Much of my work as owner of Experience AV in Montrose, Colorado, is in the strange world of spec homes — and in this market, a developer with a little foresight is the best friend a custom installer can have. Here in the beautiful San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado, it's not uncommon for a developer to build a $4- to $10-million-dollar home on nothing more than the hope that someone will buy it. To most of us, that would seem insane, since 4 million bucks would satisfy all of our audio, video, and home theater cravings and leave us financially set for life.

Recently, I finished an installation in a spec home in Telluride built by developer Scott Brown of SSB Mountain Ventures in Houston, Texas. Scott has a reputation for U.S.-based builder/owners of Casa Fortuna decided to outfit their south-of-the-border hacienda with a custom-installed audio/video system. Another is that Casa Fortuna is the keystone in a new seaside development, in U.S.-based builder/owners of Casa Fortuna decided to a Sounds perfect, right? But you can listen to the surf and Texas. Scott has a reputation for making very livable houses, as opposed to the many homes in this area that are built strictly as trophy photos for office walls. Although he wanted to maximize his investment by keeping costs in line, he also wanted to make sure he got everything right. Part of his plan was to find a "forward-thinking" A/V company — which he felt he'd found when he contacted us at Experience AV.

The Telluride home includes a full phone/data/TV structured-cable package, alarm and lighting-control systems, Wi-Fi distribution, and speaker and audio-zone control wiring, with several of the rooms finished with speakers and controllers. There are "creative" wire paths to accommodate retrofit audio-jack locations. And the multiple locations for TV placement within a room give an interior designer plenty of flexibility.

Anticipating the desire to send high-def video around the house, we installed two RG-6 coax and two Cat5e cables in every room. We also installed a separate rack in the audio closet in case the homeowner wants to add remote video sources or a video server system. Using Control 4's modular control system, we installed six zones of audio, basic shade control, and lighting control in the common areas to show the capabilities of a full control system without totally automating the house at the developer's expense.

It took quite a bit of planning to create a system that can easily be expanded to address the future homeowner's changing needs. Of course, it would be nice to have a crystal ball to predict the future of home entertainment. Now that so many products are computer-based, new technology is emerging at a frantic pace. It seems like computers are obsolete the week after you buy them, and it's becoming the same with A/V gear.

Frequently changing product specifications and continually evolving wire types, such as HDMI, have made it that much more important to prepare for new technology. It might seem like overkill to run a conduit from your gear rack to your projector, but what are you going to do when HDMI is replaced with the inevitable next-generation connection? Wouldn't it be great to be able to add whatever you need without tearing out a chunk of wall (or ceiling)? Our average price for adding this kind of conduit to a new-construction theater is about $65. That's less than what you'd have to pay a drywall guy just to cut the holes if you later decided to run a new cable.

To keep costs down, many of the less savvy developers will ask me, "Why should I spend all this money for wire when everything will be wireless next year?" Of course, we've all seen the wireless TVs and the mountains of wireless speakers at the electronics shows, but how many have actually made it into stores — and worked as promised once they got there? So far, I haven't seen a single product with enough of a "wow" factor to usher us into the wireless world.

That's not to say there aren't some intriguing wireless audio-distribution products available — like the Sonos system and Control 4's Speaker Point (both featured in Barry Sonnenfeld's Rocky Mountain Picture Show, September). Both have built-in amplifiers to work with any set of speakers and require only a Wi-Fi network to send sound anywhere in your house. The Speaker Point is an upgrade to the basic Control 4 A/V system, while the Sonos is a self-contained system that can play music that's either shared off your network or streamed from online.

In a custom installation, we're always battling the budget. Every time someone asks us to lower the cost by not running Cat5e cable in their walls because he or she already has a wireless router and wireless phones, we simply show them how many other uses it has. Cat5e can be used for video distribution (even HDMI), fax machines, motion detectors, audio transport, IR extenders, additional phone lines, and at least a dozen other things. It's almost as versatile as duct tape. We've even used it to install a wall jack in a living room and send an audio signal down to the house's central music system so everyone can listen to the latest iPod download.

When we were about 80% through the installation, the home was sold and we were asked to meet with the new owners. So we took a house tour with them, where they immediately saw the value of the Control 4 system. Afterward, they requested more than $56,000 in additions, including upgrades to 14 audio zones and the addition of 6 video zones. Upgrades included six large Sharp Aquos LCD HDTVs, a surround sound system in the living room, HD video transports for the remote video gear in three of the rooms, and an eight-line phone system. Since we needed to add only a bit of hardware to the control system and didn't have to replace anything, the developer's investment was intact. And thanks to the structured-cable package, the entire upgrade was done without having to rework a single bit of wire.

Much of the house was redone by the new owners' interior designer. But even with all the changes, we had to move only one jack — from a baseboard to the height of a flat-screen TV. And since we'd allowed for this possibility, the wire was already in place behind the new jack location.

After we installed the upgrades, the owners added even more bits of gear, including a Nintendo Wii game console and a central XM satellite-radio feed for the house, and the system accommodated the additions without a fight. For instance, we'd anticipated possible videogame systems in the living-room/recreation-room when we spec'd out the receiver. We always try to leave at least one input of each type (HDMI, component, and composite) so the receiver can handle an HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc player, a videogame console, or whatever might be next on the upgrade list.

One of the nice features of the Control 4 system is its Composer software, which enables you to program changes quickly on the fly.

When the owners asked us to customize one of the buttons on the remote to jump immediately to a specific DirecTV menu item, it took us only about a minute to make the change and copy it to all the other video zones in the house. Gone are the days of the multiday programming change (and the $500 charge that went with it).

The next level of support is already here with Control 4's 4Sight service, which lets an installer access the customer's system remotely via the Internet. (Access is password-protected, of course.) I can now make any programming changes the owners might want without having to go out to their house for a service call. You might think this means we're giving up a reliable revenue stream, but it's worth it just for the customer's enhanced appreciation. I must say that it's nice to be sitting in the office with a cold drink instead of being on the road for a stressful 3-hour round trip to custom-program somebody's remote.

Staying on the cutting edge of technology and offering easily upgradable systems gives us a big advantage over the local competition. Among other things, we're lowering the overall costs for our customers, while also eliminating the trauma of an installation. One odd benefit of all this new technology is that there's now time to escape it all with a few company fishing days in the lakes and rivers of Western Colorado. Overall stress levels are down, customer satisfaction is up, and the fish are always biting.

Equipment List

LIVING ROOM Sharp Aquos LC-46D92U 46-inch LCD HDTV Paradigm Cinema 110 CT speaker system Denon DVD-1730 DVD player Denon AVR-2807 receiver Control 4 Mini Touch Screen controller DirecTV HR20-700 HD DVR/satellite-TV receiver Sony PlayStation 3 game console Nintendo Wii game console Xbox 360 Premium game console GREAT ROOM Sharp Aquos LC-52D92U 52-inch LCD HDTV (3 pairs) Paradigm CS-80R speakers Denon DVD-1730 DVD player DirecTV HR20-700 HD DVR/satellite-TV receiver Control 4 Mini Touch Screen controller OFFICE Sharp Aquos LC-32D62U 32-inch LCD HDTV (1 pair) Paradigm CS-80R speakers DirecTV HR20-700 HD DVR/satellite-TV receiver Control 4 Mini Touch Screen controller Control 4 Home Theater Controller MASTER BEDROOM Sharp Aquos LC-37D62U 37-inch LCD HDTV (1 pair) Paradigm CS-80R speakers DirecTV HR20-700 HD DVR/satellite-TV receiver Control 4 Mini Touch Screen controller Control 4 Home Theater Controller AUDIO RACK Denon DVD-1730 DVD player Control 4 Media Controller (2) Panamax MAX 1500-UPS power conditioners (2) Control 4 16-channel amplifiers Control 4 16 x 16 audio matrix switch Netgear ProSafe 24-port Ethernet switch Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G router HOUSE-WIDE (3) OnQ wireless access points Panasonic KA-TAW848 eight-line phone system with nine phones CONTROL 4 LIGHTING SYSTEM (56) LDZ-101-A dimmers (20) LSZ-101-A switches (12) LSZ-101-A six-button keypads (10) LSZ-3W1-A two-button keypads

EXPERIENCE AV HOME THEATER
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