How to Hook Up Your Home Theater

How to Hook Up Your Home Theater is a 2007 theatrical cartoon from Walt Disney Pictures, directed by Kevin Deters and co-directed by Stevie Wermers-Skelton. This is the first theatrical Goofy solo cartoon short (other than a few educational films) made in 46 years, since Aquamania. In the style of The Everyman cartoons of the 1950s, this short follows Goofy as he buys and then sets up his home theater system, to watch football.

Production
The short was partially produced using a new "paperless" production pipeline for Disney, the first major change in production technique for hand-drawn animation at Disney since the introduction of CAPS, and was also an attempt to see if the new digital animation tools could be used to produce a short with the same graphic look as that of a 1940s cartoon. Instead of animating with pencil on paper, some of the animators, such as Dale Baer, worked on Wacom's cintiq tablets along with Toon Boom Harmony for the animation, while other animators such as Mark Henn and Andreas Deja continued to work in the traditional method with pencil on paper. It was reported on Animation World Network that about 50% of the short was done in the new paperless technique. However Disney's next hand-drawn animated feature The Princess and the Frog only used paperless with the animation effects and coloring while not in the character's animation, which is still done in paper and then scanned.

Release
The short was released with the Disney film National Treasure: Book of Secrets on December 21, 2007. It was also paired with The Game Plan for the film's release in the United Kingdom. The short was shown early at the "Animate with the Greats" class taking place at Facet's Theatre. Several Walt Disney Animation Studios animation artists taught the class, including Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers. It is also available for purchase on the iTunes Store. The three-minute "have a laugh!" version can be viewed on Disney's "have a laugh!" video page. The cartoon will be released as part of the "have a laugh!" DVD release in October 2010, it has yet to be known if it will be the full version, or the three-minute version. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2007.