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In the "how to get the best from your home cinema" video it says

"the ideal set up will have all the speakers equal distance from your seating position"

But shortly after we are told to

 "keep the front left and right speakers equal distance from the middle, the idea is to have them all level, so try not to have the drivers of your centre speaker either behind or in front of the drivers on the left and right speakers.  If you get the tweeters of all 3 level on a single plain the front of your 3D sound field will sound at its best"

 If this is done the speakers will not be equal distance from the seating position, the left and right speakers will be further away.

I think I must have misunderstood it, can someone please clarify.

Hi there

In the video you'll see the speakers arranged in a circle around the central seating position. This is what we mean by keeping all the speakers "equal distance from your seating position" - in other words, the distance from the speakers to the chair.

The comment about the "middle" refers to keeping all three front speakers on the same plane, ie: the centre speaker shouldn't be further forward or back than the left and right speakers to ensure you have an even soundfield.

The ideal is to get a sensible balance between these two demands, and as we also say in the video we realise it won't always be possible to position each speaker perfectly down to the last millimetre. Yes, your front L + R speakers might end up slightly further away from the listening position, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Don't be afraid to use your own ears when setting up: the video is designed as a guideline, but there's nothing to beat tweaking the speaker positioning in your own room to get the sound that's best for you.

Same topic but a slightly different question. In the video, a V-splitting cable is shown to connect the subwoofer.

I have a Monitor Audio Radius 360 subwoofer and had it connected with just a single ("digital audio") cable as per the Monitor Audio instruction manual. After watching this excellent and most informative video I tried to split the pre-amp signal from my amplituner to both subwoofer terminals as recommended in the video. The immediate result was a much, much richer tone. The subwoofer seemed to "come alive" just as I like it. 

Andy: what is actually happening when feeding the same signal to both terminals on the subwoofer ?

Many thanks.

P.s. I also have the Monitor Audio Radius One ("specially designed") soundbar housing two front and the central speaker (all on separate cables). This arrangement works OK. The main advantage was less hardware in the front but it seems to work OK. There is no doubt that all my front speakers are at the same distance :-)