I've got a question for you all relating to a possibly useful home theater setup tool. First, some background...

As I mentioned here the other day, I did some work last summer and fall (before work got a little too in the way) on a document that attempted to serve as a general-purpose home theater user's manual. It started as an attempt to deal with inevitable gaps between manuals (even good manuals like those provided by Outlaw) by developing a straightforward "connect this here and that there" sort of tutorial. It took only a little tinkering with layout to highlight a simple truth: there's too much variation in systems for that sort of turn-key, step-by-step instructions. You could cover a lot of the common situations, but the resulting document would be so unwieldy that it would intimidate the very people it was intended to help - and it would still be substantially incomplete. I realized that it would be better to actually try to help folks gain at least a basic understanding of their equipment anyway. (Cue long-winded anecdote about college roommate taking Engineering Mechanics before taking Physics and the friend who tried to get him through it by showing him dozens of "trick" solutions.) As a result, I decided that the best approach would be to present the basic principals in such a way that someone could get a general explanation of each piece that he intended to use in his home theater. The explanations would also offer some tips on what settings to worry about as well as some idea of how to physically connect everything. The document's working name is "Home Theater Fundamentals" although I'm not entirely sold on it yet. Here's the table of contents to my latest draft:

• Introduction
  
  • The Past: Just Watching TV
  • The Past: Two-Channel Music
  • The Present: Home Theater and HDTV
  • More Than You Wanted To Know: Technical Sidebars
  
  
  [*]Components
  
  • Surround Sound Receiver or Processor (Receiver)
  • DVD Player
  • High Definition Television (HDTV)
  • Cable or Satellite Receiver
  • Speakers
  • Other Equipment
  
  

[*]Cables

• Analog Audio
• Digital Audio
• Speaker Cables
• Analog Video
• Digital Video


[*]Audio Connections

• From the DVD Player to the Receiver
• From the Cable/Satellite Box to the Receiver
• From the Receiver to the Speakers/Subwoofer


[*]Video Connections

• A Brief Inventory
• From the Receiver to the TV
• From the DVD Player to the Receiver
• From the Cable/Satellite Box to the Receiver


[*]Menus - Receiver

• Inputs: Audio and Video
• Speakers: How Many, How Big, How Far Away, and How Loud
• Surround Sound Modes


[*]Menus - DVD Player

• Audio Setup: Streams of Bits
• Video Setup: Resolutions and Aspect Ratios
• Disc Menus: Be Kind, Forget Rewind


[*]Menus - Television

• Inputs: Bet You Can't Connect Just One
• Audio Settings: The End of an Era
• Video Settings: The Midnight Test Pattern


[*]Watch and Listen - Using Your System

• The Coffee Table O' Remotes
• Third-Party Universal Remotes


[*]Conclusion

• Local Resources
• Online Resources


[*]Appendix: HDMI FAQ

Most of the sections are pretty well fleshed out (although the TV section could stand some close scrutiny), but it all needs some paring down and cleaning up. Plus I need to revise some of the references to HD-DVD and Blu-ray to better represent the current state of our little format war.

So, to the question: what do you gunslingers think? Should I push on with this document once work slows down a bit and get it to a finished form? Post it as a free PDF on my web site, or maybe set up a secure page on my web site and offer it is a PDF download for a few bucks? Is there a need for something like this?