video experience a home cinema system does not include a TV, so you will have to buy this separate. But any home cinema has an audio video receiver which usually has many features and can play all sorts of video and audio formats from a CD or a DVD.

Whenever you choose to buy a home audio system you will first have to make some research and compare many products to see which is the best, at an acceptable price. So to do this you will have to read the technical details for the systems. You will find a lot of terms that may seem unknown to you, so here are some of the most popular home audio / video terms that you might find in the technical details, and they’re explanation.

Compact disc (or simply CD) – you probably already know what this is. It is a storing device that uses 16 bit / 44.1 khz sampling rate PCM digital signal to encode roughly 74 or 80 minutes of two channel, full range audio on a 5 inch disc.
Blu ray disc – these are discs that are looking similar to a CD or DVD, but which are capable of storing much more information and also movies and pictures in High Definition format.

Deep color – we know that the real world has unlimited colors, and when you see this note it means that you will be able to enjoy deep vivid colors just like the one found on nature, on your TV.
Energy Star – a product that has this note means that is a product which was approved by experts and received this rating because it protects the environment through superior energy efficiency.

HDMI (which comes from High Definition Multimedia Interface) – is a digital interface between audio and video source. It can transmit audio signal, digital video signal and control signal through one cable. For example if you have a HDMI port on your laptop it means that you can connect a High Definition TV here, and enjoy the video from the laptop on the big TV screen.

HDTV – comes from High Definition Television, and is a TV with a large display screen and a 16:9 image with twice  the horizontal and vertical resolution of a normal TV. A HDTV also has a scan rate of 720p (progressive) and 1080i (interlaced active). Usually a High Definition TV is accompanied by a 5.1 system of Dolby Digital audio, meaning that both the video and audio experience will be great.

JPEG and JPEG playback – this term comes from “joint photographic experts group” and is a method of compressing pictures. It is the method used for most of the pictures, and that’s why you will often find this extension on the pictures from your computer. A device that has JPEG playback is capable of showing these kinds of images. So if you’re audio / video receiver has this function you will be able to copy pictures on a CD or DVD, and then play them on the device and watch them on your TV.

PC IN – if you see written on a device “this unit is equipped with a PC IN jack (via RGB or HDMI)” it means that you connect that device to your computer and use it as a computer monitor.
SDTV – is the “Standard Definition TV”
Track – audio CD-s use tracks to divide the content of the disc. You can simply consider a track the same thing as a song.
WXGA LCD Display – WXGA comes from “Wide Extended Graphics Array”. This type of display will give you a widescreen High Definition resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The biggest advantages of an LCD screen that has this feature is that the images will be crystal clear and they will have extremely compact form factor.