By Dan Cash Construction • Design • Do It Yourself • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • • • 0 Comments

Create Your Own Temporary Outdoor Home Cinema

home cinema, home theatre, outdoor, projector, projection screenDrive-In in the Back Yard, Your Next DIY Project

Summer’s here, but the time isn’t yet right for dancing in the street. Instead, while lockdowns are being eased, it’s still not wise to gather in large groups with strangers. Nevertheless, the nice weather means that it’s nice to relax and enjoy the garden. So why not set up a temporary home cinema in the garden and enjoy the big screen experience without the hassle of having to leave the house? The first thing you’re going to need will be something to watch the movie on. You could haul a TV into the garden, but if that kind of hassle isn’t for you, then a projector is going to be the answer. Depending on the size of your garden, and where you’re going to sit will affect the kind of projector you want.

Projectors today are quite different from anything you might remember if you’ve only been keeping an eye on televisions. Today they are small, adaptable, and so bright you can watch them in daylight while ‘short throw’ projectors can sit a few inches away from the screen and still provide a huge, high definition picture. If you need to hang the projector above head height you can invert the image, or reverse it if you want to project the picture from the back of the screen.

Getting your movies from your computer to your projector and speakers is a synch. A Chromecast or Fire TV Stick can be plugged direct into the HDMI port, making it simple and trip hazard free (the projector does need to have a powered USB port though, as casting devices don’t have batteries). Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • CCTV • Home Entertainment • WiFi • 0 Comments

The Smarter The Home, The Bigger & Better The Broadband

ultrafast broadband, broadband, internet, dataWe love all things Smart Home, and have jumped fully aboard the Smart Home Automation revolution. But there is one drawback: You need a broadband subscription if your automated kit is going to work. With most suppliers that comes with the hidden fee of a phone line rental, and then, if you want to operate your Smart Tech remotely you need data for your phone as well, which means another data hungry contract.

While we can’t help with the phone contract, Briant Broadband can help with the data in your home!

Briant Broadband is a new data supply company operating two minutes walk from Worthing town centre which offers a local service based on delivering ultrafast broadband data at an competitive price point but with the benefit of experience and customer service that you only get a family run Worthing business with engineers and installers who live in the area. Read more

By Dan Cash Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • 0 Comments

The Revolution Was Television

Billy JoelIn Billy Joel’s seminal hit We Didn’t Start The Fire the singer/songwriter chronologically lists the major events since his birth which have shaped the world today. In between Studebaker and North Korea he mentions “Television” without any clarification or context, but since television was invented in the thirties, and colour television wasn’t available until the sixties, what does he mean putting it here?

Possibly he means that television entered his life between Nixon and the Korean war, as it may have been when the Joel family finally got their first television set, or it could mean that television finally became the universal means of mass communication during this era, finally superseding radio as the medium through which most people received information about world as well as local events. Read more

By Dan Cash Broadband • CCTV • Construction • Design • Do It Yourself • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • Home Security • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • • 0 Comments

Summer Sounds Perfect For Outdoor Home Audio

If we’re going to be living in our gardens this summer it’s worth looking at outdoor smart home audio.

Summer’s almost here, but it doesn’t look like the wisest decision will be to fly away to foreign climes. What with the queues at the gates for Spain, Portugal, France or Italy and the threat of unknown Covid variants further afield it might be wiser just to stay at home, even after having been unable to stray too far from one’s front door for over a year! 

But if you’re going to be spending the summer at home, how do you glam up your garden to make it somewhere you’ll want to spend time? Read more

By Dan Cash Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • • • 0 Comments

Why Now Is The Best Time To Start Looking For Your New Flat Screen TV

flat screen wall mountingIs now the best time to buy a new flat screen TV or other home entertainment tech, or is it better to wait until the trade shows are over?

If you’re in the market for a new television, hifi, or any Smart automated home devices you’re almost always stuck in a quandary, when is the right time to buy to get the best deals without missing out on the latest developments?

If you’ve ever bought an off-the-lot, straight out of the showroom car you’ll have dealt with the same questions. You could buy a “brand new” car today with this year’s registration at full price, or wait until this years’ new releases come out and buy the car as ‘nearly new’ at a discount as the dealer wants to clear the showroom forecourt to make room for the latest models.

The same goes with electronics. Retailers such as Argos, Currys PC World, Hughes, and Richer Sounds only have so much shop-floor and warehouse space so they can’t have ‘old’ tech cluttering up the shop when the new lines are in demand. The problem is timing. Get in too soon and you’ll buy a product today which will be on offer at half the price in a few weeks. Leave it too late and the deals are over, the old stock is already sold or sent back to the manufacturer to be resold in a different market, or shipped away to be recycled and made into more of the pricey technology of tomorrow. Read more

By Dan Cash Construction • General Information • Home Entertainment • • 0 Comments

How Important Are Cabling, Satellite Dish & Aerial Servicing & Repairs?

cable installation, secure cable, cable, TV, TV cable, satellite TV, TV aerialWere you tricked by the weather? Did that brief glimpse of sun at the beginning of the month have you fooled that spring was here & that you’d soon be on the beach enjoying an ice cream & a few cold ones around the barbecue any minute now?
Weren’t we all! And now March is back in full effect. “In like a lion, out like a lamb” as the old expression goes. But I guess we all wanted something to look forward to so we thought winter had ended early. No such luck!

Gales and storms are back with us once again, and with that come the inevitable storm damage to aerials, satellite dishes, and loose cabling. The damage that storms and gales can do to TV receivers is obvious. They’re large surfaces secured to your wall or chimney by only a few bolts, bolts which can easily rust of become loose over time if not properly serviced and maintained. If the wind catches them hard enough, or long enough eventually they are going to get so loose that they fall down or fly away, presenting a huge danger of injury or property damage to anyone or anything which happens to cross their path.

Loose Cable Causes No End Of Problems

Loose cabling isn’t a problem so often addressed, although it can do a lot of damage and interfere with your TV reception far more quickly than an aerial or satellite dish if they were properly installed at the same time. Read more

By Dan Cash Design • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Entertainment • Renovation • • • • 0 Comments

Our Latest “Before And After” Cable Installation

before & after, cable installation, rewiring, satellite, aerial, TV, television, expert, professional, skilled engineerWe make mention a lot about our ‘professional cable installation‘ and you may wonder why. After all, it’s just putting cables under floors and behind walls, no big deal, right?

If you look at these before and after photos from a recent job our engineers undertook you’ll start to see why it’s so important to do the job properly. Various different installers of varying degrees of expertise all seem to have had a go at this in the past.
It’s easy be break or damage a cable, especially if you don’t know where it is, and that’s why professional cable installation is so important, whether it’s in your HMO, apartment block, office or industrial unit. Read more

networking, fibre, fibreoptic, data, broadband data, broadband internet
By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Home Entertainment • WiFi • • • • • 0 Comments

Better Broadband Means Better Prices & Better Customer Service

networking, fibre, fibreoptic, data, broadband data, broadband internetHow have you been treated by your broadband provider recently? Are you happy with the bills and customer service you receive? A lot of people aren’t, and with good reason.

Not long ago Sky revealed that it would be increasing the cost of some of their packages, including broadband, pay TV and phone contracts from April to May this year. EE, BT and Virgin are all raising prices in March, using the Consumer Price Index as a justification.

How Does The Consumer Price Index Work?

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) take an imaginary “basket of goods” which statisticians and economists believe everybody wants and uses more or less every day, and compares the cost of each item against one another and the income of the British Public. The outcome of this number-crunching gives us a handy way to judge inflation, how much a pound is worth in spending power today compared with how much it had last year, five years, or even ten years ago, and how much spending power it has against other currencies, such as the dollar or euro.

Things are added to the CPI Basket of Goods as they become essential to our lives, and get left out as our tastes change. As well as things you would find in a literal shopping basket it also contains a raft of other items and costs, including bedroom furniture, rent, and one of the most recent additions: broadband internet. Read more

By Dan Cash CCTV • Construction • Design • Do It Yourself • Home Cinema • Home Entertainment • Home Security • Renovation • WiFi • • • 0 Comments

Our Finishing Touches Turn D-I-Y Into D-I-WOW!

home entertainment, barn conversion, home office, work from home, wifi extenders, mesh networkWhile Covid has kept millions of people at home with nothing to do DIY projects all over the country have finally been completed. Stuck at home, entertainment has been at a premium. With no reason to put all those niggling little jobs off, and all the time that could never be found before shelves have been going up, doors touched up and re-hung, bedrooms painted and bathrooms re-grouted. And then there are the people who like to get their teeth stuck into the big jobs!

A marvellous example of ‘finally getting around-to-it’ is this exceptional outhouse we recently tricked out with home entertainment, internet & TV in Wonersh, a beautiful little village not far from Guildford in Surrey.

Creating Workspaces You Want To Enjoy Spending Spare Time In

The homeowners wanted a space where they could ‘break out’ when they got sick of being trapped indoors, but with all the access to modern technology that we’ve all become used to. It’s a space to relax, and to work, but it also needs to be secure. A perfect scenario for for Briant Communications! Read more

networking, fibre, fibreoptic, data, broadband data, broadband internet
By Dan Cash General Information • Home Entertainment • Management • Older People • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • • • • • 0 Comments

Get Networking, From Person to Person to Business to Business

networking, fibre, fibreoptic, data, broadband data, broadband internetThis past year has come as a revelation to most of us. We’ve become so used to science and technology being a reliable source of solutions to all of our problems that when something completely new and unpredictable comes along it turns out we’re as defenceless as newborn babes. Most of us have been forced to cope because there was simply no choice. We found that our networks of friends and family were easier to reach than ever before thanks to social media, video conferencing and instant messaging, and we found that many of our jobs could be done from home, even if the distraction of being at home and not “at work” was baffling, frustrating and frankly annoying!

It seems like networking has never been so important, from our connections with friends and family, to our local communities, to work and colleagues, and to sources of news and current affairs, being able to gather and absorb information quickly, in a way that’s easy to achieve has become part of our everyday lives.
Even for people who are naturally technology resistant, the last year has meant that they have embraced that which they would normally ignore. Necessity has driven that for some: if they can’t shop online & they’re considered to be vulnerable it can be difficult to get shopping done, especially if they don’t have young, fit, active people in their Bubble. Read more