Make Life Simpler with These Smart Solutions Installed in Your Newport Beach-Area Home

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your existing window treatments or have a blank slate of windows in a new-build home, you’ve likely been window shopping for window treatments!

From roller shades to Roman blinds, motorized styles to manual styles, the options seem endless and overwhelming. Motorized window treatments bring safety and convenience to your Newport Beach-area home and come in both wired and wireless options to suit your installation needs.

Keep reading the blog to learn the benefits of motorized window treatments over manual blinds.

SEE ALSO: Confused on Where to Start with Your Security Camera Installation?

Safety

While you’re away from home, you may find yourself kicking yourself for forgetting to close the blinds before you left. Thieves could potentially peer through your windows to case your home for a burglary. Managing your motorized window treatments while you’re away is simple!

Enjoy Multi-Room Music or Take Your Audio on an Adventure

Sonos has been on the music scene since its inception in 2002. The company is known for its partnerships with music companies, from Spotify to Tidal and Deezer to iHeartRadio. Sonos’ dedication to music partnerships shows how seriously they take music, and the brand can be seen in many homes in the area and beyond, providing high-quality, multi-room music for Californians.

In this blog, we’ll cover three new products released by the audio brand: The Sonos Move, the Sonos One SL and the Sonos Port. Each comes with a variety of innovative features you’ll be sure to enjoy.

Keep reading to learn how Sonos can provide you with multi-room music throughout your Huntington Beach, CA, home.

SEE ALSO: How Hidden TVs Help Designers Create More Beautiful Homes

Wellness Centers & Stunning 8K OLED

The annual CEDIA Expo returned to Denver earlier this month. Full of innovative home technologies and product launches, the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association put on a great show as they always do. Some of our favorite companies debuted new products and exciting updates, and we also noticed a few exciting new trends. In this blog, we’ll cover two interesting home theater design trends we saw at the Expo. Keep reading to learn about two new home theater trends you can potentially incorporate into your own Irvine, CA home.

SEE ALSO: Why You Should Have Control4 Automation in Your Home  

Home Theaters as Wellness Spaces

Gone are the days of having spaces in your home serve one sole purpose. Modern families want to spend time together, and they also want to make the most of the space in their homes. Instead of utilizing one area of your home solely for movies and TV watching, the new trend is to use the home theater space as a dual-purpose wellness space in your home. Sounds a bit strange initially, but stick with us! Home theaters can utilize design features typically used for immersive movie sound and mood-setting for wellness. Solutions like speakers, lighting, and screens can transform your home theater into a meditation or relaxation room. By using human-centric lighting from Lutron, you can adjust the lighting to meet your natural rhythms. By adjusting the lighting of your Control4-powered automation system, you can feel bright and energetic in the mornings or calm and relaxed in the evenings before heading to bed for the night. As you modify the mood of the home theater to match your relaxation levels, unveil the hidden high-definition TV to show beautiful nature scenes while piping relaxing yoga music or nature sounds through your high-end audio system. All the components of a great wellness space have always been in the home theater, but the new wellness trend is taking the industry by storm!  

8K Resolution Upscaling

TVs and screens have progressively increased in size over the years, just the same as resolution has increased. It seems like only a few years ago 4K was the up-and-coming home theater showstopper and quickly began replacing the HD TVs in our home. Now, 8K upscaling technology has pushed the bar on the types of pictures homeowners have come to expect on their home theater TVs. One of our favorite brands, LG, won a BEST Product Award at CEDIA 2019 in the Flat Panel TV/Ultra HD category with their OLED TV 8K. Because signals are not transmitted to your TV in 8K resolution, your TV or projector must convert the lower resolution video image into a higher definition. This isn’t a new trend in home theaters, many homes have adopted the technology – your 4K TV had to do this with lower resolution video formats like 1080p and 720p. The key is in the processor, and the LG OLED 8K utilizes a 6-step noise reduction processor. OLED technology allows for larger and thinner screens – even curved screens – and pixels are individually lit. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for home theaters in the coming years. If you’d like to incorporate these new trends or simply talk about a potential home theater in your Irvine, CA-area home, call us today at  (949) 515-7030 or contact us online. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Learn the Difference Between Local and Cloud Storage Systems

Many of our customers consult us for a variety of smart home solutions, and we love hearing from you. From whether or not to invest in a more robust network to incorporating lighting control systems into your home, we’ve learned our customers’ strongest desires relate to simple functionality and high-quality products. That desire spills over into the security and surveillance realm, as well. Several different components can go into a security camera installation, and surveillance cameras are typically the most significant component of many systems. Camera footage storage is an aspect of security installations about which we get many questions. If you’re wondering what the difference is between local storage and cloud storage, keep reading.

SEE ALSO: How Hidden TVs Help Designers Create More Beautiful Homes  

Components of a Surveillance System

Before you install a security system in your Laguna Beach-area home, make sure you’re informed about the variety of solutions available. Beyond cameras, door and window sensors, carbon monoxide detectors, motion sensors, video doorbells, smart locks and more are all components you could potentially incorporate into your own home. From dome to bullet cameras, wireless to wired options, and indoor to outdoor cameras, there are several options available, and each is suited for different needs. A professional security installation company will consult with you, performing a site visit to understand your current setup and clarify your vision for a future security system.  

Local Storage

Local storage does just that with your footage – your video and accompanying audio is stored locally. In the past, this meant bulky servers or computer storage. That’s a thing of the past, and cameras compatible with local storage have some type of SD or microSD card storage. You can easily access this footage, so don’t think this is some sort of old-fashioned method in comparison to cloud-based storage. Another consideration to make when planning a security camera installation is whether or not you want 24/7 recording or if you only want a recording to take place when sensors detect motion. This preference will affect your storage needs. Local security footage storage is stored in your home and is accessible by you when you need to access the archive. Storing locally keeps your data secure and unavailable to potential cyber thieves. The local storage option is also the generally more affordable option since you aren’t paying for monthly cloud-storage fees.  

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage, on the other hand, sends your security camera footage to a remote, cloud-based server, off-site from your Laguna Beach-area property. The primary benefit to this storage option is the ability to watch your security camera footage remotely, wherever you are, from a smart device app or your computer browser. Launch Systems can protect your home network from cyber threats so you can rest easy knowing your data is secure in the cloud. Security camera installations can accommodate a combination of both types of storage, so be sure to consult with a professional before you make your final decision. No matter your storage decision, a security camera installation can proceed without a hitch in your Laguna Beach home with Launch Systems. Call us today at (949) 515-7030, contact us online, or chat with us below. We can’t wait to hear from you.