more WOW for your TV watching experience!

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Craig

From time to time we post about prod­ucts that make us go “WOW”  

And this is one of those times…   KEF Audio T Series Speaker System

The KEF T Series is one of the world’s thinnest high per­for­mance home the­ater and flat panel audio systems.

Designed as the per­fect com­pli­ment to any wall mounted flat screen TV.  At less than 1.5 inches thick these ultra-slim speak­ers bring true high-fidelity sound typ­i­cally found in a con­ven­tional cab­i­net speaker.  What a  beau­ti­ful design! space sav­ing speak­ers that look amaz­ing and deliver supe­rior qual­ity sound, Is this pos­si­ble?  We had to test them out for our­selves.…   assem­bled and installed in our test­ing room and dri­ven by a 300 watt ampli­fier the also slen­der 10″ sub­woofer brings great respon­sive bass to the show, while the wall mounted sur­round speak­ers deliv­ered very crisp mid­tone and vocals even dur­ing low talk­ing mono­logue of our movie choices.  For this we give the T Series Speak­ers an over­all “WOW”, and sug­gest if you are look­ing for an amaz­ing sur­round speaker sys­tem con­sider KEF and give us a call for a demonstration.

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Brilliant! Lighting Control offers Safety and Energy Savings

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Craig

It’s Get­ting Dark
…ear­lier these days and by Decem­ber, it will be just about night­time for every­body as they come home. Pulling up to a dark home and fum­bling for lights and then turn­ing on every light as you walk by to save your­self from trip­ping over good­ness knows what. Then leav­ing lights on or off through­out your home all evening…Wow, its 2011…this stuff can be done with­out touch­ing a switch…easily!

Imag­ine This
Pull up to your well lit home at the end of a long day…things are look­ing bet­ter already! As you walk into your home, lights turn on because of your motion. Your home responds to you! And to top it off, as you move from one part of the house to another, lights turn off. It even works for chil­dren. If you are a par­ent, this can really save your voice if you haven’t already recorded, “Go turn your bed­room lights off” for your child to hear every time they leave their room.

Light­ing Con­trol Adds Safety and is a Huge Con­ve­nience
The help that auto­matic light­ing gives us saves us from the nasty habit of trip­ping and falling over things that we can’t see…or drop­ping our arm­loads of stuff. There is a great con­ve­nience fac­tor for busy peo­ple who com­monly enter their homes with chil­dren, brief­cases and pack­ages in over­flow­ing arm­fuls. Sim­ply reach­ing for the lights can be impossible.

Energy Effi­ciency
Sav­ing money on energy bills is a huge ben­e­fit of light­ing con­trol. The pay­back can be in years so you will want to know that you will be in your home for some time…or use it as a bonus sell­ing fea­ture for prospec­tive home­buy­ers. I’ve sure you can already fig­ure out that the for­got­ten light by a child or even your­self adds up over the month.

Vam­pire Power
Just in time for Hal­loween, a drain on energy sav­ings that many peo­ple don’t often con­sider is some­thing called VAMPIRE POWER…you know the power that is being drawn by say, the toaster when it is plugged in when nobody is using it. That type of power waste can also be sig­nif­i­cantly reduced with light­ing con­trol by actu­ally turn­ing those out­lets off a cer­tain points.

The Coolest Part of Light­ing Con­trol!
It’s been called sexy, cool, state of the art and blah blah blah, but it really is so fun. Just think, con­trol­ling the light­ing in your house from your phone — really! You’re about to watch a movie-turn down the lights. You hear a noise in the base­ment — turn on the lights. You are ready to leave the house — turn every­thing off. But­ton presses on your phone do all this. I’m adding a pic of the inter­face. On phone light­ing con­trol works for iPhones and Android.

Light­ing Con­trol for Hol­i­day Lights
This may sound obvi­ous, but wouldn’t it be much eas­ier to man­age hol­i­day lights with your light­ing con­trol app on your phone? I know how much you love plug­ging and unplug­ging the lights every day, but if you should ever want an eas­ier way…it does exits :)

www.TrendHomeSystems.com
Serv­ing the Audio and Video needs of Penn­syl­va­nia & Maryland

Here’s more info on over­all energy sav­ings pos­si­bil­i­ties from one of our sup­pli­ers:
http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/367‑2054.pdf

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Outdoor Entertainment: Music takes the cake!

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Craig

If you are con­sid­er­ing out­door upgrades we’ve got exactly what you’ve been wait­ing for…An incred­i­ble offer for out­door speak­ers, from Trend Home Sys­tems, of course. It is Com­ing Soon to a Land­scape Expert Near You! We are part­ner­ing with the best com­pa­nies in land­scape design to bring you great out­door enter­tain­ment includ­ing rock speak­ers, planter speak­ers, light­ing and even TV or out­door movie theaters.

So if you’re con­sid­er­ing adding a deck, a pool or other out­door fea­tures and you want it to be just per­fect for your fam­ily and for enter­tain­ing, the first thing you sim­ply must have is music. Music puts the icing on the cake for out­door enter­tain­ing whether it is an inti­mate din­ner for two or a party of hundreds.

Check with your out­door land­scaper or call Trend directly to learn about the pos­si­bilies in out­door enter­tain­ment. The con­sul­ta­tion is free. (717) 478‑8132

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What do you want to know about Home Theaters?

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Craig

Please email me and let me know. I’ll try to incor­po­rate your answer into a blog post soon! Christine@TrendHomeSystems.com

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Key Home Theater Design Considerations

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Craig

The best home the­ater designs are definitly an art, based heav­ily on sci­ence. I say this because there is so much sci­ence involved both in the design and man­u­fac­ture of home the­ater com­po­nents and in the knowl­ege that it takes an expe­ri­enced designer to inter­pret in order to get the lay­out right.

The key com­po­nents in the­ater design are:
1. Shape and size of the room — this includes ceil­ing height
2. The mate­ri­als on the walls, ceil­ings and floors
3. Who is view­ing and what are they view­ing — watch­ing movies, play­ing games, watch­ing TV…all of the above. The answers to these ques­tions will deter­min if this design will be for a man cave, fam­ily media room or in-home movie the­ater.
4. Your Budget.will be a HUGE fac­tor so decide that up front if you can.
5. Is this going to be a new home the­ater room or adapt­ing an exist­ing room into a home the­ater room.
6. What’s behind the walls will deter­mine in-wall or on-wall and hid­den in a closet com­po­nents or the need for fur­ni­ture.
7…and speak­ing of fur­ni­ture: Will you be upgrad­ing to home the­ater furniture?

That will get you started. Pro­fes­sion­ally designed home the­aters (sans the room) usu­ally have a start­ing price of about $5,000 and can go up to just about any num­ber depend­ing on the customer.

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Whole House Music Keypad Simple Keypad Lets Every Room Choose from Four Types of Music When you build

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Craig

Whole House Music Key­pad­Sim­ple Key­pad Lets Every Room Choose from Four Types of Music When you build

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When You’re Building a Home or Remodeling in 2011

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Craig

Noth­ing is more astound­ing than to see a brand new home or newly remod­eled home that lacks even the basics in home automa­tion or dis­trib­uted audio and video. Maybe it just sounds com­pli­cated, but it’s like hav­ing a cell phone…once you have it you can’t imag­ine life with­out that con­ve­nience. And, ONE great sound sys­tem instead of stick­ing radios and stereos every­where in a home is pretty afford­able and looks a lot more impressive.

I know that I have a bias; how­ever that doesn’t change the facts that if you lis­ten to music, watch TV, have lights or enter­tain out­side, that your life can be sig­nif­i­cantly enhanced by even the sim­plest of home tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, when peo­ple see the lit­tle key­pads on the wall in our home, I know it just doesn’t compute…it can’t. It looks way to sim­ple for what it does. That lit­tle key­pad on the wall plays four dif­fer­ent sources of music. The first one is con­stant stream­ing music from Pan­dora on my com­puter, the sec­ond is an iPod, the third is con­nected to the TV and with that, the gam­ing system…anyone want to lis­ten to the foot­ball game EVERYWHERE in the house? The fourth is the radio. Any­where in the house, in any room, some­body can press a but­ton to turn any type of music on that they desire. While in the next room a fam­ily mem­ber can be turned into an entirely dif­fer­ent type of music on a dif­fer­ent source.

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Is it worth it?

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Craig

I had a vis­i­tor in our home yes­ter­day who was very inter­ested to learn about the multi-room audio sys­tem, inter­coms and dis­trib­uted video we have installed in our home. He noticed no wires show­ing any­where, just music every­where and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with any­one in the house with the touch of a but­ton. When I told him about the ben­e­fits to my hus­band and I and to our whole fam­ily, it was really sur­pris­ing to hear from my own mouth how much these sys­tems mean to all of us. I guess it is like a cell phone…once you have it, you could never do with­out it and the ben­e­fits are immea­sur­able. It would be hard to enjoy a home with­out built in home tech­nolo­gies nearly as much as I enjoy ours with it.

Another ques­tion our vis­i­tor asked was what the ben­e­fits might be to some­body with a smaller home. Even with a small home, iPods can’t be heard in every room with­out speak­ers in those rooms, unless you are going set a stereo in the mid­dle of the room and crank it up! Every­one can enjoy walk­ing into their home at the end of the day, set­ting their iPod in a dock and turn­ing on music that plays in their entire home while they cook a lovely din­ner (or order in).

So basi­cally, home tech­nolo­gies, are great for every­one who owns or is build­ing a home. Learn­ing what exists is prob­a­bly the hard­est part of the whole thing. Once you know about them and real­ize that they aren’t going to break the bank you’re on the path to a seri­ously great expe­ri­ence. If you want a free con­sult or just some­body to help you fig­ure out what might work for you, give Craig a call at Trend Home Sys­tems. He’ll get you the info you need to make a good deci­sion. (717) 478‑8132.

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Football Dream

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Craig

So it’s time for foot­ball again. I saw the excit­ing end of the Steel­ers game last night and it was GREAT! So how can you full­fill a least a part of your foot­ball dreams…the ulti­mate the­ater to watch foot­ball in? Every­thing from a huge screen, with an awe­some pic­ture to sound that will knock your socks off! In answer to this ques­tion, Craig has decided to do a basic mar­ket­ing cam­paign for fall that deliv­ers exactly what you’re look­ing for. He’s giv­ing away the screen with the pur­chase of any the­ater pack­age. Really, the pack­ages are meant to make buy­ing sim­ple. They are tech­ni­cally sound and all the com­po­nents work together like a charm. Instal­la­tion and every­thing is included so life is easy. The excite­ment of the sea­son, the feel­ing when you go into a the­ater to hear the sounds of the announcer and the sta­dium and see that pic­ture so huge and clear, make own­ing a home the­ater for foot­ball totally worth it!

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When to Add Modern Conveniences to Your Home

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Craig

Home the­aters, audio and light­ing sys­tems and the like can be installed any­time, how­ever, when you are build­ing a home or start­ing a remod­el­ing projects it is a great time to call Trend Home Sys­tems to get a free quote and find out what the pos­si­bil­i­ties are. Even if you want to do some­thing as sim­ple as lis­ten to your iPod through built-in speak­ers through­out your home or call your kids to din­ner with the inter­com, you won’t want to miss this oppor­tu­nity to learn about the ease that tech­nol­ogy can bring to your life.

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