[Closed] Home Cinema... Where does one start???

What's your budget?

I don't know much about this, other than I used to lived in a house with about £30k+ of Linn multimedia intergrated throughout, and I recently set up my own multimedia set up in a new house for about £600 🙂

Both are obviously very different, but aim to achieve (roughly) the same end result.

Worth popping into your local muli-room/hifi shop for a chat/demo?

Onkyo or Yamaha amp, Kef or B&W speakers. Mac Mini for media streaming.

I'd suggest you install wiring for speakers - if you don't want stands etc. the main issue is rear surround speakers. You can get those very small and wall mount them on brackets. Easiest way is to get a speaker package - lots of systems from Cambridge, Monitor, KEF, B&W et. al.

I'd head over to AVFORUMS - it's like STW for home video types. More info. there than you will ever need...

Cheers Peterfile, budget would be a bit over £600 but nowhere near £30,000!

Haven't thought too much about budget yet, really wanted to see what options are available and then make a decision based on that...

Oh, should have said, I'd like something that's good for music too...

Still not very helpful without an actual budget number to work from, up to a point you very much get what you pay for with home cinema

Probably around a £1-2 k if that helps...

Whatever you do, install concealed trunking so you can update in the future rather than rip the plaster back off in a few years.

We've just done this (well; within the last year) in our living room so I've got a few pointers for you 🙂

1) Plan the layout properly before you begin. If it's going to be a dedicated movie / music room; then don't compromise with TV position to allow more seating.

2) Surround sound speaker sets do not a good music system make. If you are going to double the room up for both; I'd get a good set of surround satellites for wall mounting and a pair of floorstanders for music use. If you want to use those floor standers as part of your surround set up you'll need correspondingly bigger center / rears.

3) If you can afford the space build a stud wall to hang your plasma / front speakers on - This gives me a 2" deep void in the wall for running cables vertically between the plasma screen and the AV stuff. Sounds like a lot of effort; but when I changed screens recently it meant I could pull all the old connectors and re-cable without too much effort (and without damaging all the pristine new plasterwork)

4) Include a wired network socket

There's probably loads of other stuff; but that's a good start 🙂

Steve

Just some inspiration..

I did this a few years back in our last house and just about to reinstall it all in the new place.

I went for a Onkyo amp and Kef 5.1 package (wall mounted) with a Sky and PS3 for streaming etc QED micro cabling
[url= http://www.hifix.co.uk/sku.lasso?KEF-KHT1005.2%20PLUS%20TXSR606%20BLK&item=8c5919e114336d74733fbb23b2ce5401d791e618bc9d9854a217c4cf9786bb915d3967f809d63369 ]Mines a bit like this one[/url]

I've been really pleased with it

+1 plastic trunking for you cables in the walls to the speakers and the TV, no bother if your having it replastered.

You also need to consider the types of media you are wanting to play, and their sources. For instance streaming movies will need different kit to playing BluRay.

Home Cinema is like MTB's ... you really can spend as much as you want on them!

Before you even think about what equipment to buy, it's actually more important to consider the acoustics of the room that's going to be used. Things like how walls are constructed; are the solid brick, concrete or plasterboard? What sort of furnishings are there? is there carpet? are there small fixings which could vibrate against other surfaces? There's no spoint spending loads on fancy equipment if the acoustics are crap. some components are designed to be used in particular settings, so may be better for your purpose than what you hear in a demo room, which will be different to your home.

Stevehine

So what have you done with the projector?! Dave was looking longingly at my set up at the weekend, he missed a trick not sorting all that out before allowing his better half to move in.

Good advice from mr hine, I did a very similar set-up to 29erKeith and added a projector into the mix.

Last bit of advice is measure your cable requirements carefully, it looks easy on paper but if you're running under the floorboards, its a messy job and I didn't take the dwarf wall into consideration for the ground floor construction of our house. Had to go and buy a longer cable for one of the speaker runs...

Have fun the end results are worth it, everything can look discrete, screen up you wouldn't know we had access to TV, even my mother likes the set-up and she hates AV stuff!

@twistedpencil

I've not done anything with the projector; it's still sat in a bag in a cupboard; not sure I can persuade myself to shell out for a new bulb given it's relatively old and non-HD. If I do use it it's likely to go in the Gym and be used for inspirational winter training videos to alleviate turbo trainer induced boredom 🙂

Agreed on getting your cable lengths correct - though I simply bought rolls and placed + cut to length as I went; but beacuse we've got a solid floor we ran the cables in the void created by the coving (Proper; period-correct hand made plaster coving; not rubbish DIY stuff - It's amazing how much difference a detail like that makes !)

Steve

Trunking with a mouse line so you can run new cables at a later date
More HDMI than you think you will need
A handful of cat5 cable - it's cheap and you can run all sorts through it
Run a phono cable to multiple points so you can move your sub around
Consider a IR repeater so you can hide your kit away
Perhaps consider a second stereo pair of fronts if music is important
Cpc.co.uk are really good for panel mount connectors so you can make up your own wall plates really cheaply.

Thanks for all the pointers so far, CPC are just down the road from me so very handy!

When you´ve managed to hide all the cables and sorted out proper sound and a nice tv/screen, it all comes down to your media frontend and storage.

Store all your HD movies, music etc on a pc and install XBMC. Buy an MCE Remote control and you´ll have a setup thats faster, smoother and more professional than commercial options.

I´m currently using a silent pc with Win7, XBMC and a library of around 500 movie titles. There are no CDs or DVDs in the house. It looks like this:

Trunking with a mouse line so you can run new cables at a later date

More HDMI than you think you will need

Outlet panels with brushes mean to don't need to spend/create faceplates and have fewer connections (more reliable/less loss on analogue)

I'd add:

Unless you can genuinely think you tell the difference don't get conned into buying expensive speaker cable - I bought a roll of [url= http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CASPEAK79.html ]this[/url] at £50 for 100m and will be doing the same again for my next house.

Depending on where you can position your rears you might be better off with [url= http://www.ceiling-speakers.co.uk/ ]ceiling speakers[/url]. Kef and Monitor Audio do them sonically matched to their other speaker sets.

Subwoofers aren't as difficult to build as standard speakers. [url= http://www.bkelec.com/HiFi/Sub_Woofers.htm ]BK[/url] are fantastic value

Logitech Harmony Remotes make the whole thing a lot easier to use

If you want to use those floor standers as part of your surround set up you'll need correspondingly bigger center / rears.

Really? You can tune most AV amps classing each speaker as large/small and sending an appropriate amount of the LF to your Sub. A single manufacturers large and small speakers should work together (limited experience but Monitor Audio claim this i think)

Hi,

I would also recommend BK subwoofers.
Got a XLS200 recently in light oak - doesn't look like a speaker in the down facing wood finish.
Quite small and great sound.

@simons_nicolai-uk - I tried it; and couldn't get an overall sound I was happy with. Could have been the amp; maybe the speakers weren't a good match (despite being from the same manufacturer) - and it was a while ago; so I guess it could have even been the room they were in.

Music is now in a different room to the TV so the extra pair of speakers came in handy in the long run anyway !

[Edit]
Oh yes; good points on most of the rest - you should only need one HDMI cable from amp to TV (I swapped from component video to hdmi when I changed screens; hence the large amount of recabling)

Brush sockets where large numbers of cables enter/exit (behind AV amp for speaker cables/hdmi etc and one behind plasma screen for things coming up) - much easier than trying to wire everything to faceplate connectors !

And Logitech Harmony remotes are great. the 700 is only £40 in some places as it's the outgoing model; bargaintastic !

Steve

My current setup is a 120" electic roll down screen, Optoma HD200X projector, one of the cheaper Onkyo amps and Tannoy SFX speakers. The projector and screen size I have been immensely pleased with. Go with as big a screen as possible and mount the projector properly to the roof. Check the room allows for a decent image throw distance. Amp wise I wish I'd gone for one of the more expensive Onkyo amps with dual hdmi outputs so its easy to have a tv for quick lunchtime tv when a big screen isn't wanted. Whatever anyone says about decent 40-50" tvs I still properly love my 120" projector setup 🙂

Probably around a £1-2 k if that helps...

You could do it at either end of that. Personally I think the speakers make the biggest difference to sound so at 2k I'd spend about £1500 on the speakers, £300-400 on an Amp, £100 on a BluRay (if you need one). Speaker tech doesn't change much over time at all and the sources are easier and cheaper to upgrade later.

And don't get conned into any other overpriced cables either - [url= http://www.thatcable.com/ ]ThatCable[/url] stuff is more than good enough

Another recommendation for BK Subwoofers and a HTPC running XBMC.

Check out Denon amps too. Denon and Onkyo have [url= http://www.audyssey.com/audio-technology/multeq#multeq-solutions ]Audyssey MultEQ[/url]. This EQs the sub too which is great - if you have bass peaks at your listening position it'll sound boomy and generally awful and you don't want that.

I'd stay away from satellite and subwoofer home cinema speaker packages and look at 'normal' speakers for the front and rear and get a matching centre from the same range. Most manufacturers will have a centre to match up. Then add a nice big sub from BK.
Ah - I've just reread you're after something not too visually intrusive. Have you heard of Infinite Baffle Subwoofers?

Positioning and layout is important. Big TVs don't work particularly well in corners or above fireplaces.

Whatever you go for I'm sure it'll sound ace. £2k is plenty (if that doesn't include the TV).