I’ve worked as a staff writer at What Hi-Fi? for a grand total of two months, and there has been a lot of technology, not to mention terminology, to wrap my head around.
While I have, of course, soaked up the beauty of movies in the cinema countless times in my pre-What Hi-Fi? life, I never really had the chance to enjoy TV shows with a top-notch set-up. There was one I had wanted to watch in a high-quality cinema-like setting ever since its first big fight scene dazzled my eyeballs, and thanks to my new appointment, I finally got the chance.
The show in question is Arcane, an animated high-fantasy series set in the world of The League Of Legends (LoL). Note that you don't have to know a single thing about LoL to enjoy the series, as many of my new colleagues who I have convinced to watch it will now be able to attest.
For a variety of reasons that aren’t worth going into here, I had only been able to watch the show previously on my Macbook Air. But now that I had the best of the world’s home cinema technology at my fingertips, I didn't waste any time in righting that wrong.
I went for the new Sony Bravia Projector 8 (which currently costs £16,000) to really immerse myself in the world of Arcane. Of course I did; go big or go home, right? We currently use a 7.2 PMC Twenty5.23 speaker package and Marantz Cinema 30 AV receiver in our reference system, and I wasn’t about to mess with that. While it is available to stream on Netflix, I opted for a standard Blu-ray disc. Our favoured disc spinner is the Oppo UDP-203.
The speaker package and Blu-ray player are no longer available (first-hand anyway), but they’re worth about £17,000 and £1000 respectively. The AV receiver, meanwhile, currently costs £3800, so all-in (well, without factoring in the speaker or HDMI cables), we’re talking about a total system cost in the region of £38,000 – roughly 30 times the cost of my comparatively modest little Macbook. Crikey.
Being able to watch Arcane through this level of home cinema set-up is a crazily privileged position to be in, of course, especially considering most people will only ever watch it on Netflix. While the animation quality still shines through on streaming, watching it on Blu-ray on such a good projector is an amazing experience. The second series is yet to be released on disc (I will keep my eyes peeled for the beautiful steel book to become available again) so I used a Blu-ray of the first season.
It is here that I will issue my disclaimer that the following contains mild spoilers for the first series of Arcane. You’ve been warned…
The show is set partially in the prosperous city of Piltover, where new technology is being developed to upgrade every part of the city. But, like most stories, there is another side to the coin. Beneath this wealth lies the Undercity, a land ripped apart by a widespread addiction to the drug Shimmer.
The first episode opens on the aftermath of a battle between the Enforcers (the Storm Trooper-esque police force of Piltover) and Undercity revolutionaries. One of the first things that becomes apparent with the Sony projector is the sheer level of depth it is capable of creating. Oh how much of the animation's intricacies I had missed before!
Clouds of red smoke plume back into the distance with breathtaking detail in every inch of the frame. Flecks of ash drift in the foreground, and it feels as though I can reach out to touch it. It is equally incredible as we get deeper into the episode. Our young central characters, Undercity sisters Vi and Powder, scale the tops of the extravagant homes of Piltover with their merry band to rob a scientist’s home. The open blue sky and dizzying heights feel so realistic – an impressive feat for an animated series.
There is one sequence that I knew would massively benefit from being shown on this projector. Fans of the show will already know what I’m talking about. Powder’s all grown up and is now known by her alter-ego Jinx, and must battle against her childhood friend Ekko. As Gizzles’ Dynasties and Dystopia begins to play, the style shifts to hand-drawn animation and the characters are depicted as their childhood selves. Every frame has such a textured quality, and the projector does a brilliant job of elevating the simple bold colours.
This scene is arguably the most loved fight in the whole of Arcane, and the playful yet fast-paced soundtrack, elevated by the extraordinary sound system, takes it to the next level.
Throughout the episode, the PMC Twenty5.23 speakers enhance every tick of a clock, every explosion from the titular blue gemstones, every bullet shot. The show has a great mix of energetic punchy songs, too, such as Snakes by PVRIS and MIYAVI mixed in with softer tunes such as Woodkid’s Guns For Hire, so you can really feel the different aspects of the sound system.
This experience has understandably made it harder for me to return to my laptop screen in the evenings, but at least I now know how the show can be – and ultimately deserves to be – experienced. And what better way to kick off a career in AV journalism than to get a taste of the very best? Here's to more extreme (and everyman) AV nirvana in 2025.
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