By Dan Cash Home Cinema • Home Entertainment 0 Comments

What is Dolby, and why is it so important to Home Cinema enthusiasts?

Dolbydolby, tv sound, sound quality first came to prominence as a noise reduction process, invented by Thomas Dolby in the 1960s. Before his noise reduction process was developed static and hiss on magnetic tapes and optical film would spoil the sound of a movie. Various ways were tried to get around it, such as reducing treble but using this method could only go so far before the dialogue began to be distorted or muffled.

As tape was rapidly superseding optical sound reproduction (a process where the sound is recorded as a visible signal on the edge of the film and converted back into sound when the film is run through a projector which is fitted with the right audio capability) the Dolby Noise Reduction (NR) was applied to improving the sound on tape by electronically suppressing the noise which is inherent in magnetic tape recordings. Read more

By Dan Cash CCTV • Energy Saving • Home Entertainment • • 0 Comments

Why Is Turning On Smart Lights So Frustrating?

phone, smart phone, unlock smart phone screenAccessing your Smart Home environmental controls via your phone is handy. It’s the easiest way to control your lighting, heating, air conditioning, even answering the door. So why is it so difficult to take master these controls without having to unlock your phone?

It’s not the worst of all First World Problems, but it does create a frustrating delay when what we all want is immediacy and the instant satisfaction that we get from flipping a switch.

Smart Home integration is supposed to be quick and convenient, but if you have to unlock your phone every time you want to dim the lights, it’s a bit of a faff. Other functions don’t require your phone to be unlocked. Want to snap a fast photo? You can do that without unlocking. Need to pay at a shop counter? No need to unlock there either when you’re using ApplePay (providing it’s less than a set amount). But when you want to adjust the lights, or put the heating on you have to fumble around unlocking the phone, going to the app and sliding the toggle. Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • Do It Yourself • Home Entertainment • Management • Tips and Tricks • Uncategorized • • 0 Comments

Getting the most out of your Google Assistant

google assistant, smart home assistant, smart home automationGoogle Assistant can help with almost anything these days, including looking up your old photos, helping you find new podcasts to fall in love with, and finding your phone.
If you’re forgetful or absent minded and you’ve got a Google Assistant then you’ll most likely already know how to use your Google Assistant to remind you to do things but there’s a whole world of things your Smart Assistant can help with.

Making lists and notes

First of all you’ll need to add an app such as Google Keep, Any.do, or Bring to your Google Assistant. Keeping things on brand will probably cause the least friction, and Google Keep is a great resource for keeping everything online you want to read, listen to, or watch later in one place. Even before you start adding your own lists or sheets to it, you can identify any websites you find with labels of your own, making them easy to organise. Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Home Entertainment 0 Comments

How Changing Broadband Providers Always Gets You A Better Deal*

broadband speed, ISP, internet service provider, wireless data, fibre broadbandThe benefits of switching broadband provider, energy, and phone company can’t be overstated. Many suppliers offer outstanding deals with new contracts, but have standard contracts which are so bad they almost appear to penalise customer loyalty. You don’t get discounts which are available to new sign-ups, the customer service you receive is often rubbish, and in the case of broadband customers, despite paying more than newer customers you’re stuck with an old router which was never top of the line in the first place, meaning that you simply aren’t getting the speeds new customers do.

Shopping around means that you’ve putting yourself in line for those great deals. Many broadband providers depend on complacency and laziness among the majority of their customers. If it’s too much of a faff to shop around for a better deal, and when you find one, it’s difficult to get out of your contract, or migrating over means losing your phone number unless you pay a fee, then you’re likely to stay with them despite a better deal being within reach.

But if you’re out of your minimum contract period and you’re just paying a rolling fee to keep getting data, why not see what other deals are out there? Better prices, brand new hardware and better customer service are all ripe for the picking! Read more

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