Outdoor Electronics Make Staying at Home Fun

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The pandemic has put a damper on vacationing, socializing and entertaining. With everyone home more, it’s a great time to add outdoor electronics.

Watching a movie or TV outside is so much fun and makes for a great “night in.”

A covered patio/deck or a three season room are great locations for a TV. Some ACT customers have installed a media room in their pool house. Other families want a drive-in movie experience in their yard with a giant screen and projector. If your family would watch movies, TV or sports outside regularly, a relatively small installation makes sense.

It will be easier to watch new releases at home with this week’s agreement between Universal Pictures and AMC Theatres (7-28-2020). Some movies will be available on-demand just a few weeks after their release in theaters. Other studios and distributors are expected to follow suit.

Music is another way to enjoy electronics outside. All weather audio systems let you enjoy music, radio or sports outside and can be designed to disappear into your landscape. ACT’s outdoor music systems offer even coverage and great sound without disturbing your neighbors.

There are options for outdoor entertainment at multiple price levels. Call us at 781-741-5959 to discuss what’s possible at your home. Consultations are always free of charge.

Multi-Room, Hi-Res Music Made Easy with Bluesound Music Systems

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ACT is happy to offer a new music system option for our customers: Bluesound hi-res sound systems.

Bluesound was started by designers, engineers and other music lovers who spent their lives in the music industry. They set out to create a system that could deliver high-fidelity audio. The result is audiophile-grade wireless HiFi speakers and digital players that let homeowners stream music to any (or every!) room in their home.

Homeowners can use Bluesound to supplement or replace an older audio system, easily add more rooms to an existing system or install a music system without opening walls to run wires. With a Bluesound wireless speaker, you can also bring music outside with you.

Bluesound systems play music from CDs, records, digital files or streaming services, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora, Tidal, iHeartRadio and many more. You can listen to your own music stored on your phone, tablet, laptop, computer or any networked hard drive.

The system is controlled with an app, which makes it very easy to operate. The BluOS Controller App is available for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and Windows and Mac desktops. Bluesound supports voice control and works with Alexa and Siri.

In addition to wireless speakers, Bluesound offers soundbars, a subwoofer and stereo components. The NODE 2i, a multi-room, high-res music streamer, has digital and analog input/output options and can connect to any existing stereo amplifier, AV receiver or powered audio system. It can also play music from a CD player or turntable. The NODE 2i works with Amazon Echo and AirPlay 2. The POWERNODE 2i does everything the NODE 2i does, but also adds amplification to a system. It works with existing speakers as well as Bluesound’s speakers. The VAULT 2i can store thousands of tracks and also rip CDs in FLAC, MP3, WAV, WMA and many other formats.

If you’d like to hear a Bluesound system in action, please stop by ACT and we’d be thrilled to fire it up. And as always, call us at 781-741-5959 with any questions or for more information.

How to Keep Your Home Electronics Up and Running Through the Winter

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Winter is the season of power outages in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for home electronics to misbehave after an outage. If any of your electronics stop working — whether it’s after a power outage or any other time — the first step is usually to reboot the equipment.

A reboot means turning the power off for at least 10 seconds. With cable boxes and other components, the power cord needs to be disconnected from the device or the device needs to be unplugged in order to completely power off.

Usually, rebooting is an easy fix. Sometimes devices are located within cabinetry or an equipment rack, which makes it difficult to access the cords. It can also be hard to pinpoint which device needs to be rebooted, especially for homeowners with robust electronic systems.

There are several new products available that allow ACT to assist customers remotely, preventing the need for a visit from a technician. These products can help tell which devices need to be rebooted and perform the reboots. They also help ACT get diagnostics for Internet speeds and help determine if network problems stem from an issue on the Internet Service Provider’s end.

ACT can also set up a user-friendly app our customers can use to fix common issues on their own. With the app, you can see all of your components in one place and reboot them right from the app. This can also be done remotely, which is a nice feature for second homes, homeowners returning from vacation or anyone who knows their home has lost power when they’re not there.

We know our clients don’t enjoy making service calls or waiting for repairmen or technicians. With this new class of products, in most cases, our clients can either fix home electronics issues on their own or have problems resolved via a phone call with ACT.

For more information and pricing, please call ACT at 781-741-5959.

What Is Home Theater, Anyway?

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When you think about technology in the home, does the term home theater come to mind? Home theater is a phrase that’s used a lot when it comes to residential custom electronics. But what does it really mean? Some people use it as a broad term to describe TV and movie viewing at home, while other people envision a private movie theater. The short answer is that home theater is both of those things.

At ACT, we usually use the terms dedicated home theater and media room. A dedicated home theater is just what it sounds like — a room with the sole purpose of providing an outstanding viewing and listening experience. A dedicated home theater is a room with a large screen, a great audio system, comfortable seating and often other fun features like theater lighting, a popcorn maker or a wet bar.

Most families today prefer a media room to a home theater. A multipurpose media room provides the best of both worlds — the stunning visuals, exciting audio and comfy seating of a theater in your family room or living area.

A lot of families like the idea of a media room, but balk at the thought of unsightly equipment in their living spaces. The technology for a media room can actually be hidden fairly easily. For example, if you’d prefer a large flat screen display to be hidden when you’re not using it, media mirrors, special artwork or custom cabinetry can be used. Speakers and sub-woofers can be placed discreetly, and components can be hidden in cabinetry or housed in an out-of-sight equipment rack. Take a look at the portfolio pages on our web site for examples of hidden technology.

When deciding what you want in the way of home theater, there are a few things to think about first. At ACT, we work with homeowners to choose the best solutions based on things like what they like to watch, who will be watching, how they think they’ll use the space, the size, shape and ceiling height of the space and of course, their budget. The size and shape of a room and your own preferences will lead to the right decisions about screen size and type, audio options and the components that will (or won’t) make up your system.

If you’d like to learn more about what would work in your home and what can be done within your budget, we’d love to come take a look and discuss options with you. Consultations are always free of charge.