Hidden Equipment
Nothing to see other than the screens and speakers!
It is becoming increasingly popular to dedicate a central location within your property and for all the AV & tech equipment to be housed completely out of sight. This relies upon a structured cabling installation backbone with all cables being wired out from this central location to each of the rooms.
We can provide you with the design and infrastructure for such a system allowing you to house your Sky boxes, amplifiers, matrices, control equipment, internet router, networking equipment and much more in areas such as a dedicated rack room or cupboard space.
We use the excellent Middle Atlantic rack solutions for all our projects as they have many different ranges which allow for the racks to be concealed within joinery spaces and other solutions to make the most of any space available.
We wire all of our racks offsite in our dedicated rack building facilities to ensure the equipment remains in pristine condition until it is ready to be installed. This also allows us to programme and test the racks prior to them arriving on site, minimising the time required on site.
If you would like to visit our Showroom to see a rack build in progress please do not hesitate to book a Showroom Experience!
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Our Approach to Multi-Room AV Systems
Multi-Room Audio
Multi-Room Audio is another way of describing a system which allows you to have music in multiple rooms. We can design systems which are built to suit the room and the interior design with a wide variety of different types of speakers and manufacturers to choose from.
Multi-Room Audio
Music – a hidden joy which not everyone gets to experience in their homes. Music can transform a quiet Sunday afternoon allowing you listen to a favourite album on a Hi-Fi system for example. It can also provide the party atmosphere if you have a system that allows you to combine multiple rooms together to play a pre-prepared playlist to entertain your guests.
We are official dealers for some of the finest speaker brands in the world from Bowers & Wilkins, to PMC, Sonus Faber to Steinway Lyngdorf. We can help to find a solution which suits your requirements and allows you to experience these different types of sound in our Showroom or at a demo at your property.
From in-ceiling or in-wall solutions through to bookshelf speakers or floor standing speakers, there are so many options we can always propose a solution which will work with your room.
We can also ensure that using your system is simple with integrations to streaming services such as Spotify or Airplay now commonplace for Crestron & Control4 solutions. You can use an app to join zones together but if you are in the kitchen you can simply find a track on Spotify and then Airplay this straight to the kitchen speakers from your own phone or tablet or any control interface.
Book a Showroom VisitMulti-Room Video
Are you a keen Sky Q user but have more than three TVs? Do you have more than one room which you would like to watch UHD content from the Sky Q Silver Box? We can help create a flexible system which allows you to share your sources to an unlimited number of TVs without having equipment in the rooms.
Multi-Room Video
We can create a flexible Video over IP solution to allow you to share multiple sources to multiple TVs or Projectors within your property. We have chosen Video over IP as opposed to HDBaseT, as this is the latest technology which overcomes previous issues with the quality of existing cabling. Video over IP can work on existing Cat5e cabling including long runs. It is not susceptible to fragile infrastructures unlike HDBaseT and traditional HDBaseT matrices.
Video over IP is a flexible technology which uses encoders and decoders. Encoders are required for any source – for example a Sky Q Silver Box or an Apple TV. You need 1 encoder per source and these are located in the AV Rack next to the sources in a chassis. Decoders are then required behind each TV, Projector or AV Receiver.
HDBaseT was previously based around a fixed size matrix, such as a 4×4 or 8×8, 16 x 16 matrix. This often meant there was some level of waste as not all outputs were needed. Video over IP allows you to create a system or any size to suit your property.
Video over IP requires a specific type of network switch. We use Cisco Layer 3 network switches for the encoder/decoder network connections. It will also require a Smart Home Control system with a simple remote control in each room which will be programmed to suit the overall system so it is simple to use.
Contact usSmart Home Control
If you have a multi-room system with numerous zones of TVs or Music it will be important to ensure the system is user friendly and not overly complex. In order to do this we recommend a smart home control system is put in place to provide a simple user experience for any member of the family or guest to the property.
Smart Home Control
If you have a multi-room system it is important that an overall Smart Home System is in place to ensure that the user experience is simple and intuitive.
Although the end user experience is simple, a control system is complex behind the scenes and we would use either Crestron Custom, Crestron Home or Control4 to control the AV systems and other integrated systems within the property such as Lighting, Intercom, CCTV, & Heating for example.
We always recommend a single handheld remote control is present in any TV/Video zone within the property. We would recommend this was a proprietary remote from either Crestron or Control4 so it has a direct connection to the system at all times. iPads and iPhones can be used with the Crestron App or Control4 app but these will always have a slight lag compared to a proprietary remote.
In our Showroom in Guildford we have Crestron Home running multiple AV zones throughout the building using touchscreens, handheld remotes and the iPad application. As an alternative we also have Control4 available in the Showroom. Please contact us for a bespoke tour to discuss your project.
Book for a Showroom VisitOffsite Rack Building
Why are we different to the competition? We believe that 75% of any one project should be completed off-site. From detailed design engineering and project management, through to offsite rack building, programming and testing, our job begins far ahead of the time we arrive on site. We have created dedicated facilities in our Showroom in Guildford to help us to deliver these services to you.
Offsite Rack Building
As a company we have been wiring all of our AV Equipment Racks offsite for over 5yrs. This allows us to complete this intricate task in a clean environment (not a building site) in a timely fashion so that rack building becomes a specific task which is part of the overall project programme.
Onsite we attend once 1st fix is complete and the cables are in place to install a wall termination panel. This is a shallow wall mounted panel which has specific terminations for data cables, speaker cables, coaxial cables and any other specialist cables. They are cut short and terminated into the correct module and labelled. We also go to the rooms and terminate the cables within the rooms at this stage so the cables can be tested.
Offsite the racks are wired and a loom of cables is created which will connect the rack equipment to the termination panels. This will all be drawn by our design engineering team so when the time is right to bring the rack to site it is a simple task to connect it to the termination panels.
Once the racks are wired they are then programmed and tested using our dedicated test bench. This allows us to spot any issues with potential faults with equipment or integration challenges before we arrive on site and deal with these accordingly without causing any disruption.
We believe we are one of very few companies who insist upon this offsite process for every single project. It allows us to ensure we deliver a 5* solution every time.
Come see our rack building spaceIf You Are Considering A New Project
Contact Us
01483 924 530
hello@surreyavsolutions.co.uk
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