Blog

SEE ALSO: How to Enhance Your Home Theater with Smart Lighting

Choosing the Room

Many homeowners may think that bigger is better when choosing a room for their home theater. And while size does matter if you want a fully immersive movie experience, the most important aspect of the room you choose is its dimensions. Square and oval rooms will distort your audio. The ideal room for balanced surround sound should be rectangular, with walls longer than they are wide, and high ceilings.

Placing the Display

Comfort and perception significantly enhance your viewing experience, which means your display must be placed in such a way that prevents eye or neck strain. The image on the screen should appear naturally as your eyes would see it in real life. While a general rule of thumb is to place your screen 24” to 36” inches above the floor and 1.5 to 3 times the screen height distance from your seating, the ideal measurement will be unique to your room dimensions, screen size preference, and seating options.

SEE ALSO: Wondering If a Professional Home Network Is Worth it?

The Problem with Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are over-advertised as the Holy Grail for improving internet connections in the home. While they can be a passing solution for entry-level applications where wi-fi connection isn’t critical, homeowners who rely on an internet connection for their business need a solution they can trust around the clock.

In a mesh network, every hop between access points around the home decreases the bandwidth by half. The more hops, the worse the bandwidth becomes. Several hops also increase network latency, which results in buffering and dropouts in certain applications, such as streaming audio and video.

Plugging in mesh repeaters around the home simply won’t offer the same guarantee for reliability as professional solutions, and that matters when a few minutes of downtime while working from home means thousands of dollars lost.

SEE ALSO: Why Residential Lighting Control Makes Sense for Your Projects

We’re with You from the Beginning

A comprehensive smart home starts with a strong foundation. By partnering with Avidia at the start of your builds, our team will be able to properly wire and install a robust smart home foundation that ensures reliability, scalability, and seamless integration of your clients’ home technology. This step also allows us to lay the necessary network infrastructure that will ensure your clients receive the best results from their smart home system.

From start to finish, our team follows a standardized design-build process that ensures your home builds are equipped with a high-quality, reliable solution that matches your clients’ performance expectations. You and your buyers will know exactly what to expect throughout all phases of the project and will have a clear understanding of how all technology goals are brought to life. Plus, we offer 24/7 service and support after the installation so your buyers can be confident that we’ll be there when they need us.

SEE ALSO: Internet Down? We’ll Handle It with 24/7 Comcast Xfinity Monitoring

Design and Installation

It’s easy enough to purchase a broadband modem and router and install them in a centralized location of your home. But how can you be sure the hardware you choose will support your needs? Especially now, more families are working and learning from home, which requires robust internet support for video conferencing. What if you experience weak spots and connectivity issues down the line? Should you install a second router, and if so, where should you place it?

When you work with a professional, you can put these questions behind you. After discussing your connectivity needs, our team will conduct a site survey using Wi-Fi visualization tools that allow us to identify potential dead zones and locate optimal locations for your access points. Your network will be custom-designed to provide exceptional performance and reliability in every corner of your home. 

Coverage and Speed

Dependable network performance shouldn’t be a luxury—especially for growing smart homes. Just like you rely on your car to start in the morning, you should be able to rely on your network to support your virtual work meetings, and your kids’ online learning, and all your internet-connected devices. It’s one thing to be faced with buffering video and slow download speeds, but it’s even worse when vital home devices, like your security system, lose connectivity. 

The ideal home network uses both wireless and wired networking methods for optimal coverage and speed. Our team installs CAT6 and fiber wiring to serve as a strong backbone for your home. Additionally, we use high-performance access points that extend reliable coverage to all corners of your home, including your outdoor living spaces.

SEE ALSO: Hate Dealing with Comcast? Avidia Can Help

Professional Monitoring

You may have professional monitoring for your home security system, but did you know you can have your network monitored too? Your network can be just as critical to your home as security. If you can't connect when you need to work on something important from home, or a part of your home’s automation doesn’t work reliably, it can be a serious issue.

The professional-grade networking equipment we install can be remotely monitored. What does that mean? Here are a few examples. We can check that your router and wired and wireless network are all operating normally. We can ensure that no extraneous devices that should not be connected have hacked into your system. We can monitor your firewall to see that it's keeping intrusions out and if any hacks have been attempted. In short, we are like your professional IT support that you might have in your workplace, ensuring the network is always operating safely.