The State of Home Theatre - Looking back at the second decade and moving on to the next decade
When we first began the noughties (90s), most homes had stereo setups, with a stack of equipment, and a pair of speakers. Then came the 2000s, and by then, home theatre was firmly established, with owners moving from analogue bases setups that used Dolby Surround, to Dolby Digital. LDs, VCDs and even DVDs were becoming replaced by Blu Ray discs and the advent of lossless sound. We went from two speakers to five plus a subwoofer, then seven, and by the middle of the last decade, we already had some forms of three dimensional sound, with setups using up to 11 speakers, but these were largely in the same horizontal plane. Somewhere in the middle of last decade, Atmos and DTS-X, and Auro introduced us to a new enveloping sound, which involved height as well as side or rear surrounds. We demoed new ways of sound transition, with rainfall from above, jets flying not only past us on the side but from on top too. There has been some consolidation of the market, with Auro larg