We all love a night out at the movies, but pandemic restrictions and technological advances have resulted in people looking towards the home for their entertainment needs. Anna Hayes explores the new landscape of home cinemas.

A scratched Aston Martin careens through the courtyard of an undisclosed dusty street; a gun fires from the darkness; a building explodes; a fist fight ensues; an old foe appears in what looks an inescapable cage; a host of beautiful women litter the scene; and a handsome man in a tux struts to the sound of an iconic soundtrack…

No, it’s not midnight in Richmond – it’s the trailer for the latest James Bond movie ‘No Time to Die’, first released in December 2019 and, in many cases, probably the last trailer any of us saw on an actual cinema screen before they were all shuttered due to COVID-19.

That movie has been delayed for almost two years but it is more the exception than the norm.

The entertainment landscape has changed, probably irrevocably, in the past 18 months and that has presented new opportunities for integrators, manufacturers and distributors working in the home cinema and theatre space.

The pandemic effect

It might seem obvious to say it but Australia is a bloody long way from everywhere and, traditionally, disposable income has been set aside by many for world travel, something which was derailed spectacularly in 2020 and looks no more likely in 2021, or perhaps even 2022.

That disposable income is, instead, finding its way into home-based projects and one such area is that of the home cinema or media/family room.

Paul Clarke, general manager of Cogworks, which is based in Queensland, says that some integrators experienced exceptional growth in 2020 but pointed out that Victoria did not benefit as much due to a long lockdown and strict rules.

In this regard, uncertainty is probably doing home cinema professionals a smidgeon of a favour.

Paul adds: “Because of COVID-19 and the unlikelihood of being back to ‘real’ normal this year, there is growing demand for more home cinema projects and this is likely to continue into 2023 and possibly beyond.”

The scope of pandemic-based upgrades or enhancements varied though, according to Len Wallis of Len Wallis Audio.

“We saw an increase in TVs and soundbars, but we didn’t see an increase in what we call a 5.1 theatre system in a media room. I think the market has moved a little bit away from that anyway. But we are finding a real resurgence in interest in dedicated theatres with proper seating, acoustics and things like that. There’s been a lot more interest in those longer term projects where you need to actually build the room and so on.”

NSW-based McCormick Concepts was the winner of the 2020 CEDIA Award for Home Cinema Level III in the Asia Pacific region and its managing director Chris McCormick says that they saw a lot more upgrade jobs during the pandemic, rather than big projects.

“After that initial lockdown, people with smaller projects started to come out of the woodwork where they’d been at home and maybe this part of their home cinema hadn’t worked properly for yours and they wanted to get it fixed. Or they wanted to add one feature, or upgrade to 4K, etc.

“Then towards the end of last year, that’s when people started investing. We started to see more of those larger AU$50k to AU$100k sort of projects. And people were a lot more confident, whereas early in the year people were still unsure and very price conscious.”

Chris also cites travel, or the lack thereof, as a big factor in people spending more on luxury home enhancements.

“The year prior to COVID-19 I saw a lot of people cancel doing home cinema projects because of things like travel. I had clients who said they could spend $50k on a cinema but would rather go on an overseas holiday.”

Chris says that, from speaking to builders, they are anticipating that the market will continue to burn until travel opens up and for approximately two years after it does before they start to see a decline as people begin to funnel money back towards travel.

The gift of sound and vision

There are two different types of installation that are common in this space – the dedicated theatre as mentioned above by Len, and the more multi-purpose media or family room which can blur the lines as to what the space can and cannot do.

There are a number of components to consider in designing and fitting a home cinema.

Paul from Cogworks feels that the three big factors are: the room itself and how it can be treated acoustically; the use of correct, specified to suit, equipment; and the ability of the company to calibrate that equipment properly to the room.

“The range of installations varies from the very basic entry level packages the chain and smaller stores and installers offer, right up to the multimillion-dollar full-blown smart home multi-zone projects designed and built by the true cinema designers,” he says.

“The end user, of course, wants a wow factor and while installing a large screen and a set of big speakers, and a centre channel up front might impress them, there is no substitute for a proper behind the screen speaker configuration similar to that of a commercial cinema to create the real cinema experience.”

Paul stresses the importance of engaging a CEDIA award-winning professional company that understands and can apply industry standards to the project.

One man who spends a fair amount of his time plugged into the world of home cinema design is Guy Singleton, creator of The CEDIA Designer (TCD), a specialised software solution for designing home theatre installations. He also emphasises the importance of abiding by standards documents and top level training such as that from ISF, CEDIA, HAA and THX.

“True cinema design is a real master class in maths and engineering and that’s where TCD really shines. It creates a design based on peer reviewed standards (RP22/CEB22-RP1 Performance Facts) that are all governed by the R10 council. It can probably do in ten minutes what would normally take a special integrator (or maybe a small team) several hours or even days.”

Guy adds that for many years cinema design has been the selection the dealer/integrator’s favourite components and arranging them into a space.

Len agrees, pointing out that three years ago they were designing theatres around products coming out of the two-channel market. But in recent times, there has been a big surge in companies producing products specifically designed for theatre application.

“We are finding some really, really interesting stuff coming out in that space at the moment. It has made our job easier because you’re not trying to integrate something designed for a different space. The results are better and we also find that we’re hitting better price points because the finished product has to do one thing, not cover a whole gamut of styles.”

Chris feels that there is a combination of people being brand loyal and not engaging the right people before starting a home cinema project, highlighting one instance where a client purchased a particular brand’s products online from five different locations, thus making it very difficult to find a company to design a system where they don’t supply the product, and also diminishing the level of support they would get when needed.

“I think if you want to do something right, the client should see a professional and talk about the outcome. There’s no need to be brand loyal, lots of brands can do what you need. Part of the journey is saying you’ll go to three different designers and see what they do. You’ll get three different brands and, as long as they’re designed the right way, they’ll probably give you what you need.”

Size matters

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to designing and installing home cinemas is that of the limitations of whatever room the project is being installed in.

Guy says that every space will have obvious compromises with doors and windows being the standout ones.

For Len, that point is very apt.

“You have to be able to make a home cinema room pitch black dark. But that’s difficult because the people with money, a lot of them live on the harbour (in Sydney) and they’ll have sheer glass and concrete, and it’s bright so that’s a big challenge.”

While retrofitting a pre-existing room has its challenges, even new builds bring challenges for integrators. Len suggests that while it was once the case that the equipment in a home cinema was the biggest cost, now the real estate is probably the most expensive part. He says that builders and architects are becoming more au fait with the notion of consulting the integrator before starting into constructing a designated home cinema room.

But that experience is not what Chris has witnessed, saying that he sometimes has a hard time convincing builders that a space needs to be constructed in a particular way in order to conform to industry standards.

“Rooms need to be built towards the outcome. But there are a lot of smoke and mirror philosophies out there about how to build a room. We can meet some resistance from trades and if a builder builds something before I get there, sometimes they’ve wasted money and we’ve got to pull it apart and change it.”

Any change in build or layout of a room can set off a chain reaction in design plans and performance.

“I’ve had people dig out a cinema room, and make it taller, because they read somewhere that that was good. But they didn’t tell me until I got there and I discovered that the seating heights and train heights were all wrong as a result. But it’s not for me, it’s a design to meet a performance level for a customer.”

If you stream it, they will come

I’ve mentioned one contributing factor to the shift towards entertaining at home – that being the pandemic. The other factor is that of the proliferation of streaming services and the availability of content such that we’ve never seen before.

I remember, as most of our readers likely will too, waiting a week for the next episode of ‘Lost’ (why did I bloody bother…) or seeing a movie in the cinema and then waiting months to see it again. And that was if you could find a copy to rent or buy.

Looking to the present and the future… well, it’s as Irish poet W.B. Yeats said: “All changed, changed utterly.”

Guy feels that as people’s habits have changed so too have those of movie studios.

“Having ‘Wonder Woman 1984’, ‘King Kong Vs Godzilla’, and ‘Black Widow’ being streamed straight to your home (on the natural day of release) seems to be a bell that can’t easily be un-rung, so I’d say that the home cinema theatre market will capitalise on this. It’s a very exciting prospect for the industry – not so much for the commercial theatres but times change and they will either evolve of die. Perhaps the price of popcorn at home will be the deciding factor.”

Len has bought into the streaming world, admitting that he had binge watched an ABC series rather than waiting for the terrestrial showing of the subsequent episodes.

“There’s a lot of very good quality, non cinema release stuff now and I think people are getting used to that. They’re getting used to not going to the movies when, before the pandemic they might have been avid movie goers. We were but we probably will go less now as we’ve been spending more time watching stuff at home. But people are getting used to that and thinking: ‘let’s get the best system that we can’.”

It’s clear that this pivot towards home entertainment is a more permanent occurrence. This isn’t a simple substitute for the Friday night cinema date – it’s now more of an everyday lifestyle choice, to have that cinema experience at home.

Chris agrees, acknowledging the ease of access to content and stressing that even the more budget conscious cinema versus a TV on the wall showed a huge difference in quality.

“I think once people go back to commercial cinemas, they’ll realise just how poor the quality is. Commercial cinemas are built to fit as many people as possible for the cheapest budget possible to make profit, like any business. But you miss out on so much stuff like sound and colour. By contrast, I’ve got an ICF certified calibrator who works on a home cinema and he’s trying to replicate exactly what the director intended.”

Chris doesn’t think the commercial cinema will completely disappear but does feel that the move towards home setups is an inevitable evolution offering convenience, safety, the ability to stop and pause, have your own food, etc.

He adds that his partner had been happy watching content on a normal 40” TV but when he built his showroom he brought her in to see it.

“She sat down and watched a couple of movies. And she said ‘I’m tainted now, I don’t think I could go back.’ And that’s what it’s like when you experience things the way they were designed to be experienced.”