Have you ever considered setting up an area in your home as a ‘Cinema’?
Notice, I specifically avoided the word ‘dedicated’!
That omission is important because very few of us can afford to have a full room assigned to watching movies.
Instead, I advocate in one of my chapters inside the latest edition of my book – Manage Your Smart Home With an App! that because 5.1. home cinema systems have become affordable in recent times, that you identify an area of your house or apartment that could potentially be used as a dual-purpose space that would allow you to
- Enjoy watching an HD movie or two over the weekend.
- Revert back to a living space for normal day to day household activities (drying clothes, kids play area etc…) once you the Movie is over.
In our own household for instance we have a room off the kitchen that was previously used for eating (‘dining’ is a posher term ). The shape of the room was relatively suitable for installing some 5.1 home cinema equipment; so decided earlier this year, to ‘belly up to the bar’ and start buying some equipment.
As shown below, this room gets used by the kids during the weekdays!
And, whenever we get a chance for a couple of hours during the weekend, we transform this area into a ‘Pop up’ Family Home Cinema – in other words, we get the kids to tidy their stuff off the floor. 🙂 Of course, we bribe them – they get to see the HD or 3D movie and the parents get the room tidied up!
A home cinema system typically consists of a bunch of bits and pieces – In today’s post, I’m going to introduce you to a set of speakers that I ended up purchasing for our own ‘Pop-up Home Cinema’ – Orb Audio Speakers.
First and foremost, let me list what my requirements were for the speakers that I wanted:
- They had to be on-wall speakers because our house is built of blocks and lots of concrete.
- The fact that I was unable to embed the speakers into the wall meant that the speakers would be quite visible – therefore needed speakers that weren’t clunky and awkward looking.
- A good power rating – this is not overly important if you’re using speakers in a whole house music system because of the background music nature of these systems – totally different ‘kettle of fish’ when it comes to a Home Cinema, you really want some good strong audio to maximize the entertainment value of your HD movie.
So, Yes I know lots of suppliers in the Home Automation space but most of the speaker suppliers only provided in-ceiling and in-wall speakers.
So I had to cast my research net out further and ended up purchasing an Orb Audio Mod1 Home Theater Speaker System.
The system consists of 5 stylish speakers – Orb Audio calls them ‘MOD1s’ and a powerful subwoofer.
So, since we got the speakers, we must have watched over a dozen Blu-rays, a bunch of Apple TV on-demand movies, normal TV programming – including the Ireland soccer team losing most of their matches at the European cup this year 🙁
ORB SPEAKERS – HOW MUCH?
Okay, I will tell you upfront that Orb speakers are not exactly cheap but definitely worth it if you want a nice, tidy and elegant set of speakers on your wall.
If you are happy with a bulky boxy look then these are not the speakers for you.
Our ‘Pop up’ Family Home Cinema has been a fantastic addition to the O’Driscoll household and the Orb Audio Mod1 Home Theater Speaker System has certainly contributed hugely to our enjoyment levels!