Do not place the sensor on top of the center speaker, even if it balances really nicely or matches perfectly. Don’t let me pressure you into dropping an extra grand on audio equipment, but a decent used receiver and a couple of speakers, or even one of those home-theater-in-a-box setups frantically flogged on Black Friday, will do you very well here.ĥ.1 systems feature a center speaker that should be placed just about where the Kinect sensor should be placed. The Kinect works best with either a stereo (two-channel) or Dolby 5.1 surround sound setup. Not only are they almost universally lousy, but they’ll make your Kinect experience (not to mention your TV, movies, and music experiences) suffer. If you’re using the speakers in your TV, stop. That’s not to say you need a big honking TV, but if you’re using one that’s a bit small for your room in its pre-Kinect state, you might end up squinting a bit. Just remember that you’ll be in a different viewing position: You’ll probably be moving your couch backwards (if you can), and you’ll also be standing rather than sitting, so your TV might seem smaller and lower. Not Samsung–don’t really matter any more than usual. The Kinect works best, in general, with a modern HDTV, simply because it’s an Xbox 360 peripheral and was designed for one.

The video side of the home theater setup is much less important. But dim lighting is the best compromise for the gleeful awkwardness of playing Kinect: You want to be able to see your fellow players, but you don’t want harsh clinical light to make their every move even less flattering. The reason to avoid utter darkness is simply for fun’s sake–the Kinect will definitely recognize gestures in the dark, which is good for controlling movies. If you have big windows, shade them during the day, and don’t light up your living room like a dentist’s office at night. Kinect works best in dim, but not dark, conditions, with even lighting throughout. Like vampires and gamers, Kinect fears natural sunlight.

Xbox one kinect sensor