The HAVs have it
James Delingpole
Before I head off to meet Angus Gibson, I find myself simmering with bitterness and resentment. Gibson is the man you go to see if you want a state-ofthe-art home entertainment centre installed in your loft or basement: cinema screen; projector for your spiffy new ultra-sharp Blu-Ray DVDs; 50-inch plasma screen for your HD TV; battery of six speakers for wraparound sound fidelity; fiber-remote control which deals with everything from the dimming of the lights to locating your favourite hardcore Albanian donkey-porn channel. The works.
Why am I doing this piece, I’m wondering? Doesn’t anyone realise there’s a credit crunch and a recession and a grisly stagflation scenario going on? Is it not, perhaps, just a mite obscene promoting toy sets which, even at entry level, will set you back around £20,000, when most of us are so worried about money we’re thinking of swapping Ocado for Lidl?
There is, I suppose, a counter-argument that in these dark times home audio visual systems (let’s call them HAVs for short) are a perverse form of frugality. Tot up how much it would set you back to take the family to the flicks — £100, shall we say, pessimistically, if you have dinner afterwards or get a parking ticket. So, all you need do is not go out 200 times and hey, the system’s paid for.
Still sounds a pretty thin justification, in my book. And anyway, aren’t HAVs a bit noov, a bit Russian oligarch, a bit Footballers’ Wives? Well yes, agrees Gibson — delightfully charming in that Old Etonian way where you don’t at all feel like you’re being practised on — a healthy percentage of his clientele do indeed fit into that category. But that doesn’t mean that normal, old-fashioned and really-not-that-rich people can’t have one too.
Within ten minutes I have been persuaded. Not in that fake ‘I was sceptical at the beginning but by the end I was convinced’ manner one sometimes affects in order to give articles like this a more interesting narrative progression. I am genuine.
First, the technical argument. Once you have seen and heard how fantastically superior a properly set-up HAVs system looks, sounds (and feels, especially the rumbling, pit-of-the-stomach sub bass) you’ll be incapable of watching a normal TV ever again. Take football in high definition (HD) on a big screen. It’s not just like being at the match; it’s like being at a match where God has intervened to give the ball, the players and the pitch an even greater number of pixels than they do in real life; or possibly like being God himself. As for Blu-Ray, it makes all things not in Blu-Ray seem like the world before your cataract operation.
Then there’s the sound. Most new films, and increasingly albums too, are recorded not in stereo but in something called 5.1, which means the different sounds come at you from three speakers (and one extra speaker purely for the bass) in front of you, and two behind. The ones behind are for the atmosphere bits: the distant chinking of cutlery in a restaurant, say. When George Lucas started this trend with Star Wars it was a gimmick. Now it has become de rigueur.
Consider too the convenience. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to build a library of films (and music) streamed (for a small fee) from the ether on to a hard disc. These you will be able to watch for ever, in considerably greater comfort than in a cinema, with no popcorn-munching chavs to ruin your pleasure. And there’s also lots of gimmicky extra stuff you can easily do, like create a compilation of all cinematic history’s greatest car chases (or Nam combat sequences) to show off to your coked-up hedge-fund playmates.
What really sold it to me, though, was the social aspect. The home cinema is replacing the drawing room and the kitchen as the groovy home’s dedicated pleasure zone. It’s where you go after dinner to chill with your mates: skin up; play games; listen to music; generally have fun. It’s such an indulgence it somehow seems to license naughtiness.
You’ll be wondering: what’s wrong with just getting a big screen and some good speakers for my sitting room? Doesn’t work. Your ceiling will be too high; it has to be black-outable; and because the room’s focus is the fireplace, the geography’s unsuitable. Sorry, but £20,000 is what you need to spend, minimum. About £6,000 preparing your redundant room (or cellar space). About £15,000 for the kit. I’d do it if I had the money, definitely.
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