How to Buy an Audio-Video Distribution System

Series Summary

A good home theater system can shake the foundation of any home. Putting the right one together can be the tricky part. Space confinements are key in choosing the right system. Then there's finding the right place to buy one. Throw in purchasing a high-definition television and the problems get compounded. In this free video series on home electronics an audio/video technician explain about putting a home entertainment system together. Learn about buying an audio/video distribution system, stereo speakers and speaker cables. Watch how to set up and buy the right surround-sound speakers. Finally, get tips on choosing an LCD TV, picking the right LCD TV screen size and cleaning an HDTV screen.

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Charles with ATX Audio Video. Many people have asked how to buy a distributed audio video system. First you need to examine what it is you would like your audio video distribution center system to do. You would need to decided the number of your sources, which could be DVD player, VCR, cable box, DVR, media server just to name a few. Also how many zones you'll have. Zones are the technical term for rooms. So if you were to have a DVD player, a media server, a DVD or DVR and a cable box, you would have four sources. If you were to distribute it through four rooms, you would have four zones. So you would have a four source, four zone system. The one we like is made by Net Streams, their product Vigilinx runs off a cat five E, which is network cable. The nice thing about this is you can run extremely long links, up to three hundred and twenty eight feet without any signal loss. There's also expandable versus traditional systems which require the initial purchase of very expensive matrix switchers and patchers. But the Net Stream system is expandable as large as you like. You can have a one hundred room home, with one hundred sources all working together."