The demonstration Home Cinema in our showroom in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, has just had a radical redesign. Along with our newly revamped Interior Design studio, the Home Cinema room has had a technical and visual makeover.

The brief to our Interior Design team was on two levels. Firstly we wanted a fabulous room that could showcase their talents but we wanted performance improvements as well. This is where the integration of interior design, lighting design and home cinema design come together to deliver spectacular results.

The finished room is a lush, welcoming and intimate Home Cinema. Careful choice of fabrics, furniture and wall treatments have improved the acoustics considerably and the glorious, dark purple wallpaper and acoustically transparent front wall accentuate the performance of the new Digital Projection Titan projector.

Sonos have announced a new addition to their range, the new Sonos CR200 Controller

Sonos Controllers let you control all your music and all your rooms from anywhere in the house. Wirelessly and instantly access your personal music library stored on your computer, plus thousands of free Internet radio stations and the most popular online music services. Mix and match Controllers for the ultimate in flexibility.

The CR200 is a dedicated wireless Controller with full-color VGA display and ultra-responsive touch screen. Pick it up or touch the screen and it’s instantly on, ready to play your music. Dedicated Mute, Volume and Zones buttons get you to the functions you use most. Includes a Sonos Charging Cradle and removable battery.

Light is often the single most important factor in a room yet it is frequently overlooked. Good lighting is about altering perceptions of light and space, creating focal points and enhancing features, and creating moods or enabling tasks.

It’s much more than just ensuring that the light level is adequate or incorporating a striking light fitting into an interior design, although both of these can be important.

People are increasingly recognizing the importance of good lighting, both for their own enjoyment of a house and for the enhancement of its value. But where do you start? Fittings are confusing and many are not widely available, positioning them correctly is a minefield, and how do you add that interesting twist or ‘wow’ factor? Control systems can be simple or sophisticated but do need to be considered right at the start. It’s risky since you can’t ‘test’ it until it is finished, and expensive – particularly if you get it wrong.

We take the mystery out of good lighting and help you make the most of your space. Our approach is to work closely with you, to understand how you use the space, what you want to emphasise, and how these needs may change over time

Multiroom or multizone audio sytems enable you to listen to your favourite audio everywhere around your house and garden.

So whether that's the Today programme in the kitchen in the morning, a selection of your favourite tunes in the garden room or some mellow music as you soak in the bath in the evening, a multiroom system can deliver that from one central source and do so without the clutter of additional equipment everywhere.

The concept is easy to describe and the reality can be stunning. However, there is no "one size fits all solution", so let's break down what what we mean when we talk about multiroom audio and outline how it might apply to your project.

See our overview of multiroom audio here

The latest addition to the Kaleidescape range is the Kaleidescape Mini Sysem 120.

It's the first one-box Kaleidescape solution and its technical architecture makes it ideally suited to smaller projects, retro fits or standalone Home Cinemas or Media Rooms. The user experience is the same as the larger systems - intuitive content browsing, rich cover art and artist, album, film information. A mini system provides a 1080p video zone and two stand alone audio zones.

Mini systems can be expanded with 1080p mini players and clustered with other Kaleidescape mini systems to scale to significant size.

The Kaleidescape Mini System represents the most affordable Kaleidescape system yet and importantly it does that without compromising any of the values of robustness, quality and ease of use that makes Kaleidescape so special.

AMX announced a slew of new developments at the CEDIA Expo in Denver including a new integrated multiroom audio system called Tango and a new door entry system.

However, our favourite has to be the new 5.2" wireless panel - the Modero MVP5200i. These new panels are shipping in limited quantities now.

We've taken delivery of our demonstration models and have been testing them against a variety of different systems; from simple Home Cinema control to whole house automation.

The screen is bright, wireless connectivity robust and the battery life is excellent. Used with a product like the Imerge MS5000 server it puts full control of a DVD and audio library in the palm of your hand. The combination of the battery life and the quality of the screen makes it the ideal controller for a multiroom audio system. AMX is a complete control infrastructure - follow the link for an introduction to AMX Control Systems