Enjoy simple video distribution over IP throughout your home with Savant Home Automation
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As we get deeper into the fall and almost to winter in Northern New Jersey, we tend to spend more time indoors. Our audio and video entertainment systems get more of a workout this time of year, whether we are watching the Giants on a Sunday afternoon or catch up on a favorite Netflix show in the evening after dinner. If you happen to have a larger home in the Morris or Somerset County area, you may have accumulated a variety of TVs and audio/video equipment over the past few years. There’s a Samsung in the family room with an A/V receiver and speakers, a Sony in the master bedroom with a soundbar, an LG in the basement game room with a secondary stereo system. Other bedrooms have inherited other smaller TVs with no sound system. Each of these has a variety of different devices like cable boxes, Blu-ray players, Rokus, and Apple TVs attached to them. Each of them has its own set of remote controls, and not all of the TVs have access to the same content. Does that scenario sound like your home? Have you wondered if there’s an easier way to have a unified entertainment system that consolidates all your video sources, makes it easy to access in any room, and doesn’t require A/V equipment scattered all over your house? There is, and it’s a whole-home A/V system with video over IP. How can video distribution over IP simplify your entertainment setup in your New Jersey home? When it’s part of a Savant home automation system, you will have one straightforward way to access any video and audio content that anyone in your house can intuitively use. Just read on to learn more.
What is Video Over IP? We’ve talked before on this blog about the power and simplicity of Savant home automation. Savant is a powerful automation platform, and part of that includes advanced home infrastructure technology that can distribute video and audio signals everywhere in your house, allowing you the freedom to choose whatever content you want and play it in any location you wish. Why would you want such a capability? Why not just duplicate the same equipment everywhere? The answer is that while you can duplicate the same A/V equipment across various rooms, there are advantages in simplicity and efficiency in regard to a distributed video approach. If you have cable or satellite TV, there are considerable cost advantages in not having either multiple satellite receivers or cable boxes to outfit every room. If you want a TV in an outdoor space, you only need to have a TV and no other equipment which is not designed to be outdoors. You could share high-end devices such as a Kaleidescape movie server or Ultra-HD Blu-ray player across more than one room and simplify the management and access of recorded TV on a DVR. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the distributed video system is the simplicity of unifying all content under one interface. With a Savant app on an iPhone or iPad, you could call up anything from a Spotify playlist, a Netflix show, or CNN on cable in one room, three rooms, or the entire house from one remote control. If you like a minimalist look, each room could have high-quality architectural speakers and only a TV, with nary a cable, electronics box, or gaggle of remotes in sight.
How Does It Work? Video and audio distribution over IP take advantage of digital networking technology to send signals over standard Cat6 networking cable to any location. Cat6 is inexpensive and easy to work with, so it is not difficult to run wires to multiple locations in a house, and even outdoors. Running both audio and video over a single cable is efficient, and it allows flexibility in where to place receiving equipment and the centralized switches that handle routing the signals. Savant’s video over IP solution can process 4K/60Hz signals and HDR content, allowing you to have the full richness of 4K streaming content from sources like Netflix and Amazon Video, or Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. Savant’s powerful video switches have the processing to let you watch up to nine different sources on your flat panel TV or projector. Using the TrueControl app, take advantage of your large screen to keep an eye on up to nine NFL games with your Sunday Ticket. During the week, track all the news from local to financial to politics on one screen. It’s like having your very own video wall in your home. And the system can be expanded to 128 zones, which should accommodate the largest properties.
How Easy Is It To Use? To give you a sense of Savant’s ease of use, it’s better to show you than to tell you. Click on the video below to see how simple it is to have your favorite channels at hand. Savant can customize controls both to a particular room or location and to a specific user. So, Dad can have his favorites, Mom hers, and the kids can watch what you let them! For additional resources, please visit our page on Savant Home Automation with articles like this on everything you need to know. Additionally, you can check out our photo gallery to explore our previous work.
Bravo AV is proud to be an HTA (Home Technology Association) Certified Installation Firm and professional A/V experts. Tom Curnin, the owner of Bravo AV, is a CEDIA Professional Designer, a certified THX Level 1 home theater professional and a member of the Home Acoustic Alliance trained to Level II. You can contact Tom directly at (908) 953-0555 or through email at tom@bravoav.com.
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