HOME CINEMA CHOICE REVIEW
September 2000
MOVIE MAGIC
Tom Bourton visits the home of a couple who have transformed their garage into a shrine to cult movies.
Everyone has a dream. In fact, everyone has lots of dreams. While you may hanker to see the world from space, or score the winning try at the Millennium Stadium, you probably also want to get a nicer carpet or buy a new shed. Whatever your ultimate ambition, the idea of fulfiling it is enough to make you break into a smile. So I suppose that's why Neil Irving can't stop grinning when he talks about his home cinema.
For as long as he can remember, Neil has been an ardent fan of cinema. For him, childhood was a time when he used to hide on the stairs to watch the late film without disturbing his parents. His first love was horror and this genre has stayed with him to this day, although a vast collection of R1 DVDs has replaced the scrapbooks that he used to put together as a kid.
A longtime supporter of the anti-censorship debate, Neil is also a regular reader of a vast array of magazines including DVD newsletter, Empire, Sight and Sound and Video Watchdog. During his college years, he became an almost daily visitor to the Scala club at Kings Cross, where cult movies were shown in their original uncut form and he picks out Eraserhead as a movie that really changed his viewing tastes at this time. Proud of the fact that he has never seen Star Wars, he detests Hollywood and its endless stream of popcorn blockbusters. That said, his vast movie collection contains the entire spectrum of movies, with Natural Born Killers sharing shelf space with Abba: The Movie.
While huge piles of videos, laserdiscs and DVDs chronicle technological developments over the last few years, an assortment of posters and photographs decorate every hallway. Most strikingly though, a mannikin called Linda stands at the end of a hall, holding an usher's torch and offering popcorn and programmes to any passing punters.
With so much memorabilia throughout the house, Neil and Carolyn were keen to convert the garage, not just to build a home cinema, but also to create extra storage space for all the gear. Neil now files back issues of magazines in the half-loft and has made room to display a wide variety of original movie posters that he owned. As for Carolyn, she is delighted with the new look. Although she describes herself as a 'lazier fan' than her husband, she is equally obsessed with all things cinematic. In fact, when the couple used to go to the cinema together, they would sit in different rows so their body language wouldn't influence each other's reactions to the film.
 
DIVINE INTERVENTION
But who could be entrusted to build this ultimate cinema shrine? Following an unfortunate experience at the hands of another firm, Neil saw the work that installation firm Pounds had done at John Thomson's house, as featured in February's HCC. From then on, things moved quite quickly. Neil sent an email to the Pounds website, received a rapid reply and a preliminary meeting had been arranged by the end of the day.
When Pounds arrived, in the form of installer Mark Eastwick, the brief was relatively straightforward. Neil and Carolyn had £20,000 to turn the garage into a home cinema. At first, they thought that the room could be dual-purpose, with tentative plans for a seating area and a window at one end. But, after only a few discussions with Mark, all parties agreed that a dedicated room was more realistic. Neil was also keen to use a small existing room to store all the kit, keeping the main room completely uncluttered. Using a small monitor, he can also cue up movies for friends without having to be in the cinema at the time.
Before their home cinema was installed, the Irvings were watching movies on a Loewe Calida TV (which they still love), a Sony 7000 R1 DVD player that was bought during a trip to the States and a Pioneer 2950 laser disc player. The Loewe TV is still in the house, forming part of a pretty serious system in the living room (including a Wharfedale DVD750 and B&W speakers), while the other two units have been integrated into the new system.
As with any project, there was a lot of work to do but, being a garage conversion, the Pounds team could specify exactly where to put all the connections. By using their own builder, Pounds could also guarantee that the install would benefit from several years of experience. The first task was to put in a false ceiling, a false floor and a radiator, as well as insulating and plastering the walls, and installing a loft ladder. Finally, all the wiring and the lighting had to be added, and forward planning meant that the Dinky Links wires could be added at this stage.
TIGHT FIT
When it came to the kit though, Mark had initially wanted to use THX Select speakers, but soon realised that the size of the room lent itself more to in-walls. He also thought that there would only be room for a 5ft 16:9 screen and it was only after careful measurement that it became possible to squeeze in a 6ft image. And, because it is a 'No Smoking' zone, the usual worries about staining for a fixed screen did not apply, so there was no need to install a drop-down version.
When it came to recommending the gear, Neil has been particularly impressed by the way in which Mark respected his £20,000 budget, working tirelessly to deliver the best system possible, and without trying to persuade him to invest more money. And, looking at the kit list, you could be forgiven for not realising that there was a budget involved at all. Accompanying the five M&K S85 in-walls, the V1250 THX subwoofer delivers serious bass and the Denon AVCA1D was recommended by Mark as a great value product. The Seleco SVP400HT provides the images, and the multiregion Sony 725D DVD player and the JVC S-VHS 9600 are the main sources, along with the existing R1 DVD player and the laserdisc player. The final additions were Monster cable and the Philips Pronto, the latter of which Carolyn finds extremely easy to use.
The end result is awe-inspiring. The rich reds and blues of the room lend themselves perfectly to the cinematic experience and the in-wall speakers are completely inconspicuous. The front array that sits below the screen are completely out of sight, and you wouldn't notice the in-ceiling rears unless you were looking for them. With the sub hiding in the corner behind two extremely comfy chairs, the room is adorable long before the lights go down.
With the system operational, the room quickly descends into pitch blackness and effects start flying around the room majestically, with fantastic steering on tricky sequences such as the aeroplane section on Fight Club. And, as well as enjoying sections of several movies, we also witnessed Neil's skills on the mixing desk as he sat in the adjoining room and put together a montage of clips to test the system to the limits.
Amazingly, there were no real problems during the installation. Mark promised Neil that everything would be completed in time for the FA Cup Final and, sure enough, the last tweaks were being made just before Chelsea and Aston Villa kicked off. As a season ticket holder at White Hart Lane, Neil is a keen Tottenham Hotspur fan and it isn't just movies that get the big screen treatment. Not only has he got Sky for all the live fixtures, but he's also got a healthy back catalogue of videos of many of the great games.
CHILLING OUT
Looking to the future, Neil and Carolyn are checking out ways of cooling the rooms, as both the cinema and particularly the kit room can get quite hot when they are full. Neil is also replacing his laserdiscs with DVDs and another potential upgrade comes in the form of THX-EX. Because he isn't a blockbuster movie junkie, he feels that there aren't enough titles that make the investment worthwhile at the moment. Thanks to the foresight of Pounds though, the necessary wiring is already in place for quick installation.
And Neil and Carolyn aren't the only fans of the system. While Neil's mother commented on how dark the room was, the recent grand opening of the cinema went down very well with all their friends. 'Most had never really experienced the sound and they were blown away by it,' says Neil. In fact, the only ones who aren't ecstatic about the system are the cats, who are wary of the bass.'
For this film-mad couple though, the icing on the home cinema cake has to be the logo which they have designed and registered. As Terrence Malick aficionados, one of Neil and Carolyn's favourite films is the moody classic Days of Heaven, which was filmed over a number of days, in the period between sunset and nightfall, when the light seems to come from nowhere. This time is known as Magic Hour, and the Irvings have now adopted this as the name for their cinema. With T-shirts already printed and a website up and running, it looks as though magic hour is here to stay.
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