CEDIA Expo 2024 is set to happen this week starting on Thursday, September 5, and same as with last year’s Expo, TechRadar is marking the event with a week-long series of articles covering the world of home theater: welcome to Home Theater Week 2024!
The Expo is an annual multi-day event that takes place in Denver, Colorado where technology professionals in the audio/video and smart home fields gather to check out the latest and greatest products and to attend educational seminars. We'll be on the ground at the show to report on the coolest products we encounter, and we'll also be handing out our first-ever batch of Best of CEDIA awards.
What do we expect to see at this year’s show? Everything from the best 4K projectors – and also some 8K ones – to ultra-large versions of the best TVs. The Expo is also a veritable playground for audio, with 33-channel immersive audio systems being demonstrated along with the latest cutting-edge surround sound processors, speakers, and subwoofers.
What to expect from Home Theater Week
Home Theater Week 2024 kicks off with a feature that takes on the in-wall and in-ceiling speaker (and subwoofer!) category, which is a popular one at CEDIA. Perhaps you’re planning on installing a home theater or media room and are wondering about the benefits and drawbacks of architectural speakers over traditional freestanding ones. Our overview covers those points in detail, and will help guide you through your home theater speaker-buying decisions.
Other articles in our series will explore the performance differences between projectors and ultra-large TVs, recent advances in room correction technology to improve sound, wired vs wireless speakers for home theater, smart lighting to improve your home theater aesthetics, and more. We’ll even tell you about the best Dolby Atmos movies to show off your home theater system and provide a sneak peek into some of the world’s most awesome home theater setups.
This article will be updated over the week with highlights from those posts, so make a point of bookmarking it. TechRadar will also simultaneously be covering IFA 2024 this week, so make a point of checking out our coverage of that show as well to learn about the latest audio/video products and tech news coming out of the world's largest tech show.
The pros and cons of in-wall (and in-ceiling) sound
Custom installation professionals use architectural speakers to create sleek, nearly invisible sound systems in home theaters and multi-room audio setups. The benefit to these in-wall and in-ceiling installations is that the speakers and connecting wires are eliminated from the space, creating a more aesthetically pleasing environment. But architectural speakers can also come with performance trade-offs that you wouldn’t get with a traditional free-standing speaker system, and those compromises need to be considered.
Our list of the 10 pros and cons of architectural speakers will shed light on the category and help you to decide if in-wall and in-ceiling speakers are really for you. The information provided will not just be useful to those planning on hiring professionals to install a home theater or music-listening space, but also to DIY-ers considering breaking out the tool kit to install speakers themselves.
What's going on with micro-LED TVs?
Micro-LED TVs have been touted as the next big display tech due to their ability to control brightness at the pixel level. In this way, they are similar to the best OLED TVs, but can achieve significantly higher brightness levels than OLED.
We've been following micro-LED TV developments over the years with an eye towards dropping prices, but the cost for these next-gen displays still runs incredibly high. Will micro-LED TVS continue to be a luxury item for years to come? Our look into whether or not micro-LED TVS are still the next big thing will let you know.
Smart lighting: the ultimate home theater accessory
Smart lighting strips are an easy and generally affordable way to spruce up the design of your DIY home theater. They also can be used as backlighting for a TV to ease eye strain, and some smart TV interfaces let you control the lighting's brightness and color hue using remote control or voice commands.
Want to learn more about smart lighting and how it fits into the wider smart home ecosystem? Our guide to using smart lighting to create the ultimate home theater experience will tell you everything you need to know.
Projectors vs giant TVs – which is better for home theater?
Giant 98-inch-plus TVs provide an option to get a very big and very bright image in your home theater, and some models – from TCL and Hisense in particular – are surprisingly affordable. Given the ascendance of ultra-large TVs, are the best 4K projectors still the ultimate home theater solution?
We compared the world's most elite projectors to giant TVs to find out the plus and minus points for both. And while you might think that the situation is starting to tip in favor of TVs, you might be surprised by our conclusions.
Panasonic re-enters the US TV market
It's been a minute since Panasonic last sold TVs in the US. Actually, it's been more like 8 years since that happened. But the company dropped the big news just in time for TechRadar Home Theater Week that it was making a return to the States, and will soon make a number of its new OLED TVs and mini-LED TVs available in the US market.
As fans of the company's premium sets such as the Panasonic MZ2000, one of the best OLED TVs of 2023, we couldn't be more excited about this development. The new models that will arrive in the US include two OLEDs, the Z95A and Z85A, and one mini-LED series, the W95A.
Your AV receiver's most important feature
What's your AV receiver's most important feature? We'll cut to the chase – it's the room correction processing now built into almost every new receiver.
There's a range of proprietary room correction variants out there, and explaining the differences between them and how they work is a monumental task, but we've undertaken it in our room correction tech overview. Give it a read, and get ready to experience better sound in your home theater.
The best Dolby Atmos movies for music
Movies with high-impact Dolby Atmos soundtracks are typically blockbuster action films with plentiful car crashes, explosions, and helicopters flying overhead to let you know without question you're watching a movie mixed in Atmos.
But there are also plenty of great music-centric movies and documentaries with demo-worthy Atmos soundtracks. We selected 7 movies with stunning scores or re-creations of live music performances, each guaranteed to make your system, no matter how modest, soar and sing.
100-inch TVs and ultra short throw projectors compared
You can now buy 100-inch TVs for about the same price as an ultra short throw projector and 100-inch screen combination. But which tech should home theater fans choose?
TechRadar was provided with a unique opportunity to directly compare a Hisense 100-inch TV and ultra short throw projector using the same source material. Which fared better? Read about it in our side-by-side big-screen TV vs projector comparison.
What’s up with wireless home theater audio?
Wireless home theater speaker systems now offer lossless Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound and other features found in traditional wired systems. Given that development, are you ready to go wireless, or should you stick with a tried-and-true wired home theater setup?
Our look at the current state of wireless home theater audio explores new wireless systems from Sony and Sonos, and evaluates the pros and cons of going fully wireless. If you’ve been dreaming of a wireless audio future, give it a read before deciding to cut the cords.
The best AV gear at CEDIA Expo 2024
TechRadar was on the ground this week at CEDIA Expo checking out the latest and greatest in home theater and smart home tech. Along with it being our first time attending the show, it’s also the first time we’ve handed out Best of CEDIA awards to a very select group of worthy products.
Check out our Best of CEDIA Expo 2024 list to find out which products received an award, along with a discussion of what exactly makes them great.
Dream home theaters made real
While it’s possible to put together a home theater on a budget using off-the-shelf AV components and furniture, and even use simple smart home tech to automate some processes, home theater installation is a big business, as evidenced by trade shows like CEDIA Expo 2024.
TechRadar reached out to custom installation professionals asking them to share images and descriptions of their best recent projects. We’ve compiled six awesome home theaters for you to take a peek inside at, and they truly are the stuff of dreams. Each one shows the individual stamp of the owner, and we hope they inspire you to dream up your own home theater.
The best home theater demos at CEDIA Expo 2024
The best part of a home theater-focused trade show like CEDIA Expo 2024 is the display booths where audio and video manufacturers show off cutting-edge gear in demos that literally rival what you see and hear in top-shelf movie theaters.
TechRadar spent hours taking in home theater demos at this year's CEDIA and compiled a list of 5 incredible demos at the show. This is only a sampling of what was going on behind closed doors in the many demo rooms at the show, but we're fairly sure we hit the best ones.
