Articles and whitepapers

Trade Talk: Selling the Idea of Home Cinema Just Became Easier (3/9/2010)

By Claire Scholes, LairdKing

I always struggled with the concept of selling a home cinema. Multiroom audio: yes, Multiroom video: yes. Both of these technologies give something practical and useful within the home, and I could see them easily being used. But a dedicated home cinema? I found it hard to justify the cost to clients.

Two things however, have changed my opinion on this matter: the first is children, and the second is the need to have somewhere to watch films where you can get lost in the action, be suspended in disbelief and ultimately relax. Children love to engage with films and be completely immersed in the world created before them, and as work becomes busier for our clients, the need to relax is greater. All of a sudden, the home cinema has a quantifiable benefit - a selling point.

People can escape and relax in their home cinema.

Where is the market?

DVD sales maybe decreasing, but they are still a large market, with sales at GBP2bn in 2009 - which is larger than gaming with sales of GBP1.7bn. According to the British Video Association, Blu-ray sales were reported to have increased by 123%. It is also worth noting that the six of the top ten film titles in 2009 were family films, indicating that the marketplace for home cinemas is with clients looking to create family homes.

The more we watch film at home, the more we are likely to want to enjoy and enhance the experience and invest in it. And it doesn't need to be a dedicated room anymore. The television market is bursting with styled and designed screens built to sit as a piece of contemporary art in a living room or kitchen, and the CI industry has access to some exceptional products to provide surround sound without compromising on a room having multiple uses.

Why we add value

With so many products on the high street, it is more important than ever that as CI members we advertise our expertise. The introduction of 3D as a home cinema choice is a prime example. We all know that 3D (as well as HD and HDMI) are actually complicated and very intricate areas of our work, especially when integrating or just putting together several different components. It would be very easy currently for someone to buy a 3D TV and find that when they get it home, it does not work properly or live up to their expectations. Is it the wirelessly synced glasses, or the fact that their A/V receiver does not cope with HDMI 1.4a, or that the TV is sold as 3D ready but the glasses and associated products are either not available or not sold during the process.

Then there is the sound. A huge part of being immersed in a film is the feeling created by the surround sound system. Again, there are many choices on the high street - most of which are ugly and are accompanied by a lack of advice on how to set up, leaving the user with a wasted investment.

Bring forward a simple home cinema package created by installers and assisted by suppliers and we have an opportunity to compete with the higher end of the retail market, appealing to those who want to enhance their home, not turn it into a branch of an electronics store. We can then hit them with our most secret of tools - the control.

Control

This is where the CI industry comes into its own. Whether it be a simple and basic universal remote, sleek touchpanel or an app on the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, we know about controls for the home and what a difference they can make.

There are exciting products such as in-wall systems from Sonance to charge and dock your iPhone like an in-wall touchpanel. As CIs we know how to program remotes such as RTI and Nevo, and set up apps to control the home cinema. But even more exciting are products such as RedEye from ThinkFlood and FLPR from New Potato technologies. By plugging in an IR interface and downloading an app, these devices allow you to use your iPhone (or indeed your iPad in the case of RedEye) as a universal controller for your home cinema equipment via infrared.

The ThinkFlood RedEye is available in two versions: the mini version(left) plugs into the iPhone's headphone socket, while the mains-powered dock version (right) communicates with the iPhone via Wi-Fi and can therefore sit anywhere within line of sight of the infrared-controlled devices.

This is a challenge that many people have been working on, and probably at first glance not be the most seamless or elegant integration we know, but it brings the CI industry direct to a larger market of customers. So for me, along with the practical uses of AV and home automation, the home cinema has now become a whole lot easier to sell.

Claire Scholes is Managing Director of LairdKing. LairdKing provides complete building automation systems from design and specification to installation and programming.

www.lairdking.co.uk