ESSENTIAL HOME CINEMA SUPPLEMENT
AWE HITS A HOME CINEMA HOME RUN AWE is a name that is synonymous with the custom install market in the UK. With awardwinning training, world-leading brands and an enviable hub of knowledge in the form of its fantastic in-house experts – Home Cinema is an area where AWE excels and supports installers with a superb offering. Here, Stuart Tickle, Managing Director at AWE, explains how integrators can work with the company to offer cinema solutions, from a simple media room, right up to a reference standard dedicated home cinema.
HOME CINEMA SURGE!
The pandemic caused a surge in the home entertainment market, with more people spending time at home and investing in everything to do with their home, including media rooms and dedicated home cinema and family entertainment rooms. Homes have had to become more flexible and multi-functional to accommodate the need to work, relax and play. Hybrid media rooms may include ‘hidden’ cinemas with concealed projectors and screens that are revealed as required, and the pièce de résistance – a dedicated home cinema and entertainment room – have grown in popularity. This is thanks in part to innovative technologies that have made the once untouchable dream of a cinema in your home, a more accessible reality. At AWE we cover all price points from entry and mid-level Epson projectors, through to the recently launched, new Sony Native 4K SXRD Laser projectors - VPL-XW7000ES and VPL-XW5000ES – which are not only compact, high in brightness and suitable for a wide variety of home cinema projects, the picture quality for the price point (starting at £6k) must be seen
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to be believed. Both are on demo at AWE HQ, as is the top end £100k projector solution, the 10,000 lumens Sony VPL-GTZ380. We also have plenty to thank the streaming networks for. Content is king and all the main services are providing cinema-quality film and TV, so we can view our favourite box sets and so many more movies at home in 4k HDR & Dolby Vision – in fact, the level of detail is stunning on either a big screen TV, or a full projection system. Even with this growth, we know there is even more growth potential in the market, so how can we support installers to tap into this and build a strong home cinema business? Well, that’s kind of what we do actually.
KNOWING THE MARKET
Home cinema has always been an important market and as such many brands are competing to be the ‘first’, the ‘best’, the ‘brightest’, the ‘most advanced’. We have seen impressive technical developments in the projector market as well as some incredible advancements in TV, with OLED, mini-LED and Micro-LED providing some major fuel for the ‘Projector vs TV’ debate. The reality is differing technologies suit different environments, so at AWE we encourage our customers to come along and experience the products first-hand at the show apartment in our Epsom HQ. Only recently we hosted our annual AWE Expo – our biggest yet – where we welcomed hundreds of industry professionals through the doors to get handson with the latest product launches, technology updates and demos from leading brands. We love welcoming installers and their clients along to the Show Apartment, which
features all the latest products from our impressive list of partner brands, including Sony, Bowers & Wilkins, LG, Rotel, URC, Denon, Marantz, Base Performance Simulators, Silent Gliss, Ring X-line, Panasonic, Philips Hue and Definitive Technology. For home cinema projects, we would encourage installers to check out our recently revamped Reference and Performance cinemas. Two amazing cinemas at different price points – one at £25K and the other at between £65K and £150k dependent upon how specified. They both offer incredible performance credentials.
SERIOUSLY GOOD HOME CINEMA DEMOS Let’s start with our new Reference Cinema. This home cinema set-up is at the top end of home cinema whilst still being relevant to most integrators, with a configuration that clients with a big healthy budget will be thoroughly impressed by.
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