The Home Cinema Alliance - Tech Talk Podcast
A consumer-facing podcast hosted by industry veterans, Stuart Burgess from Immersive Cinema Rooms and Simon Gregory from Cinema Rooms.
Each episode, we bring you News, Reviews, and Interviews from inside the industry covering Home Cinema, Home Theatre, and all things tech.
Get involved podcast@homecinemaalliance.co.uk
The Home Cinema Alliance - Tech Talk Podcast
What Happens When Cinema Specialists Join Forces?
What happens when passionate home cinema specialists decide to join forces? The Home Cinema Alliance represents a revolutionary approach to an age-old problem: how small, specialised businesses can effectively market themselves while maintaining laser focus on their craft.
Founded around 2018 by industry veterans with decades of combined experience, the HCA has evolved into a powerful collective that pools marketing resources, shares technical expertise, and connects homeowners with genuine cinema specialists. As the hosts explain, this model solves the content creation dilemma faced by boutique installers who typically complete just 3-5 cinema rooms annually – not enough to feed the content-hungry social media algorithms individually, but collectively robust enough to reach 150,000 potential clients quarterly.
The magic of specialisation becomes clear as they discuss how focusing exclusively on cinema rooms leads to superior results. "I believe my rooms are better because I don't have to think about multi-room audio, door entry, gate entry, or Wi-Fi," one host explains. "I can laser focus on the matter at hand." This specialisation creates what they call the essential "two wows" – the initial impression when walking into a room and the transformative experience when actually watching content.
Perhaps most compelling is their observation that most people have never experienced a properly designed home cinema room. "There's no doubt, if you've sat in a great home cinema, you absolutely want one," they agree, noting that many consumers incorrectly assume projectors in pubs represent the standard. The upcoming International Home Cinema Day (October 26, 2025) aims to change this by inviting the public to experience properly designed spaces without sales pressure.
Looking for your own cinematic transformation? Visit homecinemaalliance.co.uk to find specialised designers and installers who can bring the magic of cinema into your home. The results will leave you wondering how you ever lived without it.
coming up on this week's episode of the HCA Tech Talk podcast. There's not really been anybody to sort of look at our industry and go, hey look, we're really good and this is what we do and this is how we can help our clients. A lot of the social media side. So your YouTubes, your Instagrams, it likes regular content. If it gets regular content, it pushes it. If it pushes it, you get more people seeing it. If you get more people seeing it, if you get more people seeing it, you get more exposure to your business.
Speaker 2:I've got a half-decent digital SLR camera. I can't work it, like every dad you go out and buy a high-end camera when your kid is born and you can't work it, but you can work it. You've been putting the time in.
Speaker 1:What we're trying to do with the HCA is just talk about it. Get the end consumer to realise that there are professionals out here that do this stuff and build rooms like this for you to enjoy with your family. Thinking of building your dream home cinema? Don't know where to start? Start with the HCA. At the Home Cinema Alliance, we connect homeowners with the very best in the business. Our members are trusted designers, installers and technology experts who know how to turn any room into a breathtaking cinematic experience. Whether you're building from scratch or converting a spare room, our members are here to help you every step of the way. Visit our website to find your local member at homesinemaralliancecouk.
Speaker 2:What is the Home Cinema Alliance?
Speaker 1:So, fundamentally, I think that when we me, yourself and Mel Mellie, malcolm started the HCA back in sort of 2018, I think it was, wasn't it? It wasn't called that. Then it wasn't called that, but now being the HCA, the think it was, wasn't it? It wasn't called that, then it wasn't called that, but now being the HCA, the Home Centre of our Alliance, fundamentally it's strength in numbers, it's group marketing. So, you know, we have been, we've both been in this industry a long time, yes, and we've both been promoting our separate businesses in our own separate ways for many years. Sure, and there's not really been anybody to sort of look at our industry and go, hey, look, we're really good and this is what we do and this is how we can help our clients. So I think what the hda now is is basically a group of companies.
Speaker 1:Um, at the moment we're sort of early 20s, we all do really good work, we all produce really good images and what we do is we group market. So, rather than um, you know yourself, as cinema works myself, as immersive cinema rooms, you know, let's say, taking 500 quid out of our pockets and going all right, what do I do this month? Do I do social media, do I do youtube? Do I do website? Do I do magazine advertising or a show? What we do is say, look, put that, let's say, 500 quid back in your pocket, give us a monthly membership and for that membership you are in a pot with everybody else and actually to a certain extent we do all of those. So we will do social media, we will do magazine advertising, we will do exhibitions is something that I'm looking at. So it's sort of helping us promote and fundamentally reaching more people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no no, very, very good so. So how did this go? Let's go back to 2018. How did this all get started?
Speaker 1:telephone conversation between you and me, really, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, you, you and me, probably mel, I think we moved to whatsapp so we could do more on the three-way when any of us had a minute. So there was a group, kind of a sort of loose social community of various install firms called Live Install, but there was a bit of a kind of I think there was a little hardcore centre member of that. People like Dan Orange, people like you, people like me, that kind of thing. Lots of things in common, pretty small fish, you know, one, two, three-man bands, that sort of thing Often, I reckon, with a focus into home cinema. But we were the kind of the. We're littler, you know, we're not kind of idea work size, we're not kind of SMC sorts of size, but littler, probably more regional, probably focused into cinema. We just had lots of things in common. So we started out as Home Tech Gallery, yep, so that was fun and that makes sense. We started out as Home Tech Gallery, yep, so that was fun and that makes sense.
Speaker 1:You actually had an idea years before that, didn't you? Well, I think that, as businesses, if you look at the three of us, we were all transitioning to cinema as being our main business. And then I suppose, if you looked at the analytics of what we were getting the best interaction with on social media hits on the website, things like that it was cinema, cinema, people seeing pictures from dad, orange, pictures from me and you and mel and gif, you know, was just like they were getting the interaction. So I think it was just after covid or around covid, when we had a little bit more time on our hands, we sort of like discussed and turned it into the home cinema alliance. So it's very much focusing. Also, I think we touched on it in a little interview we did earlier, which was the smart home world is good, but it's such a broad spectrum, so let's focus on what we enjoy doing.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what happened to me. You know, connected Works became Cinema Works. But also, I think this is good and important stuff because let's imagine I'm looking to do a loft conversion and imagine two builders. You know this guy's got Jerry the Builder, all aspects of building we do kitchens, we do bathrooms, we do new builds, we do loft conversions. He'll be a good, competent general builder. But now let's look at this other guy and they say we are loft conversion specialists. Now I think that second guy is going to be really good at lofts and that's exactly what's happened to us. I think we've become really good at cinema.
Speaker 2:I believe you know, all the way through from design to installation, that my rooms are a bit better and it's partly because I've only got so much brain capacity. I'm the lead designer. There usually is a lead designer. You've only got so much brain capacity and if I don't have to think about multi-room audio door entry, gate entry, wi-fi, and if I really just absolutely niche down, narrow down and laser focus on the matter at hand, which is the bit that let's face, it will change your family's life, make you happy yeah and is really aspirational, because there's two, two bits to this.
Speaker 2:You see a picture of a really cool home cinema. You. You kind of want one. You can get as far as sitting in a good room, which nearly everyone in this country has not done, not sat in a really good one.
Speaker 1:It's not a cinema, but not one that's been designed for three seats, like we have here.
Speaker 2:There's a kind of this. I mean, paul from Acoustic said this beautifully you know you want the whale when you walk in, yeah, but you absolutely must have that second well, when you sit down and listen to it and see it and experience the film. If you're delivering those two whales, you're doing well.
Speaker 1:I think those two wows come out better from firms that are laser focused and specialist, and that's the sort of people we want in the, in the, in the alarm well you look at, if you take it to like you know, catering, if, if what you do every day is make, I know, let's say, quiches, you're going to be yeah. So it's almost like actually focusing on home cinema for the people that we have involved. That's not meaning that that's the only thing they do, sure, but it's the predominant thing they do. But also it's good for SEO, it's good for marketing. You know the word home cinema and the title just tells the visitor, the end consumer coming to us, what we do, end consumer coming to us what we do. And then when they land on the website, you know you've got, you've got the.
Speaker 1:The main landing page was a little bit of people's images, a bit what we do. Then we talk about the manifesto, a bit about our industry, but the most important sections on there is that we've got the dealer locator. So if an end consumer comes to the HCA via one of our social media posts or just by a bit of SEO, a bit of Googling, they come along, they can go onto the dealer locator, they can put in their postcode and they see their local member. Now they can go to two or three local members if they want and get a relative quote from each of them, but we're trying to make it that the client can find someone who specialises as a home cinema and actually like with content it's. It's. I don't know how many jobs did you do last year about five, probably three do you know.
Speaker 2:A lot of them were delayed, so I've got six this year, super flat out busy. I think it's about three last year. So I think if you look at little bits here and there. You know the odd little media room that kind of.
Speaker 1:If you look at most of the members we have, you know, let's say, arguments say they do five max a year. Five cinemas max a year. Sure, a lot of the members we have, let's say they do five max a year. Five cinema rooms max a year. Sure, a lot of the social media side.
Speaker 1:So your YouTubes, your Instagrams, it likes regular content. If it gets regular content, it pushes it. If it pushes it, you get more people seeing it. If you get more people seeing it, you get more exposure to your business. So if you take YouTube, for example, if you can post one to two videos a week on YouTube, it's very easy to get a following. Um, as a company, that myself, as immersive cinema rooms, let's we. I can't produce two videos a week from five jobs, let's say it doesn't work. But if we take everybody else's content and which is one reason, well, you gave me the great idea of hga media, which was like coming along and helping our members. Yeah, I'm not going to say actually what you said, but it's like why don't you do it? We have another word in there and that has worked brilliantly.
Speaker 2:I mean the image from Weymouth. Now that is a good room. I'm really proud of it. There's no way I could get the imagery, the composition, the light, the light balancing, the light room stuff. I roughly know how any of that works. I can't do it. That's the hero image on my website and I love it every time I go to your website and I see my image.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but really good. And this is important because we can't be great at everything. I don't have brain capacity to become great at mucking about with videography. I've got a half-decent digital SLR camera. I can't work it. Like every dad you know, you go out and buy a high-end camera when your kid is born and you can't work it but you can work it.
Speaker 1:You've been putting the time in well, I suppose I think, as you said, you know I've got the equipment.
Speaker 2:Okay, I've bought more equipment since then, but you are getting better as well, like in terms of yeah, still, and video for 20 years the incredible.
Speaker 1:For 20 years I've been doing stuff for my businesses and I've been learning it. So I've been learning Photoshop, I've been learning Premiere Pro and all those things. So actually as part of the HCA and non-HCA members but you just get a discount, if you remember is that you focus on producing the stuff, like you know we've done with you on a few of your jobs. You focus on cinema. You hand it over to the client, you make your client happy, but actually as being a member of the HCA, what we then do is we'll go along before the client's kids have got in there and wrecked the fabric walls and spill OJ everywhere.
Speaker 1:We'll go in there and do a day maybe two, but it's usually a day of content capture. Then we can go off. You can get onto a new project. We can then produce some uh videos for you. We've done some stuff recently for one of our members, new wave, you know, where we've produced the long form video which youtube loves. We've produced a short form video, which you know social media loves, and then we've done the little reels and we also did a 360 virtual tour while we were there. But I think the whole emphasis of with hga media, the hga in general is just strength in numbers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let's pull all our resources together because well, let's face it, if you're an inter, so let's say there's three of you, so you've got a kind of owner who's doing a lot of the kind of the key jobs and maybe they'll be on the tools. Most of my favourite owners kind of do stay on the tools. Gif does, udo, dan, orange does. Guys like that. I'm never getting off the tools. I like it.
Speaker 1:Me. I don't like it Control.
Speaker 2:I want fine control. If I need to move that speaker two degrees because it sounds better and I can tell that with a microphone, I want to be there and you see this with building firms. You know where the owners are trying to scale up and they sit back and the quality just goes out the window because the lads never care as much.
Speaker 2:No one's ever going to care as much about your business, my dad said to me years ago no one, son, no one will ever care for your business like you care for your business, no matter how much money you pay them. But there's no way you can have at the sorts of scale we're talking about. There's no way you could have excellent content creation capacity within your business. It's just unlikely. You can do it yourself with your phone. It will look all right and that's fine for work in progress stuff. But if you want a lovely aspirational finished image or a finished video, get a pro and I'm not saying don't, don't do it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've spoken to a few of our members recently and and joker gone that you know your phone does this and it also does this and and even though you want because most people don't understand things like the rule of thirds, so they don't understand that if they shoot a video in, you know, in um landscape, yeah, and you keep your subject content in the middle and then you can quite easily do a portrait video from that. And a few few of them were like oh yeah, I get that. So I think with the HCA it is that case of just learning from each other.
Speaker 2:No, 100% Helping each other, or actually as well. I mean, my brain is full. I'm obsessively laser-focused into home cinema. I'm better at it than I was this time a year ago and I'm still learning stuff and I go in the rooms and I just laugh sometimes because they're just getting better. I'm not. I don't want to reinvent myself as a content creator. I'll phone you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm all right with that yeah, and I mean I still enjoy cinemas, but I do get like the videos we're doing here. You know one one we've just done for you before this. You know I love the editing. I love getting on the mac editing away, overlaying music, doing things. You know I love the editing. I love getting on the Mac editing away, overlaying music, doing things like that, and I think the proof's in the pudding. I mean I've just getting some figures together for you know, the first quarter of 2025, to go back to the members, and we had some IC videos that we did where me and Simon Gregory went out to IC. Thank you, you know I look at immersive social media.
Speaker 1:I reach about 2,000 people every month. Sorry, yeah, 2,000 people every month, so 6,000 every quarter. In the last quarter for HCA, we got about 150,000 people reached as being this group. So you are like me and you. We're relatively small. We're doing our own social media content. We're getting maybe sub 10 000 views per quarter if we're lucky. But actually, if you're part of a bigger group where we could put content out every day, can't produce the content we could produce the content for you, but you're then part of this pool that's getting 150 000 views. You know we've got big plans for youtube this year because I do believe youtube. Well, youtube is the biggest platform, above Netflix, for watching.
Speaker 1:I know personally myself if you told me, stuart, you'll get rid of all your social media sorry, all your subscription platforms the only one I'd keep is YouTube Premium because I learned from it. I learned about cars I'm not going to buy. I learned about photography that I might use. I might sit there and look at someone build the cinema, which is aspirational, you know, like posh cars. I might sit there and look at someone build the cinema, which is aspirational, like posh cars. So it's just a great industry to be in and I think that we've both been in this for 20 years and I think that what we're trying to do with the HCA is just talk about it.
Speaker 1:Get the end consumer to realize that there are professionals out here that do this stuff and build rooms like this for you to enjoy with your family. This stuff and build rooms like this for you to enjoy with your family. And being part of the hga means that, yeah, you are a number in a pool of a small pool of people. You know we're not, uh, an organization that's got three thousand three and a half thousand people. I want to keep it niche. I want to keep it uh small. There are requirements to enter, but look when you're in. We act as a family, we help each other out, we borrow people, we we borrow staff, we borrow information and we produce content with each other.
Speaker 2:The family thing is so important as well, because there's no doubt, if you're out there on a job site, or if you're out there stuck on a design or whatever, chances are there's someone in the gang who's faced that problem and has already fixed it and we've got the WhatsApp group, which is just for us, but we've just.
Speaker 1:We've just sort of looked at international home cinema day, which is something that we're working on now, which is what I. What I would love to happen is everybody in the world, but at the moment let's stay britain. So everybody in britain will basically, on the 26th of october 2025, they will open their showrooms. So that can be people like yourself and me, that could be people like meridian, that can be people like yourself and me, that could be people like Meridian, that could be people like Paula Acoustics and actually just invite people in no obligation to buy anything, no obligation to sit down and talk about a project, but just experience the cinema.
Speaker 2:There's no doubt, if you've sat in a great home cinema, you absolutely want one. Yeah, first time I heard that it was um this dr udo zucker from from tag mclaren audio, which is long, long defunct. But it was kind of one of my early employees in this sort of thing and he said that and I was like, oh yeah, you're right, aren't you? But it's so true, and nearly everybody hasn't. Yeah, plenty of people have sat in a mediocre one, or plenty of people have watched a projector doing football in a pub and they assume that that's the standard and that standard is usually pretty low.
Speaker 2:Yeah, once you've got that immersed dark room, wonderful, I'm in the film, feeling you've got to have this. Um, the project I've just finished. He didn't want a cinema. I don't want a cinema, I want a room with a telly and good sound. I said, well, I've got good sound, come and look in my cinema and just ignore the picture. Yeah, two weeks later, I mean I think we're going to do a cinema, because he's never seen one before, he doesn't know how good it can be we had.
Speaker 1:I had exactly the same a client. Actually it's during covid, when we were doing virtual exhibitions. I was on the phone to him okay, so you've got two tvs already. What have you got? Well, I've got a 65 in the family room and I've got a 75 in the sort of kitchen space and I'm like so why do you want like a 95 in in another room? And he's like a bit more of the same. So what we actually did was we didn't go, we couldn't go much bigger. So we did a hundred inch, you know, off of just a sony projector with a good surround sound system, and they were lovely people. But honestly, back then they were like all right, thanks, excellent, and they were lovely people. But honestly, back then they were like all right, thanks, excellent, and they were grateful. But then, fast forward, like four years, three, four years now, they were like do you know what For a room we never had, we never thought we wanted. We can't leave this place alone.
Speaker 2:Now that happens so much. I mean, this is the thing, isn't it? So as an industry that's where I see HCA really standing in. You said it before we talk to each other a lot, we talk about tools or we talk about customers. We're not doing the outreach correctly because, frankly, we're little, we're too small, we're often too busy, so having that kind of pulled force to just go hi, we're kind of great, and I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1:It starts out with approach, the HCA. Come by the website, drop us an email, hello at homesinemareliancecouk. And basically, as long as your business produces cinema rooms, because it's very hard to market your business if you've not got content on your business or you've not built any rooms, if you've not got the content but you've built the rooms, hey look, let's reach out with hca media talk to the end client. No, but come on board, be one of the team you know and then help us market our industry to the end user and actually save your business a bit of money by doing it together rather than doing it individually right.
Speaker 2:Anything else, what do we need to know? What's happening next with hca?
Speaker 1:so international home cinema day. You know that's the thing we're working on now. Yeah, we've had a couple of conversations with people recently, just sort of. I mean, I was planning on doing it 2026, but I've had such a good reaction from it from manufacturers, distributors and installers that they're like well, I spent all this money on this room, let's bring some more people in.
Speaker 2:So I think you can't. You can't grow a new thing if you don't start right.
Speaker 1:So I think that's going to happen this year. Um, obviously, hga media is going from strength to strength. We we're getting brought back into projects, do second ones for them, you know, and and fundamentally it's just, I get a massive buzz out of still building cinema rooms as immersive. But like going on and doing a, an update for the members and basically seeing how many people that hca is reaching, and I'm just sitting there going what's in here and what is I've done, what we've so far done there.
Speaker 1:It's tip of the iceberg yeah got so many good ideas and I think I've been in this industry. I mean, I, I think what was it the other day? It was frightening because I think I worked out I think it was you, me, mal, and it might have included simon gregory, I can't remember from uh cinema rooms. Yeah, it was like 65 to 100 years experience in this industry together, which is frightening because you know, we've both reached 50 and we're a bit a bit concerned about it.
Speaker 2:But I'm you know what I'm kind of? All right, I'm kind of. The only difference is, I think when you're 50 you've got to sort of stay in shape on purpose. You know there's no stem cells left. Your body's not going to do it for you. Yeah, but as long as you do that, as long as you get your exercise in, you know enough. Yeah, you know, and I've still been learning new stuff. I mean, look, if there's a, there's a literally a plywood box out there that I just built, and a year ago I'd have got a chippy, yeah, but it was oh. Then I've got to make phone calls, then I've got to like brief him, then I've got to draw it really, really precisely this way I just got to site, measured the hole, built the box. I'm going back tomorrow to test fit it Much easier.
Speaker 1:And it's square as hell. It's a decent piece of construction. You have we have the whatsapp group. You, we have friends in the industry which like look tom, I want to do this. I don't want to bother you to do it. So how do I actually like do it myself? Do you know? Do you know what I?
Speaker 2:kind of knew enough. I literally went to the timber timber merchants timber merchants at 11 and it was done by six. Excellent, yeah, and that included the drive back from clevedon, yeah, and a service call yeah.
Speaker 1:So no, for me, hga is a family know. It's a way that we can shout about our industry, because it's a brilliant industry. You know, we had a trade event yesterday in Bristol and everybody's such a family, friendly, focused, everybody's like how you doing, mate, and, as we said, we're really, really good at shouting about ourselves to ourselves and I think so for me it's like as a marketing company, as a brand association company. Come on board and we can help you publicize your business. We can help you in the industry. If you're a consumer watching this, then go to the HCA's website homesintheralliancecouk or just search Homesinther Alliance on social media platforms. Click on a member, speak to a member, get involved with a member and you can have a room like we've got here at your showroom in your own home beautiful awesome buddy, great stuff.
Speaker 1:Thanks for your time, cheers.