add UPS to my Home Theater setup?

The purpose of a UPS is to keep critical systems running during a power outage. If you don't need to do that, then it wouldn't be a wise investment.

While agreeing generally with Colm, I have a UPS on my system because we have brief (and sometimes long) power outages and I do not like to have my system power cycled, especially when it goes off and on a few times in a few seconds or couple of minutes. The system is not "critical" but I'd hate to lose it due to power surges during those rapid power glitches. I prefer to turn it all off nicely...

If you have no power problems the UPS won't do anything for you.

HTPC & DVR would be the two most critical pieces, everything else can be on just a Surge strip. They make Whole House UPS systems, but they can cost in the thousands for just the equipment, not including the deep cycle batteries.

What is your goal for the UPS?

(1) Avoid having power dropped in an uncontrolled way and damaging gear because there are numerous power outages?

(2) Avoid having your enjoyment interrupted by those same numerous power outages?

(3) Bragging rights from having a high tech toy that most people don't even know exists?

I see nothing in your component list that justifies (1). The only A/V component that I know of that can possibly be permanently damaged by uncontrolled shutdowns would be a video projector or a DLP TV that essentially has a video projector inside of it.

Only you know how many power outages that you are currently suffering with.

If you get a typical UPS, you will only be able to continue enjoy your system for 3-15 minutes after you lose power, so that isn't a big thing unless you are afflicted with numerous short (1-5 minute) outages.

I just went though a siege of dozens of power outages because a pizzeria moved in at the end of my street and started overloading the local infrastructure about a year ago. We lost power dozens of times starting early this summer. After about 3 months of this the power company added a transformer and we've had another month or more of solid power which included more periods of hot weather.

I do have a DLP TV, but no UPS. No harm was done and even with that many outages! I was only using the system a few times when power actually went out. There were two computers that are on most of the time that were affected. There was no harm done to them or the complex audio and video production software that they run.

UPSs were definitely required back in the days when file servers ran software that included file systems (Netware) that were always permanently damaged if the computer lost power and there wasn't a proper shutdown. It took a tech to come on site to recover them if the local IT staff wasn't well trained.

M/S had similar problems because their consumer OSs were based on FAT and FAT-32 which often needed recovery under the same circumstances. However MS mitigated that siutation by making the recovery pretty much automatic by including CHKDSK in the boot process. This was actually quite silly as it stretched into the late 1990s because MS had been running the superior NTFS file systems on NT systems since 1993. Eventually in 2001 or so they dumped the old DOS/based Windows and modernized everything when NT went mainstream as XP. For the past 10 years or more NTFS has been the mainstream rule and it has inherent unscheduled shutdown resistance which is IME >99% effective.

One of the ironies of life is that USB most flash drives are still formatted FAT32, and most of us pull the plug on them all the time without any apparent file corruption. However, the flash drives themselves have 32 bit processors that are probably more powerful than most ca. 1990s computers, and they handle any recovery that is needed the next time we use them, and it happens so transparently that we probably never notice! Also, the file systems on flash drives sort of have 2 layers, and FAT32 is only the top layer.

^^^

if you are getting "outages" because of overloading circuits, you should take a big step back and address your real issue...

And one could argue about how serious a threat that is. FWIW it isn't the lamp envelope that is the issue. It isn't going to crack or explode because of a power outage.

Hmmm... I have measured some serious line spikes when power is toggled on and off so am perhaps more sensitive to Arny's (1). Surge suppression should handle the spikes, of course. I do not know what sort of inrush protection is in modern AVRs, if any. My older gear includes inrush protection that is essentially using time delay circuits. That protection is thwarted if power is cycled too rapidly, a problem I have living in the sticks. As I said, I do not know if that matters to modern AVRs (e.g. popping the power on and off multiple times in from <1 s to perhaps 10 s). I just prefer caution when I've got $20k of equipment on the line (pun intended, and I am sorry for that ).

Getc regular cocomputer grade UPS for HTPC and Sat receiver (if it has DVR). Everything else just connect to wall outlet using surge protector. Do not forget to use UPS for router and Internet ser ice modem too. If you have cordless phone, connect base station to UPS either.

IME it is highly overrated as a potential problem.

We have a video projector at church that gets routinely dumped hot. It is 8 years old, and we recently took it out of service because it wasn't HD. Cleaned the filters and put it on the shelf for the next time we need a SD projector.