Speaker placement and lighting question
 

With the two rear speakers does it matter if the speakers are facing inward parallel to you or does it have to be behind you facing forward?
Also I have 12 ceiling lights and have the option to dim them. Is it suggested to have dimmed light or is total darkness okay. If it is suggested is there an intensity indicator to the amount of brightness? Thanks

What kind of rears are you using, bi-pole, di-pole, or mono-pole? This will determine how you set them up.

Bi-pole and di-pole speakers diffuse the sound so it really doesn't matter how you have them placed. These types of speakers were created for the rears in the Pro-Logic days because the same signal was sent to both of the rears.

With the advent of DD 5.1 and DTS there is a different and precise signal sent to each speaker so a mono-pole(same type as your mains) speaker is what you want to be using.

There are 2 schools of thought on placement. Some feel the the rears should actually be on the sides of the listening position facing the listener. Others feel they should be behind the listening position and angled towards the listener, this is how I have mine setup. The best thing to do obviously is to palce them in several different configurations and run a movie with a good workout for the rear speakers and pick what sounds best to you.

As far as lighting is concerned you don't want to watch a movie in total darkness as your eyes are slow to react to changes in the lighting of a movie, going from light to dark and so on.

The best way to light your HT is to have a light behind your TV, it's called a bias light. If you have an projection TV you want to have a bias light behind the TV and at the same temperature as the CRTs, usually 6500K. Here is a link to a bias light http://www.cinemaquestinc.com/ideal_lume.htm

There really isn't a hard edged rule on which way you should face your rear speakers. Everyone's room is so different from each other that you can't really say one way is definitly better then the other. I say... try them out several ways (directly facing you... facing forward, facing inward, facing towards the wall... etc.). Find the best compromise between acoustics and asthetics and go with it. Of course... you can always ask the horses mouth. The "recommended" method of Dolby is to have your surrounds 2-3 feet above the listener on the SIDE walls facing inwards. This is what has been stated for ages by Dolby labs and to my knowledge they have never changed their recommendations with the advent of descrete rear channels. (they include a bunch of pretty pictures if you look on their web page!).

http://www.dolby.com/ht/sound/sound3.html