Home cinema FAQ

Glad you asked.

We take design far more seriously than most, which means better performance, and better looking rooms - it's not a trade-off if you know what you're doing.

Owen is the only fully qualified home technology provider in the Bristol area, with Designer, Networking and Smarthome certifications, and over 20 years' experience.

We have the only dedicated home cinema experience centre in the region. Retail demo rooms can be good for two channel hi-fi, but they can't show a cinema system to its true potential.
Ours does that. You can read about it starting here (but you might as well come and see us).

Our close working partnership with Fraser Besant Lighting gives us access to professional lighting design expertise, and fantastic lighting products, for your cinema and your whole home. As a team we offer great value as well as great service.

Cinemaworks was the world's first company to achieve CEDIA Member of Excellence*, has a prestigious international CEDIA award for a cinema/media room project, and Owen now serves on the Awards judging panel.

*there are just 15 MoE companies in the world, from several thousand eligible firms

Owen volunteers on the R10 global working group writing the next generation of standards for home cinema and entertainment spaces. That means our designs follow the most up-to-date recommended practices, before other installers have even seen them. Just three other UK install firms contribute to R10.

Home cinema systems - it depends on the system quality, the size of the room, and a few other variables. For a fuller answer please read this article. And for media rooms, this one as well.

Home cinema design Level 1 - £1200 - including a professional lighting design treatment by Fraser Besant Lighting. Higher level systems need more engineering, which will cost more.

3D visualisation £POA depending on system and room complexity

Installation & programming labour: £500 / day or £70 / hour

Bespoke elements e.g. joinery and custom cabinetry: £POA subject to design detail

All prices include UK VAT

Much of the work is around Bristol, and for cinema rooms we cover the South West and South Wales. We have some longstanding clients further afield and one overseas, who we look after remotely. I've also designed cinemas for clients farther away, for other installers.

Really it depends on your project. For a small media room I'd say an hour's travel is a sensible limit, to make sure we can look after you really well.

For projects farther away, we strongly recommend remote monitoring and maintenance, with regular planned check-up visits. It's also advisable to upgrade your home network with rugged professional-grade hardware - vastly more reliable than the 'built to give away' stuff from an internet service provider. We can help you with this.

Our trade body CEDIA offers a variety of certifications for home technology integrators. Unusually in the UK market, I carry all three higher-level certifications:

ESC-D Certfied Designer
ESC-N Networking Specialist
IST Smarthome Technician - CEDIA's newest certification is ISO accredited - and their future certifications should all be.

I'm qualified to a high level for data, wi-fi, smart home, and particularly cinema design. I firmly believe that having 'brand-agnostic' education is really important, along with training from manufacturers - following general principles and best practices lets you design a system architecture which is future-friendly and adaptable as technologies evolve, rather than just working with one make who may not be around in the future.

I also have over 25 years experience in the residential A/V industry.

Sound system - Klipsch THX speakers and Anthem amplifiers in 9.2.4 configuration - that's nine main speakers, two subs, and four Atmos overhead.

We can also demonstrate in 7.2.2 and 5.2.2.

Video system - Sony laser projector & Cinema Build Systems 'Halo' screen

Pixel lighting - Fraser Besant Lighting Ltd - options depending on design detail and pixel density.

Savant AV control system

Rako lighting control

Cinema sofa - Home Cinema Modules 'Antares' with electric recline & chaise

Fabric walls (track & fabric) - Cinema Build Systems

Cabling - Kordz & Webro

For full details please come and see us or get in touch.

Build projects - it depends on your builder. After first fix is completed, we can do the constructional elements, but we shouldn't fit electronics or fabric walls until after the builders' clean - we really don't want your lovely new cinema or equipment to suffer damage. The key phrase is 'dust-free' - if your decorators are still there, we shouldn't be installing.

In a finished home - This can be a few weeks, to order everything up, do the constructional elements, cable up and install. The quickest we can do an installation like this, if we don't need other trades and all products are in ready stock, is about two weeks.

Some companies might be quicker, we believe they need to spend longer at the design phase to really get the best result for their customers! A setup like this should last you a long time, and so the design elements should be thoughtful and considered.

You can have whatever you like.

But from a design point of view, even the bigger 'standard' TV sizes - so up to about 85" diagonal - still aren't big enough to really immerse you in the action, like a cinema does.

Modern TVs, especially the OLED and MicroLED type, do have fabulous picture and it's definitely a great choice for a media room system that's used in the daytime.

The new 'TV wall' modular systems as pioneered by Samsung are big enough, but they cost more than most entire home cinemas (and many houses) so it's a pretty small niche. These systems also have a problem that you can't house speakers behind them, so they have to go above, below, or to the sides of the screen, and so the sound-to-picture cohesion isn't as good as we'd like.

For the moment, for a really immersive and cinematic experience, for relatively sensible cost, we absolutely recommend front projection as the best option.

I hope we've answered your question, but of course you will have specific circumstances, needs and wants. We'd love to help - please get in touch so we can advise further.

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