It’s time for you to take your starter smart home tech like Amazon Alexa or Google Home to the next level.
If you’ve dipped your toes into the deep end of pool that is smart home technology and home automation, you’ve surely already found how voice control can make your daily routine, tasks, and family life easier and more enjoyable. That’s just the beginning, though. Here are some of the basic categories that you can use to start upgrading your house to the future ... and beyond.
Looking for an excuse to go out? Maybe you just need an outdoor TV.
As the weather gets nicer this year -- and the pandemic shows no signs of slowing down -- more and more families are starting to look to their yard and outdoor spaces as avenues for possible home upgrades. And there’s no better upgrade to a home than setting up a lovely and enjoyable outdoor theater with a modern outdoor TV.
Some people, however, have a resistance to outdoor TVs, thinking that they are overpriced shadows of what is possible with an indoor TV. That couldn’t be further from the truth: Today’s outdoor TVs are bright, 4K-resolution-capable devices that can bring your favorite entertainment outdoors! So, to really help our customers know what outdoor TVs are capable of, this week on the blog, we’re going to debunk some common misconceptions and answer some common questions that come up about them.
You bet!
One of the most important things we tell people about TVs is that they should never use an indoor TV in an outdoor application. While indoor TVs are great, they just aren’t made to deal with the elements the way an outdoor TV is. Installing and using an indoor TV outside will not only most assuredly shorten the life of that TV but also pose a safety hazard as well.
When you open a new TV, it doesn’t come with any cables -- only the power cord. When you open a new gaming system or Blu-ray player, or set up a new cable or satellite receiver, it often provides a basic patch cable -- typically an HDMI cable.
As your technology solutions provider, one of our core tasks here at AV Design Consultants is to connect all of your electronics, and that normally means a discussion on cables. If you want to get the best-quality picture and sound out of your devices, you’ll need to know about the cables and settings on your equipment. If you leave out either, you may not be getting the best experience -- and neither of us want that.
If you’re like most of our customers and have legacy devices, you have probably collected a myriad of red, white, yellow, green and blue color-coded cables (composite, component and left/right audio). Add those to the mix with coaxial, ethernet, fiber optic, and speaker wires (s-video, DVI, USB), and that drawer of extra cables can become quite the rat’s nest. So, this week’s blog is going to be all about cables, and we think it will really help our readers learn a thing or two about what’s connecting their devices.
Most cables -- except fiber optic -- have one thing in common: copper. They use a copper conductor to send information. When it comes to cables, it is true that copper is copper, and one manufacturer doesn’t have a patent on a better version of copper. But there are differences in cable design, and you should go in with some understanding before you end up with either an underperforming cable or spending way too much unnecessarily.
While wireless technology like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth has become a necessity, it does not provide the means for connecting many of your home’s electronics. “Wireless” rarely means a device is truly wireless; often they still need to plug in to power. Further, to reduce the demand on your Wi-Fi system and to increase performance, every effort should be made to hardwire your devices and free up Wi-Fi bandwidth for devices that truly need it, like your phones, tablets and laptops.
At AV Design Consultants, people often tell us here that because they aren’t an “audiophile,” they don’t have the ear to appreciate the differences between a good audio system and a great one. However, when we ask if they can hear the difference between streaming or music on a CD versus a live performance, they always say that they can. Most people’s ears are a whole lot better than they think they are.
What most people don’t realize, however, is that they can get near concert-quality sound right from the comfort of home. A great home audio system with a nice set of speakers can make it feel like you are somewhere else, listening to your favorite musicians play live. Hearing your favorite song reproduced in a way that brings out all the subtlety and soul that the artist intended can feel almost magical.
