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My Home Cinema

1.   Home Cinema
1.1   Her Requirements
1.2   His Requirements
2.   Research
3.   The Kit
3.1   Pace Twin PVR
3.2   Arcam DV78
3.3   Arcam AVR250
3.4   Lumagen VisionDVI
3.5   Panasnoic TH42-PHD8
3.6   Speakers and Speaker Cables
3.7   Cables
3.8   Control and Seating

Home Cinema

When my wife and I decided to decorate our front room I really wanted to install a modest home cinema setup, it is something I have been wanting to do properly for years. My wife did have some requirements I had to agree to up front though, my own requirements were more technical in nature ;-)

Her Requirements

  • Get rid of the big CRT TV to reclaim a some space in the room.
  • All equipment must be Black in colour.
  • All equipment must be as small and discrete as possible.
  • Must be easy to use and operate.
  • Minimise the exposed cabling but without chasing into the walls.
  • Stay within budget.

His Requirements

  • Audio and picture quality must be excellent.
  • Video bus must be HDCP compliant and ready for the High Definition future.
  • A modular system where each component has a specific job, so no two components should overlap in functionality. Makes upgrading in the future simple.

Research

This project would not have been possible with without the excellent AVForums to discuss the pros and cons of the various solutions and Audio-T for the time I spent in their demo rooms. Not forgetting my father-in-law, who encouraged me to overspend at every opportunity ;-)

The initial planning started in March 2004 and the final installations were completed in November 2005, the delay from start to finish was mostly down to waiting for a plasma screen to become available which met my requirements. March 2006 represented the final completion date as this was when the system was fully ISF calibrated.

The Kit

Here are the components which currently make up our little home cinema.

Pace Twin PVR

The Pace Twin is a Freeview receiver and dual tuner PVR and is the only device which was kept from my existing equipment. I have customised the Pace Twin PVR to match the new equipment, upgraded the hard disk to 60Gb which equates to 30 hours of recorded TV and am soon to retro fit a USB connection so I can download recorded program from the hard disk to a PC.

Reviews

Arcam DV78

I choose the Arcam DV78 over the slightly more expensive DV79 because DVD-A and SACD are not important to me right now and the DV78 has no integrated audio codecs which I like (why pay for DTS and Dolby Digital licenses twice?!) All I need is a quality CD/DVD player which will see me through the next couple of years until the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD format war is over. I got the DV78 second hand for a considerable discount so that had something to do with my final choice too ;-)

My second choices at the time were the Denon DVD-2910 and Denon DVD-3910 which have considerably more features than the Arcam DV78 but in a demo room comparison the Arcam DV78 and DV79 were vastly superior, particularly DVD picture quality and CD audio. For CD playback nothing came close to the Arcam DV78 and DV79 except for the more expensive FMJ series from Arcam which are way outside my budget.

In retrospect, if I had the extra cash, I would opt for the DV79 as the HDMI output would be a perfect partnership with my scaler. Still, this gives me an upgrade option in the short term should a second hand or ex-demo DV79 become available :-)

Reviews

Arcam AVR250

I decided to go for the Arcam AVR250 over the more expensive AVR300 because I didn't need the extra power the AVR300 provides to fill my relatively small room and Audio-T had an ex-demo AVR250 available with a 20% discount.

My second choices at the time were the Denon AVR-2805 and Denon AVR-3805 , but in a demo room comparison the AVR250 and AVR300 were far superior on all counts. I am very pleased with the AVR250 it sounds wonderful. Even in retrospect, if I had the extra cash, I would not opt for the AVR300 as I don't need the extra power and the higher quality audio components in the AVR300 don't yield enough of an improvement over the AVR250 to be worth the additional outlay for my modest setup.

Reviews

Lumagen VisionDVI

During the months of research I conducted I soon learnt that the picture quality of DVD versus Freeview can vary massively, to the extent that Freeview (DVB-T) is unwatchable yet DVD looks excellent on the same display. This is all down to the relative differences in the compression applied to Freeview versus that of DVD and also the internal video processing capabilities of plasma displays. I knew my wife would not accept a lower quality picture considering what I was planning to spend so I needed to find a solution, and the answer was to use a video processor which are more commonly known as scalers.

I finally bought a Lumagen VisionDVI which is brilliant! It does so much more than scaling, it also has accurate de-interlacing and applies all manner of colour corrections and other image enhancing filters. The end results is an exceptionally high quality picture from Freeview broadcast and DVD is just sensational.

Reviews

Panasnoic TH42-PHD8

I waited for over a year for a screen to become available which met my requirements. Eventually, I bought the Panasonic TH42-PHD8 plasma display. This is just a display device, it has no TV tuners, no speakers and no SCART sockets. Perfect!

It is actually a commercial device not really intended for the consumer market, but it suits my requirements and the picture quality is outstanding. I added the TY42TM6DB blade to the plasma so just one DVI cable connects the video processor to the plasma and therefore the internal processing of the plasma is largely bypassed to fully exploit the superior processing capabilities of the Lumagen VisionDVI.

At the time of purchase the PHD8 was the only panel which met my requirements and was within budget. I did look at plasmas from Pioneer, NEC and Fujitsu over the months of research I conducted, but the Panasnoic PHD series always looked better during the auditions. I patiently waited for a Panasonic PHD model that could accept High Definition and Native resolution signals via DVI or HDMI. The PHD8 was the only plasma at the time of purchase that can do this, although you have to use the DVI board as the HDMI board is limited to High Definition and can't drive the display at native resolution. If you have a scaler you really want to be able to drive the display at it native resolution to get optimal picture quality.

Reviews

Speakers and Speaker Cables

When it came to speakers my choices were very limited because my wife had stipulated small and black.

My second choice speakers were the Kef KHT-2005.2, also known as the Kef Eggs. I did all my DVD and A/V reciever demos using the Kef Eggs, they became my reference speakers. But my wife wanted something smaller and more discrete than the Kef Eggs, this proved to be a challenge until I found the Anthony Gallo Micros. My wife loved the look or them and when I auditioned them I loved them too, but loved the A'Divas even more.

I was tempted to order a Mod1 HT Quick Pack from OrbAudio as they are considerably less than the Anthony Gallo Micros and equally capable according to the U.S. reviews. But I was not happy about ordering without the possibility of a demo. I bought a pair of Anthony Gallo Micros second hand and this meant I could now afford A'Divas for L/C/R. The A'Divas sound, well, you have to hear them. They are simply incredible and I am delighted with them.

When it came to speaker cable I decided to do some reading. I soon concluded that spending a fortune on speaker cable was wasteful and unjustified based on the fact I could find no tangible evidence to support the claims of significantly improved audio quality when using high grade speaker cable. So I bought 35 meters of QED Micro for £1.45 a meter on the basis that if it sounded awful it hadn't cost me much and it could be replaced. The fact is it sounds great, and I can tell any difference from the auditions I had with the same equipment in a demo room using high grade cable.

Again, I didn't have much choice when it came to sub-woofers as my wife wanted small, black and discrete. We ended up choosing the MJ Acoustics Reference 100 which is the smallest sub-woofer I could find which met my needs. In the end, this was a compromise on my part because I would rather have had the every so slighter bigger (but less expensive) and more powerful BKELEC XLS200-DF. That said, the MJA Reference 100 is brilliant and for the size of room we have more than manages the job and sounds fantastic with music. Although the MJA Reference 100 is more expensive I did find a bundle which included a 6m QED Qunex P-SW sub-woofer cable with brass isolation spikes and brass coasters, which was very good value.

Reviews

Cables

I have yet to witness any noticeable audio and video quality enhancement as a result of the cables I have used or auditioned. Therefore, until I have evidence to the contrary, I buy middle of the range cables. The two online shops below have good stock and prices. Pretty much all my interconnects are Profigold.

Control and Seating

I bought a second hand Pronto RU940 so I could create a bespoke touch screen remote control. These are great little devices and completes the system perfectly. We now have one remote, instead of 4, which intelligently controls the complete system. My wife is very happy :-) So much so, after she bounced the Pronto on the wooden floors (it survived) I was instructed to get a second RU940 as a backup.

Our first purchase for the front room was the Ekornes Stressless seating. We have a two seater reclining sofa and three reclining chairs. Watching films has never been so comfortable :-D

$Id: MyHomeCinema,v 1.27 2008/05/06 11:19:38 martin Exp $

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