Certified Connection

Give us a call. 617-320-6930

• About
• Services
• Portfolio
• Testimonials
• Blog
• Contact

You might think that if you put a Blu-ray disc into a Blu-ray player hooked up to a 1080p HD TV, you’re getting the best of the best. But simply purchasing a 1080p television doesn’t guarantee you 1,080 lines’ worth of definition. Just about every Blu-ray player has output settings that have to be configured properly to display full 1080p resolution. And if your player is hooked to an A/V receiver, it may also have output settings that will have to be set. Some sophisticated home theaters will then send the signal to an outboard video processor, which needs the same type of fine-tuning.

But even if your Blu-ray player, your A/V receiver, and your video processor are all configured in the right way, you might still not get exactly what you want out of your system. For example, if the display mode on your television isn’t set up properly, you won’t enjoy all 1,080 lines of detail that you paid for. With all of the menus and all of the options available on HD TVs – or any piece of electronic equipment – there are countless permutations. Every customization is different, based on anything from the room you choose for your set-up to the distance between your couch and the TV, and you may not even know what you want until you see the type of customization available.

Face it: You need help. You may be a computer whiz or remember fondly your time spent as president of the A/V club, but technology moves fast and you might not know what you don’t know. Not only that, the industry focuses on customizability and the user experience, so there are tons of options on every piece of equipment, whether it be part of a security system, a home theater, a lighting system, or a home computer network. And I think your baby just re-set your system to factory settings while she was chewing on the remote. So c’mon – call a professional. It’ll be our little secret.

By: Certified Connection

Many homes, especially those in New England, date back to the 19^th, 18^th, and in some cases even the 17^th century. When some of these houses were built, people were still reading by kerosene lamp and keeping warm by a wood stove, and the only things you’d find in the walls were wooden beams and horsehair plaster.As time rolled on, new innovations required new things to be put in those walls. The advent of home electricity and the telephone meant that the wires to connect them had to be run into and throughout the home. Newer homes were built with the wiring already there, but older homes had to be gutted and updated to take advantage of this modern technology.

Aside from a few upgrades and a few variations (running in wires for a television antenna, and then eventually cable) home wiring remained pretty much the same throughout the 20^th century. But now here we are in the 21^st, and the old home wiring just doesn’t cut it any more. New advances like satellite television dishes, fiber optic networks, security systems, high speed Internet, and remote lighting systems all require a whole lot of new wiring and all sorts of new cabling.

While it’s obviously more of a challenge to wire up an older home for all this great tech, getting your new home prewired is easy for the experts. Prewiring, according to the Certified Connection Web site, “allows seamless integration of audio, video, voice, and data networking throughout your home. Watch DVD or satellite on every TV in the home. Enjoy music in every room of the home – even outdoors. See who is at the front door from any TV!”

So if you’re going to get yourself a new home, make it a smart home. Wire it up beforehand and enjoy all that modern technology has to offer.

By: Certified Connection

It seems like everywhere you turn, there is talk about living more efficiently with less waste. However, it is hard to know how to really maintain a green lifestyle and decrease your carbon footprint besides separating your recyclables and bringing your own bags to the grocery store. And now, coupled with the economy, everyone is seeking ways to save money. As we discussed in our previous blog post, “Home Automation: Cool and Cost Effective,” new home automation technologies are helping consumers to both save money and green their homes.

Monitoring electricity consumption has been proven as one of the best ways to save money on utility bills, which consequently decreases individual energy usage. One of the coolest new products on the market that can help consumers do this is The Energy Detective (TED), a real-time energy monitor designed by Peak Software. Although there are other products out there that can tell you how much electricity an appliance is using, with TED you can monitor all of the energy usage of all your appliances at the same time.

TED can provide daily, weekly, and monthly usage reports in addition to making recommendations on ways to decrease your energy usage. It can even tell you what your electric bill will be before you get it.

TED is designed to work with Control4 home automation systems. Used in conjunction with Control4 systems, you can program your appliances and climate control systems to operate during non-peak (when electricity costs are lower) times of the day. You can also monitor electricity usage from a mobile device like an iPhone.

It is estimated that the average consumer could save between $400 and $500 per year, and move you one step forward in minimizing your carbon footprint.

As hard as it might be to believe, it wasn’t that long ago that the average home entertainment center consisted of a black-and-white television sitting on a TV tray, likely with rabbit ears (tin foil optional) and capable of picking up three or four broadcast channels.

These days, a home media center can have any combination of HDTV, DVD player, video game system, cable box, Blu-ray player, CD or MP3 player—and maybe even a computer or two.

All of these components have some form of audio output, and plug into some variation of a stereo receiver. To keep up with the voluminous number of outputs, newer receivers have more and more inputs, but sometimes there just aren’t enough to accommodate everything. What to do then? Get yourself a switcher.

A switcher is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a box with multiple inputs and a single output, and lets you switch from one component to another. There are less fancy switchers with big buttons on the front or top that you press for whatever you want to watch/listen to. There are also very high-end switchers with LCD displays and remote controls, so you can switch from video game to ball game without having to get up from your couch.

A switcher is relatively simple to set up, but it’s ideal to have one hooked up during an expert installation of your entire entertainment system to make sure you’re getting the best quality sound and video. Either way, if you’ve got more outputs than inputs, a switcher is an ideal solution.

By: Certified Connection

I have a friend who prides himself on being on the cutting edge of technology. Several years ago, when the technology was new, he hired a specialist to go to his house and set up his surround sound speakers for him. He invited a group over to watch a movie that night and being new to surround sound, when the movie started, one member of our group was fooled. Each time she heard a footfall, she would turn and stare into the dark hallway behind us searching for the sounds that were part of the movie, but came from the speaker behind us. The purpose of surround sound is to make the movie watcher feel like part of the action. So the system did its job.

The technology is fairly simple – for movie sound, three or more tracks are recorded, each taken from a different direction, and then the tracks are combined in a mixing studio. Things become complex when you bring that technology home and try to set up your own surround sound speakers. There are no rules to proper surround sound speaker placement because there are so many variables. The type of speakers you have and the shape of your room can profoundly affect the performance of your system. That’s why it’s important to contact a professional who is familiar with the variables that can affect performance and who can place your speakers in a configuration that will work best for your needs whether you’re interested in using your system for watching movies, listening to music, or both.

By: Certified Connection



• IT Services
• Networking
• Smart Home Wiring
• Home Automation
• Home Theaters
• Audio/Video Distribution
• Lighting Systems
• Phone Systems

Copyright 2012. Certified Connection. All Rights Reserved.
Designed by Jackrabbit Design