The simplest home theater video source is the VCR. VCRs are amazing machines, and the library of movies available on VHS video tape is overwhelming.  When they first came on the scene, VCRs completely revolutionized the home-entertainment industry.

             These days, however, VCRs are outdone by most other available technologies. VHS picture quality is much lower than DVD -- 240 lines of horizontal resolution vs. 500 lines. Even standard broadcast television signals carry a higher-resolution picture. There's only so much you can record onto 0.5-inch VHS tape.

             While your VCR does just fine playing movies on a 19-inch television, its shortcomings are more obvious when you play a movie on a top-of-the-line home theater system. If you don't have a hi-fi stereo VCR, you'll really notice the difference. The cheapest VCRs generally have mono sound, meaning they feed a single audio track along with the video picture. There's no reason to hook this sort of VCR up to a home theater sound system -- you'll only get sound out of one of your front speakers, or the same soundtrack out of multiple speakers.

             A hi-fi stereo VCR, which doesn't cost much more than a mono VCR, will vastly improve the way your home theater plays video tapes. You'll still have the low resolution, but if a video is recorded with Dolby Surround Sound (and most feature films made after 1980 are), you'll get the full home theater sound experience.

             While a VCR won't give you the best picture quality, it's certainly an important part of a home theater system, if only because there are so many movies available on VHS video. Eventually, VHS will be completely replaced by digital video formats like DVD, but for the immediate future, VCRs are standard home entertainment equipment.