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.

In consumer electronics, it is easier than ever to build a new product. But some companies sweat all the details, pouring money into research and development to bring innovations to market first. They don’t settle for off-the-shelf components; they build their own to bring that extra edge to their products.

In the consumer electronics world, that company is Sony. The long list of firsts they have developed is much too long to discuss here. Their expertise in audio and video technology is unparalleled. They are also unique in that the company also owns significant pieces of the content side of the business. They have the most holistic view of what it takes to deliver an exceptional aural and visual experience from the creative side all the way to a cinema, your home theater, or your TV.

Why does that matter? Because it’s all in the details.

Sony understands the challenges of recreating the experience that the movie producers envisioned in your own living room. So if you are looking for a new projector – or an upgrade – to your home theater or media room in the Sandy Springs area, we’re going to explain why it should be a Sony.

Ready to learn more about the Sony projectors difference? Let’s continue.

This blog has now been updated; you can view this updated post here.

Get to Know Crestron’s New TSR-310 and HR-310 Remotes

Our world is full of touchscreens. According to Statista stats portal, 2.8 billion touchscreen devices were shipped worldwide in 2016 alone. You have to work hard these days to find a human being on the planet that hasn’t been exposed to one. The reason is straightforward: Touchscreens present intuitive interfaces for people to accomplish tasks without resorting to a help manual. The smartphone in our pocket proves that they work for a host of applications.

As much as we all love touchscreens, there are some times when they are not always the best control experience. Touchscreens require us to look at the screen to make a choice or perform a gesture.

When it comes to A/V control, the majority of remotes still have real buttons. Vendors have added app control to smart devices – from sophisticated devices like A/V receivers to simpler ones like Roku Streamers – to extend the control capabilities and allow for an alternative form of control. There are people, particularly of younger generations that grew up with touchscreens, that might prefer the smartphone as a remote control, as it is virtually always with you.

For A/V control, sometimes the touchscreen is not the best option. For many people, adjusting the volume is easier by feeling for the right button on a hard-button remote. That way, you don’t have to look down at a screen or light up a darkened room during a movie. Transport functions like play, pause, and fast forward can sometimes be more intuitive with real buttons too. Lastly, your smartphone is doing other things than remote control, and switching or starting apps for a simple function can be tedious.

Crestron has been in the A/V and home automation business since it began. They understand the control of devices and systems thoroughly. In this age of the screen, they still offer hard button remotes to allow the freedom to control your environment the way you want.

Read on to learn more about managing your A/V and home automation systems in the Roswell area with the the new, advanced TSR-310 and HR-310 remotes for your Crestron control system. These are not your average complicated remotes though – they are designed to be customized for you.

Dolby Atmos was introduced to much fanfare for home theaters in 2014. The new format was trumpeted as one of the biggest advances in multi-channel audio in years. Indeed, it brought a more immersive 3D sound to home theater. Consumer electronics partners jumped on the bandwagon early, and products like speakers, receivers, and UHD Blu-ray players started appearing in the market over the next two years.

While new technology is great, you need things that take advantage of it. For Dolby Atmos, the content was slow in coming. The first movie for home viewing released in Atmos on Blu-ray was Transformers, Age of Extinction. Video games like Star Wars: Battlefront followed as Dolby worked with content makers to make full use of the new format. While these titles were excellent showcases for the format, others were slow in coming.

Fast forward to 2019, and all that has changed dramatically. For one, there are over 4400 theaters in the U.S. with immersive Dolby Atmos sound, exposing millions of theatergoers to new levels in cinema audio. Almost every new AV receiver and surround processor now sports support for the format, with most supporting its competitor DTS:X as well. Apple recently announced Dolby Atmos support for the 4K Apple TV and is upgrading its iTunes movie rental offerings to Atmos as well. Amazon's latest streaming stick also supports the sound format. Speakers from respected brands like Bowers and Wilkins and Klipsch are available, both in surface mount or architectural styles designed expressly for delivering those three-dimensional height and positional overhead effects.

You may be thinking: What can I watch with a Dolby Atmos surround sound system in my Roswell or Metro Atlanta home’s media room? The answer is plenty - read on to learn more.

It’s April, the taxes are done, the weather in Atlanta is comfortably warm, and our thoughts are turning to the outdoors. Of course, it’s also a time when we want to spruce up our outside areas as well. We’ll uncover the patio furniture, plan for the landscapers to plant annuals, prune the rose bushes, mulch the beds, and get the patios power-washed. When it's all cleaned up and ready, we admire the result and think of what else might make the outside spaces even more inviting.

Chances are you have an outdoor grill on your patio, and perhaps it’s built-in. Maybe you have an outdoor kitchen. If not, now is the perfect time to install one just in time for summer barbecue season. Are you thinking about a swimming pool to beat the humid Georgia heat? There’s still time before summer hits.

Regardless of what improvements you have planned for your outdoor living spaces, you should consider one upgrade that will enhance any of your activities - adding music. With an outdoor speaker system in your Roswell-area patio, you will make all your swimming, lounging, sunning, entertaining and grilling activities that much more enjoyable.

Read on for some ideas to enhance your outdoor space - and if you already have outdoor audio, you may want to upgrade it!

Abbey Road studios has a long and fabled history. It is perhaps best known for the 1969 namesake Beatles album, the band’s 11^th studio album and the last in which all of them participated. Abbey Road Studios, however, predated the Beatles.

In 1931, the Gramophone Company – the predecessor to British record label EMI – converted what had been a century-old Georgian townhouse into a recording studio. In 1934, the inventor of stereo sound, Alan Blumlein, recorded Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony at the studio. Abbey Road Studios also became known for the innovative recording techniques pioneered in the 1960s by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Cliff Richard, with the help of imaginative producers and sound engineers like George Martin. Today, the studio is owned by Universal Music Group, one the world’s largest record labels.

Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) has a remarkable history of its own, if not as long as Abbey Road Studios. In 1966, John Bowers and Roy Wilkins started building loudspeakers out of a workshop in the back of an electronics shop. In the early days, the firm made public address systems, building their expertise in speaker design. By 1972, the firm had its first research facility with anechoic chambers for detailed testing. Over the decades, B&W has established its name at the forefront of high-end audio reproduction, and in recent years the company has extended its sound know-how into headphones, automobile audio, wireless, and architectural speakers.

For 15 years, Abbey Road Studios used the B&W 800D Mk1 as studio monitors, because of their incredibly accurate sound reproduction. Abbey Road recently underwent the most significant transformation in its history, adding two new studios in 2017. In 2018, the companies announced a new partnership of the venerated audio brands, where B&W is the official speaker and headphone of the famed studio.

Read on to learn more about Bowers & Wilkins speakers at Abbey Road studios. If professional sound engineers at Abbey Road use them, imagine how good they will sound in your Dunwoody-area home’s listening room.

This blog has now been updated; you can view this updated post here.

When you think of home automation and smart home technology, do you imagine something that sounds both complicated and expensive? No doubt the underlying technology is sophisticated, as is most of today's consumer technology upon which we rely every day – like your smartphone.

Most likely, you find your smartphone as a device that is not complicated to use, and a boon to your daily life. That's because the system and apps use technology intelligently to simplify everyday tasks – whether it’s communication, managing your calendar and tasks, getting information on your finances, or the myriad of other things smartphones bring to the palm of your hand.

Home automation sounds complicated, but it is much the same as the smartphone. Some sophisticated technology under the veneer of a simple-to-use interface makes it easy to manage a host of functions in your home. The good news is that home automation systems are not an all-or-nothing thing; you can start small and scale up in functionality and size. It's much like your smartphone: You can do many things in the digital realm with them, but some people stick to basics like communication and taking pictures. You can always add more apps to do more, but you don’t have to.

If you haven’t dipped the proverbial toe into smart home technology, there’s no reason not to. You can start with something as simple as taming the pack of audio-video remote controls sitting on your coffee table. A Control4 home automation system would banish all those remotes in your Alpharetta-area family room to a drawer and replace it with a clean interface that makes your A/V setup work just the way you like it. But of course, it can do much more.

Keep reading to see how a Control4 smart home system can cinch those quick 8-yard slant passes, but also go long for the touchdown, automating your whole house.

This blog has now been updated; you can view this updated post here.

Klipsch is one of America’s oldest names in HiFi audio. Started in 1946 in a tin shed in Hope, Arkansas, by Paul Klipsch, the company has been finely honing its patented horn-based designs for decades. Paul Klipsch’s goal was to recreate the sound of live music in the home, and it remains the guiding principle of the company to this day.

Klipsch speakers have always had a forward, lively sound, one that holds true to the company's goal of audio that sounds like you are really in the room listening to the artist record music. It tends to be a sound that you feel, with deep bass and high frequencies that remind you of a live performance and not something that has been filtered in some way.

Today, Klipsch is still headquartered in the U.S., and the Hope, Arkansas, shed is the site of the factory that produces classic speakers like the Klipschorn or the Klipsch Heritage Series. Klipsch Audio Technologies now manufactures speakers at a variety of price points and also owns the brands Jamo, Athena, Mirage, and Energy. The company understands how to build both high-end and lower-end speakers that outperform their price points – and usually people's expectations as well.

Klipsch’s newly redesigned Reference Premiere RP-600M bookshelf speaker is a case in point. Its performance has surprised and astounded professional reviewers considering its amazingly affordable price of $550 a pair.

If you are looking to upgrade your HiFi stereo system in the Vinings area or are looking to build one in your home without spending next month’s mortgage payment, let’s take a closer look at the RP-600M.

A home theater can be a significant investment. Like a bathroom or kitchen remodel, it can also be a big job. There's a lot that can go into a home theater. There's the screen, the projector, the speakers, the audio receiver, processor or amplifier, control capability, lighting, seating, décor, and more to think about.

Of course, your home theater area might be a setup designed around a living or family room, or it can be a full-boat dedicated home theater in an extra or purpose-built room in your house. Either way, the details must be sweated to make it into a theater experience that feels special. Those details involve the right size and scale for sound and picture, the acoustics, the methods of control, and perhaps how the home theater ties into other smart home features.

It might seem daunting, right? Georgia Home Theater is here to help. As our name implies, home theaters are a core competence at our company. To make it easier for customers to see and hear what a home theater setup can be like at your home, we have built one in our flagship theater demo area in our Marietta showroom.

Did you miss the Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody at the theaters? We have set the film up as a demo in our showroom, as the musical soundtrack can really show off a high-end sound system. And the visuals are equally stunning. The demo theater features some of our best brands – Anthem, Bowers and Wilkins, Sony, and more. At our Marietta showroom, you’ll get a much better sense of what to expect from a professional home theater installation in your Alpharetta-area home.

Keep reading for a brief look at what you’ll experience in the showroom – and what you could have in your own theater.