hificinema

Nearly all of the modern Audio Visual equipment has the capability to be connected to a home data network. In some cases this is for access to the internet for online services, and for others it is to allow you to link and control it from a personal tablet computer or smart phone.

As a result Home data networking is rapidly becoming the heart of the home, and is used to connect very many devices either via WiFi or a wired connection. It means of course that a reliable network and WiFi signal is becoming more and more important, as it affects the operation of everything connected to it. With more and more streaming services becoming the channel of choice for watching TV, Movies and listening to music, it is more important than ever that the Home Network is robust and reliable.

The simplest solution is of course a basic WiFi router such as supplied free from one of the major telecoms companies with the broadband package. For a simple system this may prove perfectly sufficient if there are few connected devices, however if there are bandwidth hungry devices on the network such as  digital streaming servers and players, A bit more care and more capable products may be required.

We have become experts in Home networks to support our Multi-room audio and video solutions, and Home Automation, so our solutions often provide you with a highly capable and robust home network. Whether it is for simply watching BBC iPlayer on the TV, or for a Whole Multi-room audio and Home Automation System Come and talk to us about your home network requirements. If we know how you plan to use your network, we can design it to ensure you can have seamless music and video streaming without interruption to internet traffic or other services.

A Star ceiling can be one of the most delightful finishes to a home cinema room possible. We’ve partnered with Starscape to enable us to install their wonderful Infinity Star ceilings. These are made up of black felt covered panels populated with fibre-optic “stars”. The fibres are bundled together to a simple ferrule, which allows a number of panels to be driven from an LED light source. Using fibre optics means that typically only one source is needed and is simple. The fibres give rise to different sized “stars”, and these can be made to “twinkle” and have a range of colours if required, adding to the delight. To talk through your Star ceiling project, call us now on 0118 968 0853

Ceiling support

The Star Panels are typically 1m x 1m boards, and are attached to the ceiling via magnets, “sticking” to steel channels suspended from the ceiling joists. In this way there are no fixings visible, and a very neat finish can be achieved. The panels also have security tethers, this is because when a ceiling panel is pulled away from the steel channels, the magnets often release all together, and the panel will fall away from the unwary.

Planning & Execution

The ceiling supports have to be installed accurately so that the Star Ceiling is in the correct place, and this requires some careful planning, measuring and marking. We are able to make up special sized and shaped panels to fit odd-shaped ceilings, however these require a bit more effort to ensure the panels can be supported correctly.

Multi-Room means music or video in every room you want it – but connected. You can play the same or different music in every room at the same time, with easy to use controls. Start playing a Movie in one room, pause it, then continue playing it in another one.

We have several multi-room manufacturers to choose from, most of which use a standard infrastructure, and so are broadly interchangeable. The Linn Digital Streaming system is one of the best established and offers some of the most flexible audiophile quality sound, controlled from handheld wireless control devices such as a phone or iPad. There are Blusound, Nu-Vo or Denon etc for great for budget systems. For those that prefer the legendary Linn or Naim sounds, we offer the full range of Naim and Linn digital streaming multi-room components.

We believe these provide the finest quality audio coupled with reliability and ease of use. Both Naim Audio and Linn have been at the forefront of top quality audio systems in the UK for many years and are associated with audio excellence.

All of our systems are based on a central music server which distributes the sound via a digital Ethernet (Cat-6) network rather than trying to centralise the players and amplifiers in one place leading to long speaker cables and severe loss of audio quality.  The systems we use are easier to wire up (See our page on Multi-room wiring), use short speaker cables for higher quality sound, and are ultimately much more flexible.  The bonus is that you usually get an improved Home Data Network and WiFi for your computers and tablets as a bi-product of the system installation.

A home cinema screen can be as simple as a large screen TV, or as complicated as a multi-format rear projection screen, where the shape of the screen is adjusted to the shape of the program material to be shown.

Large TV Home Cinema Screens  

The growth in large flat-screen TVs has meant that these are very popular for home cinema systems. The light output from a TV screen is generally much greater than that available from a projection system, and so these are great for viewing in high ambient light conditions, however can become very expensive for larger format screens.

We offer regular large screen TVs up to 85″, and can go up to the truly colossal 152″ – however this needs a significant structural and access survey as it is so big!

Most of the large mainstream TV manufacturers offer superb performing TVs with a wealth of smart features including 4K / UHD capability, access to home network content (DNLA), catch-up TV services, and on-line services such as Netflix and Youtube etc.

Some of our favourites are:

• LG
• Panasonic
• Samsung
• Sony

We focus on quality for our Home Cinema Speakers to ensure that the highest quality sound is reproduced at each budget level. Our experience of Home Cinema Speakers ensures that we can choose the right combination of speakers for your system.

In the early days of surround sound systems, the manufacturers realised that with a sub-woofer in the mix, it was possible to produce adequate results with small satellite home cinema speakers producing the midrange and high frequencies, with the sub-woofer filling in the lower frequencies. This made for cheaper systems, and so became the “standard” way of doing things.

Manufacturers of HiFi and Home Cinema Speakers

We sell speaker packages specifically geared for home cinemas from the following manufacturers:

• Acoustic Energy – conventional British speaker manufacturer
• Anthony Gallo – more discreet designer speakers
• Audiovector – high end speakers
• DALI – mid to high end speakers with superb value
• Elipson – funky spherical speakers
• Image Audio – speakers that pretend to be pictures
• Paradigm – high performance speakers
• Podspeakers – funky shaped speakers
• Procella Audio – high performance Cinema Speakers
• Quadral – conventional German speaker manufacturer
• Serene Audio – small funky speakers
• Waterfall – Glass see-though speakers!