How to build the ultimate credit-crunch home cinema system (part 2)

In part two of our credit crunch system special, we cherry pick a bargain screen, projector and speakers and then crank the whole darn rig up to eleven.

There are plenty of products which punch above their weight released every year, it’s just a question of knowing what to look out for. Feel free to snap up individual components or splurge on the whole damn system. Whatever way you play it, you won't be disappointed...

The speakers
For cinephiles looking for everything - good with two-channel, good with surround and even some decent wobbly melodic bass Q Acoustics' 1000i series is a great choice.

The system comprises four dumpy 1010i satellites and a 1000Ci in the middle, with lows energised by the 1000Si subwoofer. The four sats have 4in drivers; the centre has two of the same size. The sub has a 8in long-fling woofer, which is flung about by a 200W amp.

The 1000i boxes are beautifully finished in Cherry, Beech or Graphite black and while all these will still set you back the same as last year, at a mere £500, the tweeters are superior micro-woven 25mm polyester jobs and use so-called 'ClarityCaps' (a better class of passive crossover component used in good hi-fi) inside.

The modest price doesn't prepare you for the sheer quality of the output. They project a soundfield of great believability. With excellent placement of effects, you'll easily find yourself in the jungle in Rescue Dawn or the streets of a post-viral-apocalyptic pandemic in I Am Legend.

Admittedly, this system isn’t for hooligans. It doesn't like to go terribly loud and shouty for action movies but it’s a great partner for our Sony amplifier.

The projector
There's no shortage of competition in the home cinema projector market. Full HD light cannons can be had from a variety of brands and they use different technologies to get pretty-much the same result. You can pay anywhere between £1,800 and £12,000 for the privilege of bigscreen entertainment.

While there are a number of good DLP models at the more affordable end of the spectrum, Mitsubishi's 1080p HC6000 remains a PJ that’s hard to beat.

The integrated HQV Reon Silicon Optics image processor is a boon for standard-def sources, be they Sky, DVD or Freeview. Removing jaggies from images at the projector end of the chain ensures that whatever hits the bigscreen offers the kind of clean, unbroken lines that speak of hi-def.

The original HC5000 struggled to find depth in dark shadows, and its auto-iris was a tad slow to react, causing visible delayed-reaction dimming when a scene yo-yoed from bright to dim. The HC6000 reacts faster and can deliver a more convincing, solid, black. Select Low lamp mode in the menu, and set gamma to 'Cinema' and the shadowy streets of Tim Burton's Gotham CIty (Batman, Sky HD) really do look like they might conceal creeps and kooks. Mitsubishi has also addressed one of the setup failings of the first-gen model by including electronic keystone correction. The projector is now much more forgiving as to where it can be located. And with an updated HC6500 due soon, you might just find this model at a discounted price.

Up and running
In full-flight, this system is freakin' sweet! Once assembled in the HCC viewing room, it had visitors cooing with pleasure.

The 32in Sharp LC-32X20 TV is a little gem, with good fast-motion and excellent detailing. The three HDMIs should suit most system builders, and partnered with our PS3 source it's ideal for movie and game use. It also wins brownie points for style.

Q-Acoustics' 1000i 5.1 speaker package is a great match. The L/C/R fronts don't dwarf the Sharp, yet deliver a huge, confident wall of sound that's immediately engaging. The sub is robust enough to make its presence felt, yet doesn't hog too much floor-space. Setting it up is easy - just run an LFE phono feed from our AVR into the requisite input, set the crossover dial to around 100Hz and nudge the volume output to three-quarters.

The Sony STR-DG910 is the heart of the system. There's a number of budget receivers available that could have done this job (we're decoding HD audio in the PS3 and outputting as PCM so there's no need for bitstream decoding) but the swinger for us was Sony's proprietary DCS (Digital Cinema Sound) modes, powerful grunt and cracking build quality. In the system menu we set the size of the speakers to 'small', activating the AVR's bass redirection circuitry. This allows the sub to add body to the sound which the satellites just can't manage on their own.

The PS3 makes a versatile and entertaining source component. Connection-wise you need only run a single HDMI to the AVR, along with an optical audio connection. The former is set up in the PS3 menus to deliver linear PCM, with the latter set to bitstream. This gives you the option of listening to Dolby TrueHD decoded in the player and output as lossless LPCM, and standard Dolby and DTS 5.1 tracks decoded by the Sony receiver.

Our final component, the Mitsubishi HC6000, turns what is a relatively small footprint system into a bigscreen experience, delivering a super-crisp 1080p picture measuring over 100in from just 4m. For the best picture run an HDMI cable direct from the PS3 into the projector and view Blu-ray discs at 1080p24.

So, fby plundering the bargain bins we've assembled a system of startling quality, which is a cinch to setup. Every piece of kit is a giant killer - put them all together and it'll slay dragons for far less than many would imagine.

In Part One, we cherry-picked our source, TV and AV receiver