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One of favourite elements of 50s American youth culture is the drive-in cinema. The combination of gorgeous cars, Technicolor movies and the company of a member of the opposite sex on the back seat was enough to drive adolescents mad. In the dreary, repressed UK, there wasn’t enough room and the weather is utterly hopeless — so outdoor cinema never really took off.
In the new century, Sky thinks you might get a kick out of watching movies in your back garden, with your friends, a barbeque and enough mosquitoes to chew your arm off. The idea is that with these balmy, cloud-free summers we have in the UK, why not haul all your AV equipment outside for a game of technological Russian roulette? Don’t get us wrong, we applaud the spirit, we’re just concerned about all the rain and potential tech apocalypse that may well ensue.
Sky says you can either lug your LCD TV out to the garden, or grab a projector and a sheet and use that as a makeshift screen. You’ll also need to take speakers with you, unless you’re planning on using the ultra-terrible ones that come in most TVs. Cabling might be an issue too — Sky is very keen to dissuade you from moving your Sky box, suggesting instead that you buy a long HDMI cable. To be honest, we have reservations about this, as long HDMI runs are expensive and prone to suffer signal break-ups.
We don’t have to tell you that putting electrical equipment in your garden could end in tears, not to mention electrocution. So if you’re planning to do something like this, make sure the whole thing is plugged in with a circuit breaker, and keep as much stuff under cover as you can. If money is no object, there are waterproof TVs on the market that will offer a much lower chance of explosive death.
Have you tried moving the TV outside? Would you ever try it? Let us know via the comments below. We might even have a go ourselves and take some photos of the results…
