Whole House Audio & Video

Imagine being in your room and deciding that you want to see what is on TV. You grab your remote and then flip to the channel that you want. Simple enough. Then you want to watch a DVD or VHS. You get up, search for the movie you want to watch, then put it in and sit back down to watch. Not to hard either. But with a whole house video system you can eliminate the need to get up. You can copy all of your DVD's, music CD's, and other audio files to an electronic system that will hold them all and categorize them for you. With a whole house audio system you can pump any sound you want into any room without even having to have a stereo in the room. Or if you want you can plug your stereo into the outlet on the wall and have the sound pump through the built-in ceiling speakers.

These are only some of the benefits of a whole house audio and video system. Another benefit is the disappearance of the clutter of equipment and wires. Instead of having a DVD player in every room along with stereo equipment you have it all located at a centeralized place and run it all by remote (or touch screen, or keypad, etc...) from the room that you are in.

There are many components to a whole house audio and video system. Below are a few of the devices available.

Audio Distributor and Amplifier: The audio distribution device allows multiple items to be connected to it and then outputs that sound to multiple areas. The Nuvo Concerto system shown below will accept inputs from 6 different devices and output to 8 different areas or zones. A zone can be one room or a grouping of rooms.

This is one of the control panels that can be installed to control the above Nuvo Concerto system:

In the fall of 2006 Nuvo is also coming out with a system called the Grand Concerto which features touch screen control panels in addition to the one shown above.

Audio Tuner: Rack mounted audio tuners can be connected into the whole house audio system allowing you to listen to AM/FM radio or even XM satellite radio with crystal clear reception.

Speakers: When you are installing your whole house audio system one of the next things to consider is your speakers. Do you want floor speakers or wall mounted speakers or do you want built-in speakers. Floor speakers and wall mounted speakers can be connected into the system through a port on the wall. This way they can be taken down or moved if necessary. Built-in speakers can be built into any room of the house in the wall or ceiling or both. This allows great flexibility allowing a person to even hide them from normal view. Even speakers outside the house can be connected into a whole house audio system allowing you to play your music outside for parties and gatherings with friends.  Below are some examples of speakers:

These are one type of ceiling mounted speaker.

This is an example of a wall mounted speaker.

This is a pair of Bose weatherproof outdoor speakers.

Media Servers: Media servers incorporated into a whole house audio system allow a home owner to copy audio files and DVD's directly onto the hard drive of the server. This allows access to these files from anywhere in the system but also makes it so that you aren't always trying to find those DVD's that you want to watch when you actually want to watch them. The Escient media server is one type of device like this.

Accessories: There are numerous accessories that can be added to a whole house audio system. Nuvo and a few other companies have Ipod docking stations available to build into your whole house audio allowing you to play your Ipod MP3's through the system easily. You can also connect your home PC or laptop up to the system to play music from there through the system as well.