Wired 1 Consulting

The Definitive All-Weather Speaker Sale is now on until May 30th at Wired 1 Consulting!

The best-sounding outdoor speakers feature the same vapour deposited ceramic on aluminum silk surround tweeter used by our reference floor standing Bipolar Super Towers, plus the patented Balanced Double Surround System mid-bass driver, and Definitive Bass-Radiators to outperform the competition! Available in black or white.

Now, the best get even better with this Definitive All-Weather Speaker opportunity: YOU SAVE up to $120 on these amazing outdoor speakers and of course, Wired 1 Consulting can custom install them for you! (506) 470-7510

Get your orders in now an get ready for hopefully, a long hot spring and summer! These speakers are designed for our climate so you can leave them outdoors all year round!

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As many years as I have been in the electronics business there have unfortunately been a bunch of scam artist out there who prey on the uniformed public. During my career there have even been brick and mortar outlets that, even though they had what looked like a legitimate business, were guilty of all sorts of illegal consumer manipulation. Bait and switch tactics were often deployed, extended service contracts that weren’t underwritten, so when the company went out of business that 5 year warranty that you paid $500 dollars for might as well have been written on toilet paper! I’ve even seen companies collude to scam their insurance companies, claiming that  they had had a warehouse heist of millions of dollars that they contrived with another retailer in another province and the two companies just traded inventory! The claims were settled with the insurance companies and the trading retailers had inventory that theoretically didn’t cost them anything! Yes, this actually happened! But one of the most common con games that have been going on for decades is the “White Van Speaker Scam” here’s the link to Wikipedia about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam

These speakers look very legitimate and most times they are actually supported by a manufacturer’s web site and everything! However, these speakers are obsolete models that haven’t been relevant for a number of years and usually come from a “knock off” company in China or another far east country! Even though they might look OK they are obsolete garbage! This actually happened to an acquaintance last week who called me up to ask if I knew about the speakers that he got a “killer deal” on. So, if you are approached in a parking lot with a deal that it just too good to be believed, run in the opposite direction!

Invest your money in a legitimate speaker system from an authorized dealer like Wired 1 Consulting.

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Yesterday (02-10-2015) Microsoft released a doozy of an update for all Windows computers! This update addressed over 50 security vulnerabilities in the operating system, some known and some just discovered. So it’s a huge update! Some clients are reporting that the update is not downloading and installing on their computers. Here’s how to get around it. Restart your computer, check for updates, view updates and unselect the “important” updates, then select only the first listed “important” update. Choose install now. You may be prompted to restart your computer. When the computer restarts go back to check for updates and try to install again, If it’s still taking forever, cancel the update and repeat the select one at a time procedure described above.

If it’s still beyond your level of expertise give us a shout! These are very important updates that should be installed immediately!

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A custom home theater is a fantastic addition to your home for watching movies or the big sporting event and it can also be the focal point of any get together. This family has a fitness studio adjacent to their theater room. After the workout clients and friends can relax, have a low calorie snack and watch a movie or two!

My client commented that the theater room gets LOADS of use!

Contact us today to get your theater designed and start enjoying THE BIG  PICTURE!

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A SMART TV connects you with the internet and can give you access to on-line services like Netflix and YouTube. Some sets can also allow you to connect to a media server (a home PC or separate, remotely or local connected device) so you can stream or transmit the contents, both audio and video to the television, such as your music or movie collection. Understandably, these televisions need to be connected to your home internet in order to accomplish this. Most of the current crop of SMART TV’s have built in wireless (Wi-Fi) capability as well as a wired Ethernet connection. For most applications a Wi-Fi connection is fine, however this wireless connection is dependent on 2 very important things; the speed of your Wi-Fi connection and the quality of this connection. If you are working with a media server your wireless connection may not be robust enough to deliver the content to your TV without the occasional interruption of either the sound or the picture. Wireless is still not as fast or reliable as a hard wired internet connection. This may be tricky to connect if your internet router is in another room in the home! Wired 1 Consulting can show you ways to get a wired connection to your set without having to run new wires to your internet router for the best sound and picture quality.

Sound quality from these new TV’s is generally pretty  lousy! Your new TV is really thin, and so there is no room for the manufacturer to install decent speakers, unlike the old days when cathode ray televisions gave the manufacturers a large, mostly empty cabinet in which to install speakers, most flat panel sets have a speaker system that would be OK for a laptop computer, but not for your living room! If you do some investigating you will find that all of these companies offer “add-on” speakers for their television sets. IMPORTANT NOTE: I have yet to hear one of these “add-on” speaker systems from a television manufacturer that sounds good!! In most cases the speakers are made out of plastic boxes with very cheap component drivers in the box. This is NOT the kind of sound you want for your movie night or that big game! Luckily there are a wide variety of speaker systems available from companies that are primarily speaker manufacturers, that rely on the audio quality of their products to establish their reputation. You may already have an audio system that would be able to hook up to your new TV given the right configuration. For a better speaker system or help with your connections Wired 1 Consulting is here for you! We are authorized dealers for a large selection of manufacturers like BOSE, Definitive Technology, DENON,  MARANTZ and a wide selection of others.

OH, and if you haven’t bought one yet, we also sell SMART TV from most of the popular brands!

Give us a call today and get the most out of your investment! (506)470-7510

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The most significant announcements at last week’s CES show in Las Vegas was the formation of the Ultra High Definition consortium. The major manufacturers and developers have finally decided on the format requirements of the new UHD (Ultra High Definition, also erroneously referred to as 4K) television format for both transmission and display.

Up until this point there was no precise parameters to define the actual format of UHD. A lot of  manufacturers were stating that their televisions were UHD ready without even knowing what the actual broadcast/display standard was going to be! Well, now we know.

UHD increases not only the detail level of (approximately 4 times the resolution of current high definition televisions) but it also has an increased dynamic range (the difference between black and white that the display is able to show) and a substantially increased colour gamut (more colours on the screen). Now that the industry has ironed out these variables, the manufacturers of broadcast and display technologies know what their devices and format HAVE to do in order to  carry the designation of UHD.

This will happen with the generation of televisions being released this spring (’15) by most of the manufacturers. One company, Samsung, has added an “S” prefix to their new models ,which the “S” apparently doesn’t stand for anything in particular, but denotes that these sets are in full compliance with the finalized UHD standard.

As far as delivery to the home is concerned most manufacturers have announced plans to release new Blu-Ray players compatible with the UHD standard and both Netflix and YouTube plan on having some internet streaming content in UHD available this year. There are also video cameras and Smart phones available that can record the new UHD standard for playback of your own content.

As most of you know that read my blog, I have been advising to stay away from the UHD format until the format was finalized by the industry. This spring is finally the time to purchase a new UHD television without concern of compatibility! It’s about time!

Now, what size would you like?

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Got a new TV for Christmas? A lot of my clients did! Now you’ve got a great new television with all the latest inputs and technology and maybe your new TV is a “SMART” set, meaning you can connect it to your home internet connection and watch steaming services like Netflix and YouTube. A lot has changed in the past 5 years!

Most of my clients are using one of the television service providers (Roger’s, Bell, Shaw etc.) to provide television content for the home. The problem is that a lot of these clients have obsolete technology provided by their service provider years ago.

You are being charged a monthly service fee to be able to watch the television content in your home but in a lot of cases the “box” that delivers this content is OLD (I mean REALLY OLD) technology! If your service “box” doesn’t have a HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) output port on the back of it you will not be able to take advantage of the resolution capabilities of your new television!

The service providers are not going to “offer” these new innovations to you automatically. They are quite happy receiving your monthly payment for technology, that in some cases, is almost 20 years old – in technological chronology that’s forever!

Why is an HDMI connection better?  Because it is DIGITAL. Up until a few years ago television was delivered to your home as an analog signal or waveform transmission. Any time a signal is transmitted via analog there is a large chance of electrical or radio frequencies interfering with the signal. If you are old enough to remember rabbit ears antennas you know what I’m talking about – static in the picture and “ghosting” of the image. Today, television is delivered digitally. That means that the image you see on your TV is a bunch of ones and zeroes, or on’s and off’s, that are delivered to today’s televisions. There are millions of these ones and zeroes arriving every second and it’s up to your TV or cable box to turn them into picture and sound on your TV. Now, although it is difficult to interfere with a digital signal, the picture can get messed up if all those millions of bits of information are not delivered accurately. This can cause a symptom known as pixelization or dropout. The best way to avoid this from happening is to keep the signal digital until the final stage, your TV for the picture and sound or if you have an HDMI equipped audio system the sound will come out of your speakers and the picture will be sent to the TV digitally.

Check the back of your television delivery box. If there is not a 1″ slot on the back marked HDMI, call your service provider and ask for an upgrade! You will be glad you did. If you need help getting it all put together properly give Wired 1 Consulting a call. (506) 470-7510

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A longstanding client of mine contacted me recently complaining about a few things. The remote control for their satellite receiver was starting to fail and the sound wasn’t always in-sync with the images on the screen (I call it the “Godzilla” effect, where the mouth moves and a split second later you hear the voice). The reason for this was easy to understand as they had bought a new digital flat panel TV and had used HDMI cables to get the best picture from their HD satellite receiver and Blu-ray disc player. In order to get the sound to come out of their surround sound audio system they also had to make separate audio connections. The problem with that is that even though they might both be digital audio connections,(HDMI and either coaxial or fiber optic digital audio) the onboard processor in the Blu-ray or the satellite receiver will prioritize the audio processing in favour of the HDMI output and as a result, the digital audio is very slightly delayed when compared to the audio that is transmitted through the HDMI cable. The replacement for the old Sony receiver with a new DENON receiver now gives them full HDMI switching (it has 7 HDMI inputs!) eliminating the need for digital audio connections. The DENON also has automatic lip sync that makes sure that the mouth moves at the same time as the voice comes out! With UHD (Ultra High Definition) compatibility they will be ready for their next TV when the time comes!

A Harmony Ultimate Home remote control system now gives them the freedom to control the system from anywhere in the home. No pointing required! And one rechargeable remote control hand unit instead of the 5 remotes cluttering the coffee table that they previously needed.

To find out what Wired 1 Consulting can do to simplify and improve YOUR valuable leisure time contact us today!

New DENON AVR-3100W wireless network receiver/ Harmony Ultimate Home remote control system with a new Apple TV

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At Wired 1 Consulting we also do commercial audio and video systems. Sometimes there is a lot more to the job than meets the eye! On this project we were contracted to install in-wall volume controls, ceiling speakers and new amplifiers. everything looked great below the ceiling but above the ceiling was a nightmare! Old control wires everywhere and even connected, working thermostats were just shoved above the ceiling tiles in the plenum space! We should have had hard hats!

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