Sealed or Ported Enclosure

[Homebrew]

    I'm drawing up the plans for my jukebox and plan to use car audio subs, speakers, and amps to run it.  I've come to a dilemma on the type of enclosure to build for the subs.  In cars, i've always used sealed boxes for size reasons and i have only heard a few cars with ported boxes and they didn't sound as good IMO.  However since the subs are going to be projecting to an area much larger than a car, i'm wondering if i should use a ported enclosure.  What got me thinking was that nearly all the home theater subwoofers i've seen are ported, as are most large home speakers in general.  I always assumed this is because they're meant to project to a large area.  
    Hopefully some of audiophiles can give me some input on which would be best for me.  I want the subs to hit pretty hard, but they need to be loud as well.  Now i could be wrong, but i thought that ported boxes generally were louder, but lacked the punch of sealed boxes.  Likewise, sealed boxes weren't as loud, but generally hit harder.  I want to strike a happy medium here, so hopefully someone can lend some suggestions.  Any thoughts/suggestions/input is greatly appreciated.  Thanx guys,

-Kevin

[aj6500]

find the manufacturers specs and build to them.  They do lots of testing in both kinds of enclosures, so it takes most of the guesswork out.