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Your Hearth Is Now a Media Setup — Here’s How to Do It Right

Let’s face it: we gather around televisions, not fires.

By Patrick Lapera

Dec 25, 2015

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chris carroll

The idea of the hearth — the space around a fireplace — is synonymous with the idea of home and family. But the hearth isn’t necessarily about fire; it’s about gathering around and experiencing human connection. Few American families congregate around (or even have) a fireplace at night, but the dedicated social space lives on. It’s just moved a room or two over.

Our TV shows, movies and video games aren’t just parcels of entertainment. They’re shared experiences, conversation starters, starting points for people to explore larger questions or forget their problems. The television set is often associated with loneliness — but today we identify with each other over our favorite shows, or a song, or a video game. If we approach home entertainment not as a way to isolate oneself but as a way to bring people together, it’s possible to create a home media setup that not only has great picture quality, but encourages us to spend more time together.