The annual CEDIA Expo kicks off this year on Thursday, September 4, and to properly celebrate both the show and the spirit of high-end home theater, TechRadar will be running a series of features throughout the week on a range of home theater-related topics.
We’ll be reporting news from the show, and also from IFA 2025 in Berlin, Germany, where we will have boots on the ground to gather news in-person on the launches of new projectors, TVs and more.
If you’re unfamiliar with CEDIA Expo, it’s a trade-only event that takes place in Denver, Colorado, each September, and brings tech professionals in the custom audio/video and smart home installation fields together to check out new products and attend educational seminars. And if you’ve never heard of IFA, it’s an annual consumer event that usually takes place around the same time as CEDIA, and features new products from a wide range of electronics manufacturers.
What to expect from Home Theater Week
We like to kick off Home Theater Week with a review of an exciting new product, and for this round, we’ll be checking out the new Kaleidescape Strato E movie player.
We’ve previously raved about the company’s Strato C and Strato V movie players, along with the Kaleidescape Store, which lets you purchase and rent better than 4K Blu-ray quality movies with uncompressed soundtracks for playback on the company’s hardware. The Strato E is Kaleidescape’s least expensive 4K player yet, and it gives movie fans the highest-quality alternative to the best 4K Blu-ray players.
As usual, we’ll be dropping lists of great movies to show off your home theater system’s picture and sound capabilities. And we'll dig into Dirac Live, a sophisticated room EQ tech that’s now available in under-$1,000 AV receivers and will soon be coming to Dolby Atmos soundbars.
We’ll also be discussing subwoofer placement and RGB mini-LED TVs, as well as other exciting new home theater developments such as Dolby FlexConnect.
Home Theater Week, as usual, will go out with a bang with a look at some of the world’s most awesome home theater setups, and we’ll be listing the coolest products and tech on display at CEDIA Expo and IFA 2025.
This page will be updated regularly with new stories and news coming out of the shows, so check back regularly to keep up with developments.
The best way to watch movies at home
What better way to launch TechRadar’s Home Theater Week than with a review of the best possible component money can buy for watching movies at home?
The Kaleidescape Strato E movie player follows in the footsteps of its Kaleidescape Strato V big brother in providing a method to download 4K Blu-ray quality movies with lossless-quality soundtracks. The main difference the Strato E brings is lower onboard storage for holding movies downloaded from the Kaleidescape Movie Store, but also a lower price, making it a more accessible option for movie fanatics.
With the Kaleidescape Strato E, you can say goodbye to streaming and even to 4K Blu-ray, and we’re confident you won’t look back.
Which 2025 OLED TV is the best for home theater?
Following up on TechRadar’s OLED TV showdown, a blind test we conducted with casual, non-expert viewers, we sat down with the same TVs again for a more in-depth evaluation, primarily using movie scenes on 4K Blu-ray with the room lights dimmed and the TVs set to Filmmaker Mode.
It was a tough competition, but a clear winner emerged: the Panasonic Z95B. That outcome runs counter to the results from our blind test, and it proves that you sometimes need to dig deeper to appreciate what a TV is fully capable of. Unlike last year’s Panasonic Z95A, which topped out at a 65-inch screen size, the Z95B is available in a 77-inch size, making it an even more compelling home theater TV option.
More subwoofers = better bass
As home theater enthusiasts know, adding a subwoofer to your system is necessary to properly convey the low-frequency effects in Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks, and it levels up the excitement when watching movies and listening to music.
One subwoofer will suffice for most people, but using two or even more subwoofers can result in smoother-sounding, less directional bass. If you find the prospect of a room packed with subwoofers to be daunting, our discussion of the advantages of multiple subwoofers may very well change your mind. At a minimum, it may cause you to consider the benefits of adding at least one extra sub to your current setup.
Room correction for the masses
Dirac Live is a sophisticated room correction tech found in AV receivers, integrated amps, and even soundbars. Although it requires a computer to get set up and perform its sound-transforming magic, it’s relatively easy to use and extremely effective at eliminating bass bloat and mid-range congestion caused by speaker-and-room interactions in your listening/viewing space.
Our Dirac Live overview covers the technology behind it, what products you’ll find it in, and the basics on how to use it. If you’ve ever wanted to make an affordable improvement to your home theater system’s sound, consider it essential reading.
The best 4K Blu-rays to give your TV a workout
Wondering how good your TV really is? At TechRadar, we have a library of 4K Blu-rays we regularly use for TV testing, and these can easily reveal performance advantages – and deficiencies – when it comes to parameters like contrast, shadow detail, color, and screen uniformity.
There are four discs in particular that we regularly rely on, and you can read all about them in our roundup of the best 4K Blu-rays for evaluating your TV's picture.
Gemini comes to Google TVs
TechRadar recently had an opportunity to see the TCL QM9K, the company’s new flagship mini-LED TV, in person. Aside from being the brightest TCL mini-LED yet, with a specified 6,500 nits brightness, the QM9K is notable for being the first TV to feature Google TV with Gemini AI assistant and Dolby FlexConnect for audio.
Our report on TCL’s new flagship goes into detail on Google TV with Gemini, and it also describes our experience with Dolby FlexConnect, a new technology that greatly simplifies home theater audio systems and setup, and offers a fantastic alternative to soundbars.
The Best Dolby Atmos movies to show off your home theater
From Sinners, Warfare, and F1, to 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven (recently remastered in 4K), there’s a wealth of movies out there with soundtracks that will show off exactly what your home theater can do.
We compiled a list of the 10 best Dolby Atmos movies released in 2025, and while it was tempting to go beyond just 10, we think you’ll agree that this list contains some of the most potent system showoff fodder you can find.
Do you need to spend $6,000 on a video processor for your TV?
Even the best TVs can have performance shortcomings, almost all of which can be easily addressed by an external video processor. Such devices are normally paired with the best projectors, and can be seriously pricey, but with OLED and mini-LED TVs steadily increasing in screen size, adding one to your TV is becoming a more popular option.
We recently met with madVR, a manufacturer of sophisticated and highly capable video processors used in high-end home theaters, to learn more about the company’s products and how they can benefit all manner of displays, from $30,000 projectors to $3,000 OLED TVs. After reading our madVR video processor overview, you may never look at your TV in the same way again.
Dream theaters made real
A regular highlight of TechRadar’s Home Theater Week is our overview of AV system installations. These can become quite elaborate, reflecting in-depth collaborations among architects, interior designers, and custom installation and acoustic calibration professionals. And they can also be humble DIY theaters carved out of a basement space for movie watching and gaming.
For HTW 2025, we dug up 5 awesome home theaters to delight and inspire you on your own AV journey. Some are simple in-wall Dolby Atmos speaker setups driven by an AV receiver, while others feature the latest and greatest – and priciest – in video projection and audio processing tech. Either way, we think you’ll appreciate the lengths these homeowners went to make their home theater escape room special.
The cool TVs that heated up IFA 2025
TechRadar wasn’t on-site at CEDIA Expo in Denver this year, but we did attend the IFA consumer show in Berlin. As usual, there were examples of the latest TVs on display at IFA, including ones that use RGB LED backlighting tech, and others that teased the forthcoming Dolby Vision 2 HDR format.
From a 115-inch, $30,000 Samsung micro-RGB model to a Vestel transparent OLED, our list of the 5 coolest TVs at IFA will give you an overview of the exotic displays that captured our attention at the show.
Projectors at IFA 2025
IFA may be a good show to check out the latest in TV tech, but it’s arguably an even better showcase for projectors, with a range of brands introducing new lifestyle and home cinema models.
Our overview of the 7 coolest projectors at IFA 2025 will acquaint you with these new projectors, which include everything from triple-laser RGB models with 5,000-plus lumens brightness to a 4K beamer built into a party speaker, complete with wheels for outdoor viewing convenience.
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