As we finally got round to buying our own place, a detached 1920s house in Southwest London, I decided, as part of the full electrical re-wire that was required to make the house safe, to properly install my home cinema equipment and Linn Knekt. I took the opportunity at the same time to purchase a shiny new 50 inch Panasonic Plasma display (the TH-50PH9) and order Sky HD for some extortionate sum of money.

This work wasn't always planned for the same job, however. After spending a few months living in the house, I had the fairly grand idea to budget for a screen and projector installation at some point towards the tail end of 2007. I think I was blinded by potential size there without really thinking it through properly. With the screen in the position I had planned, the four surround speakers would be unplaceable and the room would have looked very clumsy. Hence my epiphany at 10pm on the Sunday evening before my long suffering electrician started, which involved reversing the room and placing a larger plasma screen on the opposite wall.

This meant that the two large 2.2 metre sofas in the room would be facing each other, with only one sofa facing the screen. This has the obvious downside of making the screen invisible to half the occupants of a full room, but changes the aesthetics of the room itself much for the better. I'm very pleased now it's been decided to do it this way, and I'd advise anyone having issues with older houses and architectural features such as fireplaces and complex coving to look at furniture arrangement from a fresh perspective.

So once the decision to reverse the room had been made, the speaker placement became extremely simple with the four Kef THX TDM-34DS going on the rear and side walls into the perfect position for one of the sofas. The two fronts and the centre are to be wallmounted around the screen, and the subwoofer is going behind and to the left of the main viewing position. All the cables have been laid into the wall and under the parquet flooring, none of which could be raised, so much rodding and heavy work ensued to make sure nothing was visible. I laid three video cables - 2 HDMI and 1 Y/C - which should suffice for the moment. If I get anymore I may invest in a digital video switching amplifier.

I've treated the speakers to some new white cloth covers. They've never been the most attractive speakers in the world but they perform extremely well for movies and they should look better with white grilles. My Pioneer DV-737 is now looking a little tired and, indeed, is misbehaving now and won't accept disks, so I think I'll need to look for a new player. This, however, is probably the worst time imaginable to be investing in a new disc spinner with two new formats to choose from. I may go back to my ten year old Sony player in the meantime, but it pains me to feed a nice new HD plasma screen with a ten year old Y/C signal.

I still very much rate the Denon KAVC-A1SE I've been using for nearly five years now. It's beefy enough to drive all 7 speakers at very high volumes, even for Lord of the Rings Special Edition lengths, and it decodes enough sound formats for me. As much as the new Denon keeps calling out to me, I'm going to stick with what I have for now.

So the only new bit of equipment is the Sky HD box which arrives in a week or two. Currently, the room is awaiting plastering work to make good on the chased out cables. I will be adding pictures of the room in its "before" and "after" state over the next couple of weeks. I'm determined to document both this installation and the Knekt work, so keep checking back if this is of interest to you.