For all intents and purposes, home automation technology is mainstream these days. A host of companies are making everything from smart light bulbs to thermostats to video doorbells, and many of them are connected to Google, Apple, and Amazon home automation platforms. While it seems like a recent phenomenon, in reality, home automation has been around for decades, and some companies have been at it longer than others.

Crestron is one such company and the one that practically invented home automation. Crestron started in 1971 building a variety of automated machines, and it began focusing on electronics control in the late 1980s with one of the first wireless remotes for commercial systems. The company's long history and focus on automation have made it a staple of control systems from corporate boardrooms to the largest homes.

As the premier smart home company in Metro Atlanta, Georgia Home Theater has years of experience designing and installing custom Crestron control system solutions for homeowners throughout the area. Read on to learn about three ways Crestron stands out from any other home automation solution.

Summertime is best spent with family and friends in the fresh air with food sizzling on the grill and your favorite tunes wafting through the air. Why not make your backyard the unofficial destination of the season? Today’s weatherproof technology means you can upgrade your Sandy Springs or Metro Atlanta property with an outdoor speaker system and outdoor TVs for cookouts, pool parties, and relaxing year-round; without worry of long-term damage from exposure to sunlight, heat or rain that our area is known for.

But before adding outdoor speakers and TVs to your home, it only makes sense you’ll want to hear and see the quality first. Many direct-to-consumer products claim to be high-quality, but you don’t know how it truly sounds until you experience the technology in real life.

At Georgia Home Theater’s showroom in Marietta, you can look, touch, hear and see our outdoor speaker and TV options before purchasing. To prepare for your visit, continue reading to explore the outdoor entertainment that is on display at Georgia Home Theater’s showrooms.

When you think of a home theater, the first thing that comes to mind is the big screen. While today's flat panels are growing to 100-inch sizes and even higher, the most cost-effective way to showcase a giant picture is still through a projector and screen; as long as you have the space.

What might keep someone from having the projector and screen setup? One common reason is that projectors and projection screens work best in darkened settings, and not everyone wants to retreat to a theater-dark room to watch a Netflix show or the night’s Braves game.

Fortunately, one company saw that problem and invented a solution. Screen Innovations is true to its name, designing innovative screens for media rooms and home theaters as well as unique motorized shading solutions for indoor and outdoor spaces.

Screen Innovations’ Black Diamond theater screens are the first optical projection displays that reject ambient light from every direction, making them the perfect choice for any home theater or media room.

So if you have a media setup with a projector – or you are looking into a new home theater installation and would love to watch with the lights on or the shades up – a Black Diamond screen might be just what you need at your Roswell or Metro Atlanta home.

Keep reading below to learn more about Screen Innovations and its Black Diamond screen material!

Since 2003, Control4 has been an innovating force in smart home automation. Their systems have always been intuitive, easy to use, and designed so that novice and experts alike can control their home environment effortlessly.

Smart home technology is moving ahead at a breakneck pace. Control4 understands that, and they have not stood still. They’ve listened to Control4 installers like Georgia Home Theater, their customers, and paid attention to the latest advances in the smart home world to build an even better version of the Control4 platform: OS 3.

In OS 3, Control4 made a huge leap forward to make its system even easier to use for homeowners like you. Over 1,000 enhancements have gone into the software to enable the ultimate smart home experience.

What do you need to know about OS 3 for the Control4 home automation setup at your Sandy Springs or Metro Atlanta property? Read on to learn more.

The audio receiver is the do-it-all hub for many home audio setups. It is the anchor in most multi-channel home audio-video installations, deftly managing video switching, decoding all audio formats, amplification, room correction, and more.  

Yet the receiver is sometimes not entirely appreciated by some audio enthusiasts. While the receiver is a convenient one-box solution, some think only separate components will deliver the sound quality that will satisfy them. 

Anthem begs to differ with that notion. Anthem is part of Paradigm, the Canadian speaker company that is well-regarded in audio circles for delivering excellent sound quality at prices that won’t break the bank. Anthem also makes separate processors and amplifiers, so they know how to make high-quality components that prioritize sound quality. 

The majority of today's receivers from mass-market brands tend to load up on features at the expense of quality. Today's receivers feature Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, built-in audio apps, multiple surround modes, web and app-based control, and many more features that are all convenient – but they do not necessarily improve sound quality. 

Anthem receivers eschew “feature bloat” for delivering what a receiver should first and foremost: excellent sound from any source. That doesn’t mean that their receivers are missing key features; they focus on the ones that matter and building the best quality product for the price point. 

So if you’re an audio enthusiast looking for a new receiver for your media room, home theater, or listening room in your Atlanta or Florida home, read on to see why Anthem should be on your list. 

Have you ever driven a BMW 5, 6, or 7 Series or Volvo XC60 or S90 with a B&W sound system? Or perhaps enjoyed the glorious soundtrack of a Maserati Levante Ferrari-built engine along with the equally sonic Bowers & Wilkins sound system? If you’re fortunate enough to have a McLaren 570 in your auto collection, you also have the audio system that is a match for that supercar.

The common point among these high-end auto companies is that they all partnered with Bowers & Wilkins to offer the ultimate car audio system that matches the performance level of the car. In car audio, sometimes a famous brand name is attached to the sound system to add brand cachet, but underneath the system is not differentiated from others by any unique engineering. Not so with Bowers & Wilkins. With each of these companies, B&W worked directly with the auto interior design teams to tailor the sound system specifically to the car’s acoustics, while incorporating unique technologies of their home audio products for the best possible sound reproduction.

Georgia Home Theater does not sell car audio, but of course, we sell high-end home audio. If you are looking for high-performance speakers for your Sandy Springs or Metro Atlanta home audio system, Georgia Home Theater is an authorized dealer for Bowers & Wilkins speakers. So, if you happen to have experienced the excellence of B&W in a car, you are in for a treat at home.

If you have moved to Midtown Atlanta in the past few years, you have seen tremendous growth and improvement in this urban enclave. The Olympic Games in 1996 helped accelerate that growth, and the area boasts amenities like the Woodruff Arts Center, Atlantic Station, great restaurants and so much more.

You enjoy living in your modern urban high-rise, but come summer the hot southern sun streaming in your floor-to-ceiling view windows makes your air conditioning work overtime. It's easy enough to draw the curtains or shades, but you don't want to block the view. And continually opening and closing drapes and shades gets tiring. What's the solution? Motorized shades.

You might think that motorized shades might be limiting in style, too modern, or challenging to install in your space. We'd like to politely dispel all those notions here and show you how motorized shades will enhance your urban Atlanta living spaces.

Ready to learn more? Just keep reading.

Paradigm is a company well known to audio enthusiasts for its focus on performance, but always delivering exceptional value regardless of the price point. Lately, the Canadian company has moved into the higher end of the speaker market with the Persona Series, a beautifully crafted line of speakers that offer striking aesthetics and performance. But even at the high end, the value proposition compares favorably with the competition.

With the Defiance subwoofer line, Paradigm continues to deliver excellent performance at various levels to accommodate most any bass-lover’s wishes for both music and movies. Of course, you know and we know that there are a lot of quality subwoofers in the market. What sets Paradigm apart?

That’s what we’re here to tell you. If you are looking to outfit or upgrade the listening or media room in your Smyrna-area home, you would be wise to consider Paradigm speakers and subwoofers. We sell a lot of these at Georgia Home Theater, and with good reason: They deliver top value for your audio performance dollar.

Let’s take a closer look at Paradigm Defiance subwoofers.

Outdoor TV and audio can add many more hours of pleasure in your outdoor spaces and help you maximize your investment. Yet we at Georgia Home Theater have often wondered why we see outdoor TV installations in the Sandy Springs area and throughout Metro Atlanta use TVs made for indoor use only. We know the primary driver for this is cost.

As an audio-video retailer and integrator, we understand that the prices of flat-panel TVs have come down precipitously, and outdoor models are more expensive, so it might seem like a good decision to use an inexpensive outdoor TV outside. We have just three words for that:

Don't do it.

It's akin to using an indoor electrical extension cord outside and leaving it there throughout the four seasons. You wouldn't do that, right? A quality outdoor TV can be viewed as an investment in your outdoor entertainment, just like the outdoor speakers you may have. Here are all the reasons you need to justify the purchase of a real outdoor TV for your home.

The smartphone in your pocket – or maybe your hand if you are reading this on it – is a powerful computer. In fact, current generation smartphones have about the same computing power of the average laptop from just five years ago.

But this is a hyper-connected world, and all that computing power goes to waste without connectivity. How useful is Google Maps to navigate to a destination without a connection? In the same vein, all the smart devices in the world are reliant on connectivity – to each other in the home, and to the Internet to connect to the information, content, and services that make them exponentially more powerful.

But just like your smartphone, a Control4 system has a crucial dependency to work well in your Alpharetta-area home: It needs a robust and reliable network. Conveniently, Control4 has a professional-grade networking solution as well: Pakedge.

Learn more about why if you are interested in a highly integrated home automation system, you will need a professionally installed networking system that will keep up.

We've talked before how we at Georgia Home Theater like to work with the best brands in their categories, and we have a rich stable of brand partners in audio, video, and home control to prove it. Landscape lighting is no exception, and in that space, we work with Coastal Source. The company puts quality into every aspect of their products’ design and performance, and it’s a difference you can tell. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the company also offers high-performance outdoor audio solutions, but we’ll leave outdoor sound to a different blog.

If you haven’t installed landscape lighting for your Alpharetta-area home, you are missing out on an opportunity to enhance and beautify your property’s outdoor areas. Few investments add as much drama, flair, and utility to your property as much as lighting.

Let’s discuss some ways a landscape lighting installation can add distinctive appeal to your Georgia home. Read on for more.

Are you a minimalist type of person? Do you appreciate great design, but like everything clean and tidy, with form following function? Are you passionate about high-quality audio and video in your home?

We apologize for all the questions. But if you answered yes to all of the above – or even some of them – you might want to read further about digital media distribution systems for your home. If you think that a digital media distribution system sounds like something that belongs in an office building, you would not be wrong either.

Crestron is a company practically synonymous with home and commercial automation. Long before Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and other consumer home automation existed, Crestron was pioneering automation solutions for large residences, boardrooms, and conference centers for years. Crestron’s Digital Media Distribution system is a result of their extensive expertise in creating high-end audio-visual solutions.

What is it, and why might you want this Crestron automation solution for your Roswell-area home? If you have even a bit of a minimalist streak, read on to learn more.

Father’s Day is coming in June, as it always does. Are you not sure what to get your significant other as a gift ahead of this year’s celebration?

Georgia Home Theater has some ways to change that, especially if your Dad or husband is an audio or video enthusiast. Even if he's not, we have some excellent gift ideas that might just turn him into one. So if you’ve been wondering what to get the Dad in your life for Father’s Day, these five ideas are sure to amp up his Atlanta-area media room design with their outstanding performance.

Are you excited that you will now know what to buy for Father’s Day? Just keep reading.

At Georgia Home Theater, we like to associate ourselves with quality brands. When it comes to audio, we have a preference for companies, products, and brands that have been synonymous with quality for a long time. Those brands include Bowers & Wilkins, McIntosh, Klipsch, Rotel and Paradigm, to name a few. Each of those companies has a commitment to offering the best audio performance possible for each of the products they offer, whether that product is aimed at the high or low end of the market.

Recently, we have been proud to add another well-known name with a reputation for quality to our offerings: Martin Logan. Martin Logan is yet another American Hi-Fi company (like McIntosh and Klipsch), founded in the unlikely location of Lawrence, Kansas, by Gayle Martin Sanders and Ron Logan Sutherland. Sutherland was an electrical engineer, and they both had a fascination with electrostatic speakers. What are electrostatic speakers? They are quite different from conventional speaker drivers that use electromagnets and current to move air. Electrostatic speakers vibrate air using thin conducive panels suspended between stationary panels. They are also known as dipole speakers, as they radiate sound all around from these panels as opposed to more directional sound from conventional speaker drivers.

When Martin Logan began, most electrostatic designs were relative failures. They were hard to drive with most amplifiers, and they were weak in bass reproduction. They did, however, offer an airy, enveloping sound that could reproduce genres like classical music in a more natural way than conventional speakers.

To make a long story short, suffice it to say that Martin Logan has applied years of engineering work in electronics and material science to perfect the electrostatic speaker. Today they are the foremost purveyor of electrostatic speakers, to the delight of audio enthusiasts who know that their sound is like no other, offering the kind of soundstage you hear at a live performance.

Georgia Home Theater is pleased to bring the transparent high fidelity sound of Martin Logan to your HiFi stereo system at your home in the Roswell area. Read on to learn more about three Martin Logan speaker models that can transform yourlistening room.

Some products stand the test of time. Their design transcends the fads, and the company pedigree assures a level of performance that lives up to the brand. In cars, the Porsche 911 is one such product. In continuous production since 1963, its design has evolved with the times, and its performance continues to push the limits, but it has stayed true to its purpose. The Herman Miller Aeron chair is another modern example of iconic design, often imitated but never duplicated.

In home audio, several brands have also withstood the test of time. But few have hewn as closely to their purpose and heritage as McIntosh audio. In 2019, the company celebrates its 70^th anniversary of offering superlative audio products. Like the Aeron chair and the Porsche 911, McIntosh has its own classic design flourish – the blue-lit analog power meters and traditional metal trimmed knobs on a massive black faceplate. Just like those other classic products, older generations of McIntosh audio products are still prized by fans of vintage audio; they were designed to last for decades.

What makes McIntosh special? It has always been a commitment to ultimate performance and quality. The company may be best known for its amplifiers, and that was the starting point, as well as the genesis of those iconic blue power meters. In the 1960s, McIntosh amplifiers helped power the massive Woodstock concert, which was conveniently in the company's backyard in upper New York State. The 1970s saw the rise of HiFi audio, and the company broadened its line into tuners and speakers. If you walked into a HiFi shop then, you knew that McIntosh was top-of-the-line gear.

The 1980s saw the rise of digital audio with the advent of the CD, and McIntosh introduced its first CD player as well as expanding further into loudspeakers. The 1990s brought home theater and architectural speakers into popularity, and McIntosh was there with new multichannel amplifiers and in-wall transducers. The decade also saw McIntosh move into automotive audio, and a McIntosh system was produced for another iconic automobile, Ford's 2003 remake of the Lemans-winning Ford GT.

Currently, McIntosh continues to evolve with the times and has embraced two of the major technology drivers of the audio market: Digital music and wireless. For a taste on the current range of McIntosh audio offerings for your Atlanta home audio systems, you may be surprised at the breadth.

Just keep reading to find out more.