Until very recently stereo receivers were used just to connect the different units of the home stereo music system. This practice is now obsolete. Modern home entertainment is far advanced these days and all these terrific changes have happened only recently and in just a few years.

Home entertainment has gone digital and the receiver is capable of handling video and stereo inputs from several devices and channel them to your TV set. Modern receivers are also capable of decoding surround sound and support up to five speakers and a subwoofer.

All this requires a lot of connections between the various units. It would be worth your while to learn how to go about setting up your home entertainment system. The easiest system to assemble is the all-in-one home entertainment package which comes with a clearly written instruction manual that makes connecting the matched components a simple task.

It is quite a different matter if you decide to select the different components for your home theater set up. In this case you must carefully plan what you need and buy the right kind of equipment to get the job done successfully. Let us consider the receiver first. You must make sure that the receiver of your choice has the requisite number of connections to take in all the components of your system.

All receivers will have connections for a DVD player, a VCD player and cable or satellite box. These connections will take care of the video. If in addition, you want to connect your system to a camcorder, a video game system and a digital video recorder, you will need additional inputs for all these units.

Naturally, such extras will cost more but if your heart is set on having all these, you will find that the extra cost well justified. Once you have got all that is needed for the receiver, you need to look into the types of connections that you must have. Normally, standard cable connections will be quite satisfactory and such connections are used with all most all video equipment.

However, if you wish to improve the quality of video you will need to use an S-video connection instead of the standard cable connection. This may be preferable since the camcorder videos are of very high quality.

Most digital receivers are now equipped with built in surround sound decoders and this will be the best choice. All you need to do now is to ensure that there is a good match between the system components and the input connection of your receiver. This is generally either optical or a coaxial.

Please make sure that you match the type of connection your receiver. You must also make sure that you have sufficient number of connections to operate your speaker set up. If you plan to use 6.1 or 7.1 surround sound system format make sure you have enough speaker connections in your receiver to power each and every one of your speakers. When you have done all this, setting up the home theatre is a mere matter of getting organized. Make sure you label each end of the cables appropriately so that you will know which one goes where. Make sure that you match the "+" and "-" terminals of your speakers when you make the connections.

If you fail to match these terminals correctly, the quality of sound will be badly affected. It is hoped that you will find these instructions helpful for you to plan and successfully install your own customized home entertainment system.