Welcome to Our Smart Home Technology Blog

In the coming months, you’re likely going to get a lot more use out of your televisions and music systems. From Christmas celebrations to Super Bowl parties, it’s important to ensure your whole house audio/video system is ready with top-notch sound and visual quality. If you think the system in your Dallas area home might not be up to the task, keep reading to learn about all the latest upgrades you can take advantage of.

SEE ALSO: What is Whole House Audio Video?

4K Ultra HD Displays

4K Ultra HD is quickly becoming the standard for televisions throughout the USA. The TVs have four times the pixels of regular HD TVs, and the difference in visual quality is like night and day. When 4K televisions first debuted years ago, their high cost and lack of content filmed in 4K meant that they were typically only found in the homes of technology early adopters. Now, however, 4K TVs are quite affordable, and almost every new show or movie is filmed in 4K. You can even now watch live sporting events in 4K, creating such a lifelike picture, you’d swear you were sitting in the bleachers. 

So whether your Thanksgiving tradition is to watch the Macy’s Day Parade in the morning or cheer on the Dallas Cowboys in the afternoon, upgrading to 4K is a sure-fire way to make the experience more enjoyable.

Multi-Room Music Systems

Music is an integral part of creating the perfect atmosphere for holiday parties. Instead of fumbling around with multiple remotes, struggling to get all of the different stereo systems throughout your home to play the same songs, upgrade to a multi-room music system. With a multi-room setup, you can easily choose your favorite Christmas playlist and enjoy high-fidelity music in every room of your home.

Lighting and shading control is often considered a must-have aspect of any smart home because of how much convenience it adds to your lifestyle at home. If you’re considering adding lighting and shading control to your Texas residence, it can be tough to know how to get started. Keep reading to learn the main aspects of lighting and shading control so that you can start taking advantage of its benefits in your University Park or other Dallas area home.

SEE ALSO: Top 3 Benefits of Lighting and Shading Control

Choose Your Brand

When it comes to lighting and shading control brands, two companies stand out far above the rest: Lutron and Crestron. Some control systems only control lighting or shading, not both, which can make the system more complicated. That’s not the case with Lutron and Crestron. The great thing about Lutron and Crestron is that they both provide so many different options: roller shades, wireless dimmers, skylight shades, touchscreen controls, and more.

From the same company, you can get everything you need for a complete solution. And beyond the technical aspects of the control system, Lutron and Crestron also offer window treatment design elements. You can look through their extensive collection of different fabric types, colors, and patterns to find the best options to match your home’s décor.

Pick Your Locations

The types of lighting and shades you choose will depend greatly on where you put them. It’s important to get the right lighting and shading materials for your lifestyle and the purpose of each room – blackout shades for a media room, but transparent shades that simply reduce the sunlight glare will serve the client better in rooms with a gorgeous view. After you decide which rooms you want to have lighting and shading control in, a DeVance Electronic Lifestyle expert will be there to offer advice and guidance on selecting the best materials for each space—considering everything from what the ideal fabric type would be to reduce UV damage to furniture on through to the final selection of light fixtures to accentuate your artwork.

An effective and reliable smart home automation solution has a lot of pieces and parts all working together to add convenience and comfort to your home. One often overlooked aspect of this complex system is the home network. In this blog, we discuss three aspects of home networking that are vitally important for ensuring your smart home operates smoothly, whether you’re in Highland Park or another Texas area.

SEE ALSO: Explore What it Means to Live with Smart Home Automation

Speed

The speed of your home network is directly tied to the speed of your devices. Each piece of equipment might say it can reach lightning fast speeds, but if your network is throttling your bandwidth, your smart home automation system will never operate at full performance.  DeVance can optimize your home network and remove the obstacles that are causing network throttling. By streamlining your home network, your devices will be able to reach their full speed capabilities.

Reliability

When you’re streaming television shows on Netflix or watching a movie in your dedicated home theater, you’ll be able to enjoy the entire show without any lagging or delays in audio or video. However, 4K streaming requires a lot of bandwidth, and your network simply may not be up to the task.  Often, the source of video lagging during streaming is a lack of strong Wi-Fi. DeVance can install wireless access points at strategic locations throughout your home to ensure that each smart device has a strong and reliable Internet connection.

Scalability

Your home network needs to be ready not only for today’s technology, but also for tomorrow’s. You don’t want to be one step behind the latest smart home automation technology simply because your home network isn’t capable of supporting more devices. Using the latest standards and advances in home networking technology will ensure that whenever you want to upgrade your smart home automation system, your network won’t hold you back.

Some people may describe their company’s conference room technology as “practically stuck in the stone ages.” That’s a problem. Even if your system isn’t that old, commercial audio/video technologies have come a long way in recent years, and an outdated system could negatively impact your Dallas, Texas business. Fortunately, there are many new and innovative technologies available for businesses that make using conference room AV easy and effective. Below, we’ve covered the three main ways that a commercial AV upgrade can add value to your business.

Save Time
How much time do your employees waste fumbling around with the conference AV system, trying to set up a presentation or connect to a teleconference? If it’s more than a few minutes, there’s definitely room for improvement. Modern commercial AV systems are designed to be user-friendly and simple to start, so your employees know exactly what to do with minimal training and no guesswork.

Commercial automation integrates all the audio and video components within your boardroom into one simple control system. Want to lower the screen, turn on the projector, dim the lights, and turn on the speakers? That can all happen with one press of a touchscreen. There’s really no comparison when it comes to time savings for conference room automation vs. manual operation methods.

Increase Reliability
There are few things more frustrating than getting ready to start a presentation with an important prospect only to have your AV equipment fail you at the last minute. In today’s fast-paced and demanding business environment, you need a commercial audio/video system that will always offer crisp, clear audio and video. The streamlined approach to operating your commercial automation system ensures that you’ll never accidentally exit out of a video conference or struggle with finding the right controller to adjust the audio. The result is a conference room system that functions exactly as it should, every time you need it.

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What does your conference room technology say about your company? If you want it to say that you are cutting edge and innovative, commercial automation is the way to go. An outdated and inefficient AV system can be off-putting to potential clients, while an AV system that has your presentation instantly start at the push of a button can impress those clients and assure them that your company has a good handle on things.