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Want to make your living room into a home cinema? Augment your experience by getting a top of the range smart TV that’ll make you feel like you’ve brought the silver screen home with you. As well as that, add on a soundbar and other extras to really raise some hairs when watching the latest thrillers. Better yet, you can go even further these days and make your room that much more cinema-like by installing extras like backlighting and soundbars to take your experience to the next level. Let’s dive in to find out how you can build your own immersive home cinema with just a few upgrades.
A Smart TV with a Difference Making Cinema Mode
If you’re looking for a smart TV to turn your living room into a home cinema, then keep an eye out for one which has a solid cinema mode. Similarly to a gaming mode or a sports mode which you might already use, this will be a picture setting available that optimises your smart TV’s picture and audio to be optimal for watching movies. Most of these cinema modes will actually turn off a lot of the fancy features that try to boost the image quality like motion smoothing or high-range HDRs as these might actually go against what the director wanted the film to look like. For example, motion smoothing might make the film look unnatural and strange as the director might have wanted some blurring in the scene. So, if you’re wanting the most authentic experience in your home cinema, then looking for a smart TV which has a solid cinema or filmmaker mode is actually more important than getting all the fancy new picture technology as this technology will make the film look and feel different from what you remember.
We recommend LG’s OLED55C55LA as one of the best cinema mode smart TVs that you can get today. Make use of their Filmmaker Mode to disable all the post-processing effects the smart TV does and instead enjoy the movie the exact way that the director intended. This’ll give you the most authentic cinema experience that you can get at home, making it perfect to help you build your home cinema. While people in the past have complained that the picture on Filmmaker Mode is too dull unless you sit in complete darkness (like an actual cinema!), this LG model now uses ambient light compensation from its built-in light sensor to properly adjust the picture contrast without touching any other post-processing settings. So, if you’re looking for the most authentic cinema experience in your home cinema then check out the LG OLED55C55LA smart TV here.
Another option which you might consider instead is a smart projector, to really get that cinema feel in your room. Why not go all the way in building a home cinema and get the true movie magic feeling with a projector streaming over your head? If you’re thinking of it but still a bit unsure, then check out our handy blog comparing smart projectors and smart TVs to help you choose the best option for you.
Now that you’ve got the perfect smart TV for that authentic and cinematic feel, why not get some extras to make it feel even more immersive? Let’s dive into some of the must-have extras to take your experience to the next level like a soundbar as well as backlighting.
A Hair-Raising Soundbar to Make Movies Hit Harder
To help really transform your experience, go beyond just your smart TV’s speakers by also syncing up a soundbar for surround sound. While smart TVs these days have great speakers installed, buying a soundbar as well will also help you with the experience. These help expand your experience by giving you a much more powerful speaker system that can give you surround sound. So if you’re building a home cinema, then pairing your smart TV with a soundbar will boost the sound quality of the films you watch to hair-raising levels.
Depending on who made your smart TV, it’s best to purchase a soundbar from the same manufacturer. This way, you can be sure that they can sync and work together before making a big investment. Even better, many of these will actually be fully controllable directly from the remote control you already have for your smart TV, so you don’t have to fumble around with extra remotes in the dark! So make sure that the same company made your smart TV and the soundbar you want to buy in order to avoid annoying compatibility issues and extra remotes.
Here are some of our recommendations for soundbars depending on what brand your smart TV is:
Backlighting to Draw you in Even Further
Backlighting can help take your viewing experience to the next level by syncing up lighting behind your smart TV with the action on the screen. This makes the action feel so much bigger by going beyond the screen to light up your room with what’s happening.
Our personal recommendation if you’ve already got a good smart TV is to install your own backlighting system rather than buying a whole new Phillips Ambilight TV. You can either get a sync box like Fancyleds’ Fancy Sync Box which plugs into your smart TV to read the colours or a camera system such as Govee’s TV Backlight 3 Lite which places a camera above your smart TV to read what’s happening on your smart TV and light up your room in real time. Either way, if you’ve already spent a lot on a smart TV with a really good cinema mode, setting up backlights on it yourself will help expand your home cinema experience to draw you in to the action.
If you want to find out more, then check out our blog all about backlighting for smart TVs here!
As you can see, there’s a lot to do and consider when trying to create the perfect home cinema experience, starting with finding the perfect smart TV with a cinema mode. The recent updates to Filmmaker Mode make the authentic cinema feel of the mode much more consistent by adjusting for the level of ambient light in your room, making getting a new LG a better choice for a cinematic smart TV. Once you’ve got this, make sure the experience is as authentic and as big as possible by investing in a soundbar and backlighting. So, what are you waiting for? Check out some of our recommendations above and build your perfect home cinema experience!