The Conduit to Future-Proofing Your Home
Want that killer home system upgrade? Lay the groundwork for it now by installing conduit for your future cabling needs.
You might know that your house needs plenty of Ethernet cabling and speaker wire, but what about five years from now? We’ve already experienced the transition from component to HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface), so chances are a wiring upgrade is in your future.
To fish new cabling behind the walls of your finished house can be a real pain. A lot of cutting, drilling, and marring will occur, and for every hour your custom electronics (CE) pro spends snaking cabling around ducts, studs and other obstructions, your wallet takes a hit.
You can minimize the time and effort it takes to pull in new wire by having your CE pro install plastic conduit behind the walls. Naturally, it’s better to do this while a home is being constructed.
Conduit is basically a hollow plastic tube through which wiring can be channeled. It installs inside the walls much like plumbing, and comes in various lengths and diameters to suit your needs.
“We’ll usually put in conduit that’s at least 3/4-inch in diameter, and go with something larger, like a 1-1/2-inch tube when we need to run a bundle of various different wires, like to a home theater,” says Jeff Cooper of Simply Sight & Sound in Menifee, Calif.
Make no mistake, conduit isn’t meant to hold every piece of wire that goes into your house. In fact, it may hold no wire at all. Its main purpose is to provide an open avenue for additional cabling once your house is finished. In a matter of a few minutes, instead of hours, your CE pro will be able to route fiber from the attic all the way down to the theater in the basement, for example.
How much conduit your home needs and where it should be installed depends a lot on the preferences of your pro. Cooper, for example, installs anywhere from 500 to 1,000 feet of conduit on most jobs, and relies on it as his main future proofing tool. “We’ll run conduit from a central equipment rack to all TV locations and from the satellite dish to the main distribution hub. We’ll even put it in rooms, like guest bedrooms and bonus rooms, where we think the homeowners might someday add a theater or a home office.”
Mark Lynch of Quality Sound & Video in Fayetteville, N.C., takes a more minimalist approach. “We’ll typically put run conduit from the attic to the crawlspace and between equipment racks,” he says, “and that’s about it.” With Lynch’s plan, you’ll spend a couple hundred of dollars; Cooper’s will run closer to a couple of thousand.
Cooper and Lynch both agree, however, that running conduit from the house to outbuildings, swimming pools and other popular outdoor destinations is a great idea. Buried in the ground, the conduit protects wiring from damage and lets you wire up new equipment, like a weatherproof TV, rock speakers or an intercom at the front gate, without having to trench into the lawn to lay additional cabling.
Good Ideas
Pull strings: Lynch puts a few “pull strings” inside each piece of conduit that’s installed. It makes fishing new cabling though the conduit a snap. Just attach the wire to one end of the string and carefully tug on the other end of the string to bring the cabling though.
Color coded: Conduit from manufacturers including Carlon and Homepath Products are orange in color to make it easy to locate and discern from other pipes in the wall.
A real stud: The eXpath system from Homepath Products looks and installs like a wall stud, making it a nice addition to your home building plans.
by Lisa Montgomery
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/the_conduit_to_future_proofing_your_home/
Custom Installation Services, LLC – Audio/Video Sales, Service and Installation in North Carolina and South Carolina
Posted in Audio Systems, Home Theater, technology
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Tagged audio video, Charlotte, home audio, home stereo, home theater electronics, home theater furniture, home theater setup, home theater wiring, integrated home theater, Lake Norman, Mooresville, tv installation, whole house audio
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10 Ways to Be a Good Customer
 How to work with your custom electronics professional to ensure that your project is successful.
Whether you’re planning on adding a home theater, want to create curb energy use or need electronic systems that’ll make your life more efficient and convenient, it pays to be a good customer.
According to custom electronics professionals (CE pros), there are certain things you can do to ensure that the project runs smoothly and that the technology his firm designs and installs for you satisfies all your needs. In speaking with CE pros throughout the years, I’ve come up with a list of 10 ways to guarantee high-tech success in your home.
1. Know your priorities. What’s your biggest hot button? Is it watching movies in high-def or having music play wherever you go? Maybe you’re more concerned with streamlining the control of the lights in your house. List your priorities from top to bottom, and get every member of your family involved in the process. This will help your CE pro decide where to focus the bulk of your budget.
2. Have a budget. Speaking of budget, it’s a good idea to at least have a ballpark figure in mind. If you know approximately how much you can spend, your installer will have an easier time picking out products that’ll meet both your priorities and your budget.
3. Share your story. Believe it or not, your lifestyle, schedule and routines are of interest to your CE pro. The fact that you wake up at 7, work until 6 and go to bed at 11 may seem mundane to you, but information like this is critical to the workings of your systems. With it, your CE pro will be able to set up a schedule for the lights and thermostats to adjust automatically throughout the day.
4. Attend meetings. Particularly for projects where technology will be installed during the construction of a home, it’s common for the CE pro, architect, builder, interior designer and other subcontractors to meet weekly. It’s helpful if you also attend these meetings. You’ll be able to share your input and answer any questions they might have.
5. Maintain contact. It’s inevitable that you’ll run into a few hiccups during the project. Be sure that your CE pro is able to reach you to throughout the project so collectively you can decide how to proceed.
6. Be willing to compromise. Some of hiccups may require some form of compromise. For example, the perfect spot for viewing your built-in TV might have a heating duct in the way. Your CE pro, will likely suggest a different location. Hear him out and be willing to deviate from the original plan.
7. Stay the course. There’s nothing more difficult for a CE pro to deal with than a client who changes his or her mind continually during the course of a project. Asking for a different product, like a larger TV, can often jeopardize the entire project. In this case, your CE pro may need to modify the size of the cabinet, readjust the position of the speakers and maybe even redo the construction plans so that the room can accommodate a larger screen. All this will cost you time and money.
8. Do your homework – but not too much. It’s always a good idea to educate yourself before undertaking any project, but understand that your CE pro know which products work best together and which don’t. Even though you’ve read nothing but good reviews on a certain surround-sound receiver, for example, it may not be the right one for your type of A/V system. Leave product selection to your CE pro.
9. Expect follow-up. The more you live with your systems, the more you understand how you’d like the electronics to perform. For example, the 50 percent brightness setting you and your CE pro originally agreed on for the hallway lights may seem too dim after you’ve lived in your house for a month or two. Expect your systems to be tweaked a few times after the installation is complete.
10. Spread the word. If your CE pro does a good job, tell other people about it. Word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising. Who knows—if you connect your CE pro with a new customer, he just might give you a deal on your next project.
by Lisa Montgomery
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/10_ways_to_be_a_good_customer/C227
Custom Installation Services, LLC – Home Theater, Audio and Video Services, Home Automation in North Carolina and South Carolina
Posted in Audio Systems, Flat Panel TV's, Home Theater, News
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Tagged audio advice, Best Buy, central vac dealers in charlotte nc, Charlotte, custom home builders in charlotte nc, custom home builders in lake norman, frank betz house plans, geek squad in charlotte nc, Home theater installers Lake Norman, Mooresville, multiroom audio, Samsung, Speakercraft, surround sound, whole house audio
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Dolby Talks TrueHD, Format Differences
 Craig Eggers of Dolby Laboratories explains the differences between the company’s audio formats and the connection options to facilitate these formats’ playback.
As a victim of circumstance the company has had a difficult time educating the public about the advantages of its Dolby TrueHD format, but Craig Eggers, senior manager, partner marketing for Dolby Laboratories, says the company is working to inform consumers about the parameters of its lossless audio format, which is available on Blu-ray discs.
A Recent History of Surround Sound
Eggers says that consumers interested in the different formats should start by examining Dolby’s discrete 5.1 format that’s available as part of the digital television and home video disc formats.
“The format that’s part of the [DTV] broadcast standard and DVD is Dolby Digital. Dolby Digital is a lossy, compressed format. It was designed to eliminate redundancies within the decoding process. This enables us to take a big file and compress it down to a file that’s compatible with DVD and broadcast TV,” Eggers explains.
“Dolby Digital Plus builds upon this. Dolby Digital has a bit rate 384/448kps. The format is capable of going 640kbps and receivers are capable of decoding that bit rate. In broadcast [TV] and DVD, Dolby Digital is limited to 448kbps and 5.1. With Dolby Digital Plus we can add more bits than Dolby Digital Plus—6Mbps and it can support 7.1 channels of discrete audio.”
Eggers mentions that as Dolby Digital evolved, companies have turned to the Dolby Digital Plus format, which is built upon the foundation of Dolby Digital to increase the quality of their products.. He says companies like Vudu now use Dolby Digital Plus because of its variable bit rate efficiencies that enable it to provide a 1080p level of video while also offering a quality surround sound experience.
Blu-ray Ushers in Better Sound
Taking the quality level higher, Dolby’s lossless compression audio format Dolby TrueHD provides consumers with the same quality level that the recording engineers hear with master recordings.
Eggers says that Dolby TrueHD is available as part of the Blu-ray format and they support legacy components that aren’t compatible with Dolby True HD by embedding a higher bit rate 640kbps Dolby Digital soundtrack into the audio to ensure a high level of surround sound.
To experience the company’s lossless surround format, Eggers explains that consumers have the choice of using either HDMI or RCA cables between their Blu-ray players and receivers.
“A lot of newer AV receivers have external audio inputs and with these inputs, what you need to look for in a BD player is one that internally decodes Dolby TrueHD and that comes equipped with multichannel analog outputs,” says Eggers.
“The player has to decode Dolby TrueHD internally and it must be equipped with multichannel analog inputs. Taking it a step further, if the Blu-ray disc player can decode Dolby TrueHD, it can decode the format and it can pass through HDMI as PCM audio and it then sends the signal to a receiver with early versions of HDMI [1.1, 1.2]. Newer receivers with HDMI 1.3 have built-in Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD decoders and they enable the Blu-ray player to send a Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby TrueHD bitstream signal to the receiver where it’s decoded inside the receiver.”
Audiophile Pedigrees Not Necessary
According to Eggers, the best part of the Dolby TrueHD format regardless of how it’s achieved in the home is the final result, which he says is immediately noticeable to the listener.
“I think if you have a quality system, there is an audible difference and what they [consumers] will experience is a warmer signal with more atmosphere and presence, and it is very natural sounding,” states Eggers.
“A good example is the ‘Chris Botti in Boston,’ disc. It has warmth, presence and its sound contributes to the, ‘you are there experience.’”
If all of this information still isn’t enough to clarify the benefits of Dolby TrueHD, Eggers advises consumers to visit the Dolby Laboratories’ Web site, which offers lots of detailed materials on the topic.
by Robert Archer
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/dolby_talks_truehd_format_differences/
Custom Installation Services, LLC – Home Theater, Audio and Video Services, Home Automation in North Carolina and South Carolina
Posted in Audio Systems, Blu-ray, Home Theater, Music and Movies, technology
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Tagged audio advice, Best Buy, charlotte nc custom home builder, charlotte nc speakercraft dealers, custom home builders in charlotte nc, custom home builders in lake norman, frank betz house plans, geek squad in charlotte nc, home audio consultation and design, home automation companies in charlotte, Home theater installers Lake Norman, lake norman custom home builder, Lutron dealers in charlotte nc, NIRV dealers in charlotte nc, speakercraft dealers in charlotte nc, universal remote programming in charlotte nc
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