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We're building the new AVForums home cinema - Picture House 4, and publishing a build diary here.
Rather than build a dedicated home cinema, we wanted to show how well a home cinema can be integrated into a lounge or family room, like most people have.
To follow the tradition of my Dad's family, we named our first home cinema Picture House after the cinema in Newport Shropshire which my Dad's dad and his brothers ran from 1913 to 1962.
They ran a few cinemas in the area and used to transport the films between cinemas. Dad tells me that one of the brothers (Oliver Wright) died when he had a motorbike accident delivering films from one cinema to another.
Picture House #2
Our first home cinema was a difficult job. We lived in a mid-terraced ex-council house on a dodgy cul-de-sac in Woodgate Valley, Birmingham. There was a void under the garage which we heard had been dug out at another house on the estate. So we broke through the six inch thick, reinforced concrete wall under the garage and excavated over 100 tons of rocks. The hallway, kitchen and garden were trashed for over a year.
There was a cluster of electrical cables which came through the wall which I should have moved, but didn't, and we had a problem with damp water coming through the floor.
It was a good place to watch movies and it certainly helped sell the house when we moved in 2003.
I learned some painful lessons building that home cinema and still have the scars (from the jagged steel rods sticking out of the walls) to show for it.
Picture House #3
We relocated to Telford and I had my eye on the detached single garage down the garden. We had set some cash aside for converting that and with some help from Rob Sinden of Gecko, David Bone of Owl Video, Roger Batchelor of Denon, Roland Brooks of B4 Projection and Piers Clerk of Home Cinema Engineering, Alastair and Andrew Collie of Kent Home Cinema and my kids we created a really nice home cinema.
The problem with Picture house #3 was that being down the garden, it got very cold in Winter and Very warm in Summer. We had an air conditioning system installed, but it wasn't very good because it couldn't cope with the extreme weather. It was also not ideal having to trudge down the garden to watch a movie and so the home cinema got used only once every week or two.
More about our first two home cinemas can be found here.
Picture House #4
We moved back to Birmingham in the Summer of 2011 and have enjoyed our Kuro and 2.1 system in the lounge, but the build of the new AVForums home cinema (and Picture House #4) was long overdue.
We had limited choice of where to have it. We considered extending the house for a dedicated room, but the cost would have been huge.
So we decided on using what is officially the dining room, which we handed over to the kids as their play room.
It's the room next door to my office and it's a reasonable size at 4.27m x 5.76m. However, as well as the door to the hallway, there are also two patio doors plus two radiators.
Below is the view as you walk into the room. On left wall there are some nice plaster features and lights plus a radiator down the far end.
On the opposite wall is a patio door into the garden. On the right wall is an internal patio door and a radiator.
Walk to the far corner and look back, and you can see the door into the hall.
One thing I won't miss is that nasty ceiling light which I bang my head on regularly.
Since this will be, like most peoples' home cinemas, part of a multi-function room, we wanted to cover the build to show how a (hopefully) really excellent home cinema can be built into a room which is also used for other purposes.
Since more than 90% of AVForums visitors are male, I think we can reasonably say that the WAF (or wife acceptance factor) is an important consideration when thinking about a home entertainment system. Let's be more PC and say that partners of home cinema enthusiasts don't always appreciate having AV equipment making a bold statement in their living space.
Since I don't know anything about in-wall speakers, I asked Neil Davidson of Genesis Technologies for some advice.
Neil has worked with AVForums previously as a technical consultant. He invited us to see their demo rooms in Bracknell and we were impressed. You can't see any of the speakers in the larger demo room, and the screen has Batman artwork on it when not watching a movie.
The system didn't sound overly loud. I asked Neil about this and he explained that an indicator of loudness is distortion. I.e. as the volume goes up, the amp/speakers are less able to cope and the audio starts to distort. This system had so much power that it didn't distort. He suggested we try to have a conversation while listening to another clip. It was like being in a nightclub. You know, when you are yelling directly into someone's ear, and they still can't understand you?
It was *that* loud. But still crystal clear.
With the great picture quality as well, it was very much a case of 'I want one'.
I decided early on that I'm really not up to DIYing this home cinema. I'm too busy running AVForums and considering that we should be showing people how to do it right, I'm completely out of my depth.
So Neil put together some kit suggestions and recommended Simon Ridley of Son-Tech as an installer.
Simon emailed through some great ideas.
Rather than build a dedicated home cinema, we wanted to show how well a home cinema can be integrated into a lounge or family room, like most people have.
To follow the tradition of my Dad's family, we named our first home cinema Picture House after the cinema in Newport Shropshire which my Dad's dad and his brothers ran from 1913 to 1962.
They ran a few cinemas in the area and used to transport the films between cinemas. Dad tells me that one of the brothers (Oliver Wright) died when he had a motorbike accident delivering films from one cinema to another.
Picture House #2
There was a cluster of electrical cables which came through the wall which I should have moved, but didn't, and we had a problem with damp water coming through the floor.
It was a good place to watch movies and it certainly helped sell the house when we moved in 2003.
I learned some painful lessons building that home cinema and still have the scars (from the jagged steel rods sticking out of the walls) to show for it.
Picture House #3
We relocated to Telford and I had my eye on the detached single garage down the garden. We had set some cash aside for converting that and with some help from Rob Sinden of Gecko, David Bone of Owl Video, Roger Batchelor of Denon, Roland Brooks of B4 Projection and Piers Clerk of Home Cinema Engineering, Alastair and Andrew Collie of Kent Home Cinema and my kids we created a really nice home cinema.
The problem with Picture house #3 was that being down the garden, it got very cold in Winter and Very warm in Summer. We had an air conditioning system installed, but it wasn't very good because it couldn't cope with the extreme weather. It was also not ideal having to trudge down the garden to watch a movie and so the home cinema got used only once every week or two.
More about our first two home cinemas can be found here.
Picture House #4
We moved back to Birmingham in the Summer of 2011 and have enjoyed our Kuro and 2.1 system in the lounge, but the build of the new AVForums home cinema (and Picture House #4) was long overdue.
We had limited choice of where to have it. We considered extending the house for a dedicated room, but the cost would have been huge.
So we decided on using what is officially the dining room, which we handed over to the kids as their play room.
It's the room next door to my office and it's a reasonable size at 4.27m x 5.76m. However, as well as the door to the hallway, there are also two patio doors plus two radiators.
Below is the view as you walk into the room. On left wall there are some nice plaster features and lights plus a radiator down the far end.
On the opposite wall is a patio door into the garden. On the right wall is an internal patio door and a radiator.
Walk to the far corner and look back, and you can see the door into the hall.
One thing I won't miss is that nasty ceiling light which I bang my head on regularly.
Since this will be, like most peoples' home cinemas, part of a multi-function room, we wanted to cover the build to show how a (hopefully) really excellent home cinema can be built into a room which is also used for other purposes.
Since more than 90% of AVForums visitors are male, I think we can reasonably say that the WAF (or wife acceptance factor) is an important consideration when thinking about a home entertainment system. Let's be more PC and say that partners of home cinema enthusiasts don't always appreciate having AV equipment making a bold statement in their living space.
Since I don't know anything about in-wall speakers, I asked Neil Davidson of Genesis Technologies for some advice.
Neil has worked with AVForums previously as a technical consultant. He invited us to see their demo rooms in Bracknell and we were impressed. You can't see any of the speakers in the larger demo room, and the screen has Batman artwork on it when not watching a movie.
The system didn't sound overly loud. I asked Neil about this and he explained that an indicator of loudness is distortion. I.e. as the volume goes up, the amp/speakers are less able to cope and the audio starts to distort. This system had so much power that it didn't distort. He suggested we try to have a conversation while listening to another clip. It was like being in a nightclub. You know, when you are yelling directly into someone's ear, and they still can't understand you?
It was *that* loud. But still crystal clear.
With the great picture quality as well, it was very much a case of 'I want one'.
I decided early on that I'm really not up to DIYing this home cinema. I'm too busy running AVForums and considering that we should be showing people how to do it right, I'm completely out of my depth.
So Neil put together some kit suggestions and recommended Simon Ridley of Son-Tech as an installer.
Simon emailed through some great ideas.
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