Room
Home theater, finished so the wire has disappeared
Audio and video cabling, television wall mounting, HDTV antenna installation, and URC programming that turns a table full of remotes into one button anybody in the house can press.
Chapter 01
One button, one remote
We custom program URC and other universal remote control systems for an entertainment center or home theater, so any number of remotes comes down to just one. It makes it easy for anybody in the family to hit a button and get to their content.
The useful part is not that one remote has all the buttons. It is that the remote is programmed around activities rather than devices, so pressing one thing puts every box into the state that activity needs. Getting a remote to control several devices is the straightforward half. Working out every activity the household actually does is the half that decides whether the room is genuinely easier to use.
A fair test of the result: hand the remote to somebody who does not live in the house and say nothing. If they can sit down and watch something, it is finished.
A finished living room with a television mounted flush to the wall and no visible cabling
Mounting and cabling a room properly
Hanging the screen is the easy part. What decides whether the wall looks right is deciding what it has to carry before anything is fixed to a stud: power, at least one video source, a network connection so the television is not depending on wireless for a sustained high bitrate, and any audio beyond the set's own speakers.
It is worth running more than you need while the wall is open. An extra cable during the job costs almost nothing. Adding one afterwards is a second job.
Televisions also get mounted too high, because people place them while standing up. You watch sitting down, and a screen roughly at seated eye level is the difference between a room that is comfortable for two hours and one that everybody finds tiring without working out why.
Chapter 03
Antennas, sound and the rest of the wall
HDTV antenna installation is still a live part of this work. Plenty of households want local channels over the air, and placement and aiming matter more than the hardware does. That cable is far easier to run at the same time as everything else.
Flat screens have very little room inside them for speakers, which is why dialogue on an otherwise excellent television can be hard to follow. Any separate audio needs its cabling planned alongside the screen. In-ceiling speakers give one of the tidiest results in a finished room and are one of the most irritating things to retrofit once the ceiling is closed up.
Smart home, without the gimmicks
Amazon Echo and Alexa can be installed throughout a home to make controlling lighting or heating and cooling easier. With compatible equipment we can install these devices so you can turn down the lights or set the temperature with your voice, and URC automation is available for similar purposes.
The word doing the work there is compatible, and it is a question to settle before buying anything rather than after. It is also worth being level-headed about where this helps: a room you walk into with your hands full, or a lamp on the far side of a bedroom. It is much less useful as a replacement for a switch that was already in reach and always worked.
5E Communications, Locally owned. Serving the Texas Panhandle since 2006. Call (806) 674-6900.