FilmFour HD recently launched exclusively on the Virgin HD service (take that Sky subscribers!) and I’ve been recording a few films on the handy V+ hard drive. The quality of Channel 4 HD is very good on Virgin and FilmFour looks to be equally good, and without the distracting channel indent in the corner of the screen, which is nice.

The other night, I curled up with my girlfriend to watch one of these recordings- The Fly, made in 1958, starring Vincent Price and David Hedison. I’m a big fan of David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, but I’d only seen the original once before, many years ago on terrestrial TV. I could have sworn it was in black and white, and I’m sure the channel panned and scanned the film to fit square TV’s (thanks guys, I only wanted to see 51% of the picture!). Surprisingly enough, FilmFour’s CinemaScope Technicolor presentation was quite an improvement. HD is great for brand new films and demo-material documentaries like Planet Earth, but I find there’s something nice about seeing an old film in HD. Notice the detail in Vincent Price’s Brylcreemed 50’s style hair? Spot the wallpaper pretending to be real woodwork on the set! Thrill to the blue-bottle with it’s head painted white! Actually, we had to pause the film for a minute and discuss just HOW they managed to paint the fly’s head white…was the ‘fly-wrangler’ able to hold it in place? Did they hide some paint in a pile of sugar and chuckle as the fly, blissfully unaware, painted it’s own head? Fascinating stuff.

As much fun as spotting extra HD detail is, the main reason The Fly 1958 inspired this article is, it’s very good. Maybe even as good as the remake. I couldn’t help but notice (once I’d marveled at Vincent Price’s hair a couple more times) that the underlying themes of the remake are all present and correct in the original. David Cronenberg, the hack, had half his work done for him. I’m only kidding of course, David Cronenberg is no hack director, but his glorious remake mostly built on the originals ideas.

In the 50’s, a time when you could (so they tell us now) leave your doors unlocked at night, the big fears were nuclear war and scientists ‘gone mad’. Scientists ‘gone mad’ building nuclear weapons? YIKES. A lot of the horror and sci-fi of the day featured giant nuclear bugs (science created this monster!) and alien invasion (look out, the Commies will get you!). The Fly was one of the most popular crazy scientist movies, a huge hit spawning two sequels and (thirty years later) a remake and a sequel to the remake. Today, in this climate of remakes gone mad, there is (of course) talk of another remake. In 3D, probably.

Where was I? A bit scared actually, my mind just wandered to that money-spider hanging from the HiFi Cables office loo ceiling… I’ll get back to those themes, present in the original and remake. Our mad scientist in the original (played by David Hedison, Felix in the Timothy Dalton Bond movies) uses his (patent-pending) DISINTEGRATOR-REINTEGRATOR machine to teleport (a term apparently not-coined in 1958) himself a few metres through space. Tragically, he didn’t notice the housefly hitching a ride, if only the maid had used the anti-bac spray in the kitchen more often. I wonder if anti-bac spray was available in 1958, it would have been a lot easier to invent than a DISINTEGRATOR-REINTEGRATOR, surely, and could have prevented all this horror. Anyway, the teleport promptly flips-out and swaps the scientist’s head with the fly’s head (eeewww!) and, just for good measure, swaps his arm with (look away now kiddies) the fly’s leg. In the remake, this transformation happens much more gradually, the scientist slowly and painfully becomes a human-fly hybrid. This allows Cronenberg to delve a lot deeper into the psychology of a human beginning to think like a fly. In one touching and quite disturbing scene, Jeff Goldblum has a great speech about how he, the human-fly, will become the very first insect politician. It’s tragic stuff, the humanity of the scientist, trying to reason with the insect controlling him. The insect just wants to eat, well, everything and that’s quite anti-social you see. In the original, there’s no suggestion of an insect politician, because his instant fly head renders speech impossible. This forces David Hedison to communicate with his wife via typing (with his good arm), knocking (once for yes, twice for no) and, in the most poignant scene, writing “Need fly. Love you.” on a blackboard while trying to keep his fly arm at bay. Hedison needs the white-headed, white-legged fly to (help meee, help meeeee!) get his head and arm back. Ladies, ever tried catching one particular fly and having your husband’s life depend on it? Didn’t think so. It’s pretty frustrating and adds a great deal of suspense to the film (the remake missed a trick by removing this element). Surprisingly, catching it in his hair did not occur to Vincent Price…

In a new series on our Facebook page and blog, I’ll be frequently posting articles relating to home cinema.

When I say ‘home cinema’, I use this term quite loosely. These pieces could discuss anything from the quality of the Blu-ray release of My Name is Bruce, to an anecdote about the time a two-litre bottle of Coke hit me on the head during a screening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at a Cannon Cinema in 1989. These articles are called ‘Random Home Cinema Thoughts’, if I try to bring any kind of order to them, I expect I’ll over think and decide not to write one that day, or any day. Which would be a lot less fun for my readers.

Now, that’s where YOU come in. Hopefully, my random thoughts will provoke your random thoughts and I’ll be inundated with comments agreeing or disagreeing we me. Maybe you’ll simply not believe that a two-litre bottle of Coke could hit anyone on the head during a public film screening, sounds a little far fetched, no? Or perhaps my assessment of My Name is Bruce on Blu-ray (great special features, ropey transfer) will rub you the wrong way…heck, you could love Bruce Campbell even more than I do, you might even have every episode of Zena: Warrior Princess on DVD…where am I going with this? Oh yes, agree or disagree, make some comments and provoke more random home cinema thoughts. That’s why a lot of us are here, we’re a bit keen on home cinema aren’t we?

Anyway, that’s the intro, keep an eye out for the first article…

First, we pick the reel from our stock, in this case Chord Carnival SilverScreen.

We measure 10cm (a good length for separating the plugs) and score the outer jacket.

We now gently cut through the outer jacket and reveal the foil shielding.

We fully remove the outer jacket. This usually reveals the 2nd layer of foil shielding, the 1st layer tends to remain inside the outer.

We carefully peel away the foil shielding.

We use a blade to gently score the dielectric. This exposes the…

…internal conductors. Gentle scoring with a blade and bending the cable avoids cutting the red and black insulation.

We now twist off the PVC dielectric.

9. Exposed

The internal conductors are now fully exposed. Notice how they are twisted within the cable.

10. Heatshrink

We now push the heatshrink neck halfway along the cut cable end.

12. Shrunk

The heatshrink is now fitted in place.

13. Trim

We trim the conductor ends to match.

14. Score

We evenly score the conductor insulation.

15. Strip

We now use a wire-stripper to remove the conductor outers.

16. OFC

The oxygen-free copper, multi-strand conductors.

17. Plug

We hold the plug in place and…

18. Crimp

…use pliers to crimp the cable retainers.

19. Both

This is done on both sides.

20. Held

With both cable retainers now crimped into place, the cable is securely held. Notice how there is now a space for the solder to be applied.

21. Plugs

Both plugs are now ready to be soldered.

22. Clamped

We now push the plug into a clamped banana plug socket, this holds it in place as we apply the solder.

23. Solder

We use high quality, lead-free solder.

24. Apply

We carefully apply the solder with a hot soldering iron.

25. Extract

Notice how the extractor (above centre) is positioned to remove the fumes.

26. Finish

We neatly finish the soldering, ensuring the barrel of the plug is filled.

27. Extracted

The smoke is sucked away and filtered through the extraction unit.

28. Soldered

The solder cools and holds the wires firmly in place.

29. Direction

We fit the heatshrink with the arrows in the correct direction, following the type on the cable outer.

30. Heatshrink

We position the heatshrink on the plug.

31. Shrink

Then the heat gun is used to secure the heatshrink into place.

32. Finished

Both plugs are now finished and ready to connect.

1. Measure

We measure the ordered length of Qed XT Evolution and cut this from the reel. Extra care is taken to ensure that each run of a pair is exactly the same length. A 2.0m pair must be two runs of 2.0m, not one of 1.9m and one of 2.1m!

We then measure the standard 10cm separation for the plugs to be fitted. Longer splits can be made on request, this is especially helpful when sockets or amps have unusual placements.

 

2. Score

We use a blade to lightly score both outers at the same time. Scoring this way ensures that both ends are equal when the outers are removed.

 

3. Separate

The cores are then separated and we carefully cut back any excess webbing.

 

4. Trim

We use a blade to very neatly trim off any excess webbing.

 

5. Remove

We now use the wire stripping tool (below left) to remove the outer where previously scored by the blade. A Stanley knife may also be used, but be careful, don’t accidentally cut any of the wires!

 

6. Twist

We carefully twist the exposed conductors in the same direction they are spiraled within the cable. In doing so, the spacing tubes spring away.

 

7. Snip

We neatly snip away the spacing tubes.

 

8. Removed

Notice how we have cut away the spacing tubes as close to the edge of the outer as possible.

 

We twist all the wires tightly around the central core, in the same direction they are spiraled within the cable.

 

If you’re preparing this cable for bare-wiring at home…also cut away the central core tube, this will make the twisted wires thinner and enable easier binding post use.

 

We turn the shims into place over the wires.

 

We trim any excess conductors at the top of the shim, ensuring 360 degree contact with the conductors.

 

13. Barrels

We push the Qed Airloc barrels down the cable. This must be done before crimping on the plugs, because the barrels will not fit over a crimped plug later.

 

14. Plug

At this point, we fit the banana (or spade, on request) plugs over the shims.

 

15. Crimp

The plug is placed in the Qed Airloc crimping tool, and with a strong squeeze…

 

16. Crimped

 

17. Fusion

The plugs are now crimped into place. Note the square crimping pattern: solder-free, airtight fusion between cable and plug. Nice.

 

18. Done!

The Qed fitted Airloc plugs line up perfectly, thanks to all the painstaking steps taken. Ready to plug in.

Recent LED screens from Samsung and others are starting to get super thin. As a consequence the gap between the rear of the screen and the wall is getting small too. This can create problems for HDMI cables which is why HDMI cables have started to sell with swivel plugs so that you can minimise the gap that the plugs take up. But we came across a neat HDMI cable from a brand that we hadn’t encountered before.

Peerless make a Slimline HDMI cable that uses a ribbon cable only 3mm thick combined with a right angle plug at one end. We think that this makes the Peerless Slimline HDMI the cable that fits into the smallest space behind a screen that you can currently buy.

On top of that the cable has a top notch technical specification with support for HDMI 1.4 and Ethernet capability.

So whilst you may have heard of Peerless we think it makes a perfect choice if space is a challenge.

You see more details HERE.

This may come as suprise to many people but if you sit too far away from a 1080P screen showing a Blu Ray film your investment in the 1080P extra resolution is wasted. How can this be?

Even a person with perfect eyesite can only detect a certain amount of detail in an image. The further away you are the less detail your eye can detect.

If you sit too far away from the screen your eye can only detect the level of detail that 720P resolution provides. So even if you replaced your 1080P with a 720P screen of the same size you would not notice the difference.

To put this another way lets assume that your sofa that you like to watch films on is 9 feet from the wall where your flat screen is mounted. If you buy a 46″ screen your vision can only detect the resolution that a 720P screen is capable of at this distance. If you buy a 46″ 1080P screen instead you pay more money but will not be able to notice the difference. To get the full benefit of a 1080P screen you would need to buy a 70″ screen…….which is going to be rather expensive. You will save an awful lot of money by moving the sofa nearer to the screen. But how close does it need to go if you buy the 46″ 1080P screen? Well the answer is to get the full benefit of that high resolution screen the sofa has to move 3ft so that your viewing distance is reduced to 6ft.

The optimum viewing distances for popular screen sizes are:

Screen Size	1080P Distance	720P Distance
32″	50″	75″
37″	58″	87″
40″	63″	94″
42″	66″	99″
46″	66″	99″
50″	78″	118″
60″	94″	141″

You can see a more detailed chart here.

But the crux of of of this is that if you want to experience the full Blu Ray effect it is cheaper to move your sofa closer to the wall than to buy a screen big enough to get the full HD experience.

The What Hi-Fi annual awards are due to be published in the What Hi-Fi Awards issue that appears on October 20th. It is interesting how the cable awards have changed over recent years. A few years ago there were a whole range of important awards from SCART cable and Component Video cable through to Analogue, Optical and Digital interconnects. There were enough to go round and it was possible for most manufacturers to pick up a significant award for something or other.

But now in 2009 there are really only two awards that are highly significant: speaker cable and HDMI cable. The reason being that these are the two cables that are responsible for the majority of spend in the cable sector.

So in October there will be at most two brands who will be delighted with their results and the remaining brands will have to look on with envy.

The cable awards are of real value to a brand. When hardware such as a Blu-Ray player or LCD screen wins an award it if often a short term benefit as hardware products have short lives and are often obselete within a couple of months.

There is much more stability in the cable market though, so an award will usually have a life right through the following year up to the next awards.

Our team have already made their bets on who will win the HDMI cable and Speaker Cable awards. It will be interesting to see if any of us have got it right.

QED have been busy on speaker cables recently. Having bought out the new premium Revelation Speaker cable that really impressed us, they have followed up soon afterwards with an enhanced mid-range speaker cable. They haven’t actually replaced Silver Anniversary XT, instead they have a positioned XT Evolution as a slightly more expensive enhancement.

The construction of XT Evolution is if anything more like Revelation than standard XT. You could describe it as Revelation without insulation to the strandedl conductors. We can only assume that the construction cost of Evolution XT is nearer to Revelation (with an RRP of £15.00) that standard XT (with an RRP of £6.00). So given the RRP is £6.50 we reckon QED are offering it as something of a bargain.

Our listening test on our high end system confirmed what we suspected from the construction of the cable and our high regard for Revelation. The system was previously using Chord Signature speaker cables. So when we replaced them with XT Evolution you would normally expect the system to sound like the someone had turned the lights off. But whilst the XT Evolution is not in the same class as Chord Signature the system retained the authority and accuracy that you expect from a high end system. We were particularly impressed with the timing and pace. Quite remarkable given the RRP is only £6.50 per metre.

You should think of this cable as a fantastic slightly de-speced Revelation that sells at a bargain price.

In terms of audio performance Evolution XT easily justifies the minimal price premium over XT. So unless your budget is really tight we would strongly recommend an potential XT buyer goes for XT Evolution.

To buy this cable click QED XT Evolution Speaker Cable

We recently wrote about Chord bringing out a more affordable HDMI cable, the new Chord HDMI supershield. Well they have now followed quickly with a new premium HDMI cable that replaces the Silver Plus and takes them even more upmarket with a higher price.

The new Chord Active Silver Plus has an RRP of £155.00 wheras the previous Silver Plus was £85.00. This takes the new cable into definite premium territory for the home cinema enthusiast who has high standards and is willing to pay a significant price to achieve them.

As you can see from the picture the Active has a filter built into all lengths of the cable which is designed to improve the subjective quality of audio signals transmitted by the cable. Early feedback from customers confirms this to be true. It will be interesting to see an in depth review in one of the magazines.

Click here to see the new Chord cable: Chord HDMI Silver Active Plus

We have decided to focus more on headphones and sell them from a dedicated new website Headphone-Shop .

The new site carries a wide range of headphone brands and offers the same excellent service that you have been used to with Hificables.co.uk .