Decorating the Living room was like breaking a bond. It was one of those things that we knew needed to be done and yet it was a big enough job that we put it off for nearly five years. The big push this year came about when I came home one eve and just grabbed a hammer and chisel to see how difficult it would be to remove the york stone covered chimney breast.
2 days later and the room was a wreck. On the plus side, without the fake chimney breast there was a nice empty wall just begging for a big TV. I've never been a big fan in the past, but recently we have been watching a lot of movies at home and it occurred that if we do spend a lot of time in front of the TV, might as well make it a good system!
Here we are two months later and the first part of the master plan is complete. The room is essentially finished and we are now the proud owners of a great home cinema system, except for the TV!
The system is based on two key components: the surround sound speaker system and the decoder/Amplifier.
For the speaker system, I went for the KEF KHT-1005 set, which is a 5.1 system. The gorgeous aluminium egg shaped speakers landed at £300. Don't bother shopping around for these: KEF have a very strict retail agreement which means that these are not available by courier. This means that prices are strictly controlled too!
One word of caution though: make sure any accessories you want are available: the sexy KEF stands for my speakers are still on a boat somewhere between China and here and the speakers don't look the same without the stands.
The same restrictive sales policy does not apply to the stands so shop around: I'll get mine for £55 per pair when there are some in the UK to buy!
The Amp that I went for is the Yamaha DSP-AX757SE . It's a flipping great big unit that is far too deep for the fireplace but it works great. It has 7 inputs, each with composite, Svideo and Audio connections. There’s a big bank of Digital inputs too so most digital kit will work just fine. Note there is no HD available though, so look elsewhere if you want HD ready kit.
I do want this feature, but I'm happy to bypass the AV Amp with the HD Video signal when the kit is available.
Shop around for this unit, I got mine for £322 delivered which is a whopping saving on the RRP.
Okay, so it's all plugged in and although the speakers are presently sitting on the floor, it is one impressive sound. I can't begin to describe how eerie it is to have ambient sounds behind you when you watch a movie.
I'll post again when the Telly is installed and the speaker stands are in.