Take your kitchen when you move!

Last November the Harriet F. Rees House (1888), an historic residence in Chicago, Illinois, United States was moved. Located on the once-affluent Prairie Avenue, the Rees house was built for the widow of a property developer. Ironically the house became threatened by a development project. Instead of demolishing the building, the city decided to preserve it by moving it across the street and north one block. It stuck us as a handy way of keeping your bespoke Anglia Factors interior if you just couldn’t bear to leave it!

Of course you could always get a new one!

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Home IMAX for just £1.8m

Image credit: TK Theatres

We’re indebted to the Gadget Website for this news: – Whenever high net worth individuals gather, they like to row over who has the best home cinema. Well now there’s a special attack that allows instant victory in such an argument: having an IMAX in your house.

It is pretty hard to trump having a full-on IMAX cinema in your subterranean space. But it can be done: Ideaworks and IMAX have teamed up to offer IMAX Private Theatre to UK dwellers for £1.8 million. The full list of what you get is below, but here’s the summary:

You get dual, “commercial-grade” 4K projectors, promising 2D and 3D, native and upscaled images of a quality (and size, if you’ve got the space) that’s very hard to beat.

Image credit: TK Theatres

There’s also access to 200 IMAX films of recent vintage with instant access, via the web, to new ones on the day they hit cinemas, via the same “Day and Date” download system used in modern cinemas.

You also get the design and installation of a full home theatre with, interestingly, as many seats as you can fit – your 1.8 million is flexible here.

You can also use the system for gaming and standard TV – something like Game of Thrones or Netflix’s 4K streams should look great, though we’re not sure the One Show would look quite as peachy. Quirkier features include the ability to spilt the screen into four separate streams – multiple football matches during the World Cup, for instance – with the option to have both 3D and 2D frames up there simultaneously. Quite why you’d want to do that, we don’t know, but it is technically very impressive.

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Home theatre seating for a small room

They may not be able to spell it but home theatre is big in the ‘States and here are some ways they furnish smaller rooms

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Buy now before cinemas run out!

Anglia Factors home cinema installation with storage

“Although 2014 was a year in which British films and talent were recognised at many award ceremonies, 27 out of 73 constituencies in London had no cinema. This finding has led to suggestions that poorer people are less well served by the cinema industry in the UK.” So says the Deloitte Media Consumer 2014 Survey

The survey continues…”the number of cinemagoers has been on gradual decline since 2009. A combination of price rises and falling incomes makes the cinema relatively less accessible, which shows that higher income groups are significantly more likely to visit the cinema than low-income groups. 70% of those earning more than £55,000 a year visit the cinema at least twice a year, compared with only 39% of those who earn less than £20,000 a year”.

Home cinema installation with storage

“Not only has the number of cinemagoers been declining, the industry also faces challenging economics to build and maintain screens. A relatively small, two screen, 400-seat cinema costs around £3 million to build, and the industry has had to absorb the capital costs of digitisation over the past decade, reducing the capital available to build new infrastructure”.

Furthermore, “since 2007, the average price of a cinema ticket has risen 4.4 per cent a year, more than inflation, which averaged 3.1 per cent in the same period, and more significantly in direct opposition to median non-retired household income, which fell by 6.4 per cent between 2007/8 and 2011/12”.

Home cinema installation with storage

So, we conclude that, while a night out at the cinema is fun, it’s getting more expensive and it might not be so easy to find a cinema in the future. Why not consider a Home Cinema? No queues, free popcorn, the ability to pause for a break and all your favourite films and chums!

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PO research says ‘give kids more room’

Home cinema for TV & games

A fifth of UK households are home to children sharing bedrooms, according to research last summer from Post Office Mortgage’s Step-up report. For one in 10 (9 per cent) homes this is due to a lack of space, as the average square foot of a home has decreased dramatically over the last 90 years from 1,647 square feet to 925 square feet (as we’ve blogged about in the past).

Over half (58 per cent) of all adults wish their children had bigger rooms in which to study and play, and a further two thirds (63 per cent) would like to move in to a bigger house. Unfortunately, aspiring movers can expect to wait an average of four years before they will be able to upsize, while nearly a third (30 per cent) doubt they will ever be able to move up the ladder due finances or other commitments.

Bunk beds for sharing

In some households the kids rule the roost, with almost a third (31 per cent) of adults willing to take a smaller room. This seems to be especially true amongst adults (49 per cent) with children aged between one and three years old.

Storage to maximise room

Despite the warm weather (it was done in June), it appears children are more likely to spend their summer holidays indoors. More than a quarter (28 per cent) prefer to sit inside and play computer games, while one in eight (15 per cent) spend most of their time watching television. Over two thirds (65 per cent) of adults say that children in their household play outside less than they did as a child.

We can make space in bedrooms, fit out extensions and new homes. We can also help with home cinema for TV watching and computer games.

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Hesitant about Home Cinema?

Perhaps you have considered asking us to design and build you a home cinema but thought the notion a little too odd or out of the ordinary. Well a year ago the Mail Online covered some cinemas that would make a home cinema look, frankly, mainstream!

Sol Cinema, South Wales The brainchild of Paul O’Connor and Jo Furlong, the World’s Smallest Solar Movie Theatre can travel anywhere in the world. It is set in a caravan and includes a red carpet, popcorn, an usher and room for 16 people. The ‘World’s Smallest Solar Movie Theatre’ is the brainchild of Paul O’Connor and Jo Furlong. The pair wanted to parody mainstream cinema, and only shows short films about 10 minutes long. Audiences can choose the film they want to see and even enjoy the screening with a bag of pop corn. The cinema has already appeared at Glastonbury, where a 60-second version of Harry Potter was shown.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery, California Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a huge draw for thousands of cinema goers each year, who gather to watch classics like Rebel Without a Cause. The films are projected onto the side of the mausoleum containing the bodies of silent-film legend, Rudolph Valentino, and Oscar-winning actor Peter Finch. There are also late night screenings of horror films, such as The Shining and Halloween.

Paris treetop screenings The canopy of a Parisian forest provided an unlikely setting for a cinema, where a mesh platform was built in the treetops to show fantasy adventure film Epic. The event was organised by RealID Europe, in collaboration with Fox Studios and Garnier. Managing director Bob Mayson said: ‘The structure was a real feat of organisation and imagination, intended to immerse viewers deep into the 3D world of Epic. ‘When the audience ascended up the rope ladders and found themselves in a fully functioning cinema right in the heart of nature, you could see the wonder in their eyes.’

 

The Archipelago Cinema, Thailand. Imagine floating on a raft at sea in total darkness, with a jungle backdrop and towering rocks either side.
Now place a cinema screen into this dramatic landscape. The Archipelago Cinema, designed by Beijing-based architect, Ole Scheeren, was created specifically for the Film On The Rocks Yao Noi Festival 2012. Scheeren made a floating platform from recycled wood. This has been strewn with bean bags, which the audience sit on while watching an enormous screen that has been secured to the ocean floor.

If you’re thinking of your own home cinema – pop in a see us, we’re here to help.

Home cinema inspiration

Not sure we have clients willing to spend £1.5m on a Bat Cave or Pirates home cinema but give us the challenge!

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Has your Home Cinema got Atmos?

Just time before the new showroom launch to report on a three-dimensional cinema sound technology which has been used in many new Hollywood films is now being made available for home cinema systems.

As reported in The Guardian “Dolby’s Atmos technology creates realistic “sound objects” at specific points around the viewer, reflecting the action on screen. It can create the effect of cracking thunder in the distance or falling rain around the viewer, making the audience feel they are inside the action, the creators hope.

Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón described the new technology as “a dream come true, where you can explore the possibilities of depth and separation as never before”.

Atmos was launched in 2012 as the fifth upgrade to Dolby’s 39 year-old “stereo” surround sound product, and has since been hailed as “one of the most significant developments in the history of cinema sound” by Pinewood Studios.”

“Cinemas need ceiling-mounted speakers to demonstrate Atmos, and although home cinema enthusiasts could also install speakers in their ceiling, it is possible to improvise and create the same effect.

“Our research discovered that a sound appears to come from above a listener when it has a ‘notch’ – the combination of the sounds bending over your head to your ears as well as the reflections from your shoulders,” Jowitt told the Guardian.

Sounds without that “notch” appear to come from directly in front of a listener, rather than above. Dolby uses processing technology to build a system that could use speakers which instead of being mounted to the ceiling, bounce the sound off the ceiling to create the same effect.

The result is a virtual overhead speaker, created by directing a small speaker at the ceiling – and the difference between that and roof-mounted speakers is impossible to discern.”

Home Cinema enthusiasts can benefit

“People looking to upgrade their existing home systems to Atmos will need to buy kit including a new audio receiver, which decodes the sounds and spits them out to the speakers. Audio receivers less than two years old might be compatible with the Atmos software update, Jowitt explained, but the system will still require at least two “up-firing” speakers.

The good news is that the Atmos soundtrack can be squeezed onto a Blu-ray disc or into the existing Dolby Digital Plus technology used by streaming services including Netflix, which means an existing Blu-ray player or streamer should be able to handle it.”

As always: pop in and see us, we’re here to help.

IMAX Home cinema for £125,000?

IMAX announced late last year that it was to begin offering wealthy Chinese cinema fans the opportunity to build their own personal IMAX screens.

The company signed a joint-venture agreement with Chinese company TCL Multimedia, according to Reuters.

Each of the luxury home cinemas will cost at least $250,000 (£157,000).

IMAX has also announced plans to target wealthy customers in Russia, Hong Kong and the Middle East.

TCL has estimated that demand for home cinemas in China will grow 20 per cent a year over the next five years.

The growth is also expected to be boosted by growing 3D film revenues. Recent figures have shown that four out of every five tickets sold for Gravity were in 3D. The only other film to achieve that is Avatar.

According to IMAX, the company already earns 16 per cent of its global revenue from China. It has 131 screens installed in the country and recently signed a deal to build a further 120.

Of course – if you’d prefer something a little more affordable come and speak to us. We’re here to help.

Home Cinema takes a 4k leap forward

We are fascinated by this excellent White paper from CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and installation Association) entitled ‘What is Ultra High Definition and Why Does it Matter?’ It’s only 6 pages – please click here to read it.

Not only does it tackle the difference between HD and the new Ultra HD but it also puts it into the context of our own rooms. Where we sit in relation to our screens, what size screens will the new Ultra HD permit and the benefits of the new format over the old. We have the in-house capability to design, build and equip these increasingly desirable home cinemas and are glad to be able to pass this useful and interesting information on. Please call us if you would like to discuss this further…