THE PREMIERE ROOM
Netflix nights mean home cinemas are now the hottest ticket in town
Once upon a time, home cinema buffs were identified by the size of their movie collections. The rise of streaming services has changed that.
More and more of us await that lavish new production on Amazon Prime or bingewatch a favourite netflix series, and those keen to have the home cinema experience want their set-ups to reflect this.
‘A Blu-ray disc player has been at the heart of any home cinema system but clients increasingly ask me, “Why would I need one of those?” ’ says Richard Pasker, a director of Sevenoaks Sound & Vision ( sevenoakssoundandvision.co.uk), which has fitted out the home cinemas of film aficionados such as col needham, founder of IMDb (the go-to movie information source).
As it happens, a good disc player is available from £ 300 and is probably the least expensive part of a home cinema system.
Film connoisseurs seeking that fully immersive feel will spend most of their budget on the screen and image source, the sound system and the ambient conditions (the ability to black out the room and arrange speakers around it).
Yet in these areas too, lower-cost options are bringing a big-picture experience to more homes. chris england is a lifelong movie fan and IT director living in camberley, Surrey. He has been on a 20-year journey with his home cinema, which continues to evolve.
‘I love enjoying a cinema space with my wife that is optimised for us and for our friends and neighbours.
‘We can share a favourite movie and a bottle of wine and we’ve saved a fortune in cinema tickets over the years.’
The set-up that chris now has would cost around £30,000 to recreate.
It includes both a widescreen 4k 65in TV and a retractable cinema screen with high-end 4k projector, an Atmos Dolby system comprising amplifier and multiple speakers for immersive sound (notably ‘room- shaking bass’), not to forget a single RTI control unit making it all pushbutton ready.
He fitted his living room with motorised black-out blinds and a false wall that houses speakers and hides a heating pipe.
‘The team at Sevenoaks Sound And Vision helped me plan, build, configure and optimise it all.
‘ You could easily spend six figures creating a dedicated cinema room with a permanent screen, special seats and the rest but I didn’t have that kind of room or budget.
‘Also, people increasingly watch content in different situations on different devices — phones and iPads on commutes, say — so flexibility is a factor.
‘The important thing is to decide what matters to you before spending the money.’ chris still buys the Blu-ray disc versions of his favourite films, which he considers to offer optimal quality, but, increasingly, he catches them sooner via the streaming plans through his TV.
netflix charges £11.99 a month for its Ultra HD plan; Amazon’s Prime Video comes in high resolution with the broader Prime package (£79 a year or £7.99 a month), and those with a TV licence can add the catch-up services of the BBc and other channels. Remember, you need reliable high-speed broadband.
If streamed content is your thing, there are options that let you start for around £1,000. LG makes a 65in TV (£799, johnlewis.
com), while adding a £250 sound bar and subwoofer ( prcdirect.co.
uk) gets you much of the way towards a ‘ 5: 1’ speaker arrangement (five speakers plus a subwoofer) considered threshold quality for ‘home cinema’ sound.
Meanwhile, LG’s more expensive OLeD screen technology allows the individual pixels to light up separately, creating picture precision and colour depths that won’t be clearly beaten (from £1,279, amazon.com).
These TVs are fully 4k so let you make the most of netflix and its competitors. While not all streamed content is available in that resolution today, increasingly it conforms to the highest standard.
When it comes to decor, the choice varies enormously according to how dedicated the home cinema space is.
AS chris’s cinema space also functions as a living room, he is able to turn on mood lighting, close the blinds, drop the screen and power up the concealed speakers when he wants it to be a cinema. Vintage sofas and armchairs, such as Made’s Ivan armchair in mineral blue (£499, made.com), have a retro cinema feel but will function and look appealing in a living room space. Things change when it is a dedicated cinema room. Then, it is desirable to have darker room colours (walls painted with dark blues, greys or even black), LeD strip lights around the bottom of the room, cinema seats, a popcorn machine. All this would usually be obtained via a home cinema installer such as Prestige Audio (£40,000 to £100,000, prestigeaudio. co. uk), Gecko Home cinema (from £ 50,000, geckohomecinema. and The cinema company ( thecinemacompany.org, POA). The trend towards streaming shows no sign of abating. netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos was named the most powerful man in Hollywood. Amazon is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into making its Prime Video content (indeed, it reportedly spent that amount on The Grand Tour alone), while the BBc and ITV are trying to catch up with their Britbox offering.
Best of all, you don’t need to break the bank to enjoy it all in your very own cinema Paradiso.