One brand that stands out as a true innovator in merging audio visual electronics and lifestyle products is Séura. Séura offers a unique line of stylish HD displays that fully integrate into the décor of your home. Their flagship product is known as a TV mirror. TV mirrors are LCD displays mounted behind mirrors that vanish when powered off. These make excellent hidden TVs in non-traditional spaces such as bathrooms, kitchens or powder rooms. TV mirrors offers an elegant solution for accessing television in many rooms of the house.In addition to TV mirrors, Séura manufactures the hydra waterproof television which is perfectly at home in places like your shower or Bath suite. With a TV mirror in the bathroom you gain the ability to catch the morning news in the shower or even pipe in music and movies from your favorite streaming media device.With the limitless possibilities of home integration and elegant design, Séura TV mirrors are amongst our favorite options for hidden TVs.
Séura TV Mirrors
Home Theater Upgrade in Phases Part 2
We’d like to share with you another media system upgrade done in Glen Ellen. Here, we have another simple upgrade with a small twist at the end. The customer wanted a more streamlined and elegant system than the previous one, shown below.
The first step was to clear out the old system and cut in holes for the new B&W in-wall speakers.
Once the speaker wires were fished through the walls, the in-wall speakers were installed along with the Sanus wall mount for the new TV.
A Samsung Ultra thin 1″ LED display was installed on the wall mount.
With the TV and wires in place, it was now time to configure all the components in a new cabinet. The components included a Velodyne subwoofer, a Mac Mini, a Comcast HD cable box, a Sonos Zone Player, an Integra receiver, and a Sony Blu-Ray player.
Here’s where the challenging part of the installation occurs. Now that the system has been upgraded and the cabinet is a bit larger, the symmetry of the hearth is thrown off center. We suggest to the client that modifying the hearth would re-balance the symmetry. The next day contractors modified the hearth to balance the wall.
After the hearth was successfully trimmed down we realigned the media system, painted the in-wall speakers, programmed the URC remote, and calibrated the audio and video. As you can see below, the new home theater’s visual impact is very minimalist considering how many components and features are available in this system.
Home Theater Upgrade in 6 Phases
Phase 1: The first order of business was to clear out the old TV, AV gear, and shelving to make way for a more streamlined AV cabinet.
Phase 2: The next step was to place the Polk speakers and subwoofer in the cabinet for a compact, but well balanced system. The cabinet also provides clean cable management for the speaker wire and cables.
Phase 3:Following the speakers placement, we placed the Wii game console, Denon turntable, Sony Blu-ray player and Comcast HD cable box in the cabinet for an easy connection to the receiver.
Phase 4: After all the cables were fished through the cabinet we wired them up to an Integra surround sound receiver.
Phase 5: The Samsung Plasma HDTV was then installed and the Wii motion sensor was mounted on top of the display.
Phase 6: The final step was to mount the acoustically transparent panel doors onto the cabinet for a clean finish. The Universal Remote was then reprogrammed for simple operation, then the audio system and TV were calibrated for optimal performance.
Final result is a cleanly designed, robust and reliable, easy to use media system that fits into the room’s décor.
TechNotes: TV Technologies and Applications
In the world of televisions, there are a lot of options to choose from, and each one has its own benefits and drawbacks. In just a few short years, the television industry has seen a dramatic shift away from older TV technologies to almost exclusively relying on liquid crystal (LCD) and plasma flat-panel display technologies. If you were to walk into a big-box consumer electronics store these days, you’d be hard pressed to find a bulky direct-view CRT or projection TV anywhere on the sales floor.To help you make sense of it all, here’s where we’ve been and where we currently are when it comes to the technology behind TV display devices.Historical TVsDirect-view CRT – Who can forget the giant plastic and glass behemoths that used to dominate our living rooms? While they produced a great standard-definition picture, any direct-view CRT of a good size weighed in excess of 250-300 pounds. Fortunately for our backs, direct-view CRTs are not readily available anymore.CRT Rear Projection - The original big-screen TV, this technology used red, green and blue “guns” that worked together to project light onto a large screen. Brightness was a challenge with these early big-screen TVs, so they were only well-suited to rooms that were kept fairly dark on a regular basis. Like direct view CRTs, these have also fallen into obsolescence.DLP/LCD Rear Projection - The original “affordable” high-definition TV, these projection TVs used relatively new Digital Light Projection (DLP) or LCD projection technology to project a much brighter image on a screen. Since they eliminated the three cathode-ray tubes, they were extremely lightweight and were also not as deep. DLP and LCD projection TVs were largely driven into obsolescence due to the dramatic drop in price of flat-panel LCD TVs over the past two to three years.Current Flat-panel Display TechnologiesPlasma TV - Considered the “gold standard” of high-definition TV viewing, plasma TVs were the original flat-panel display on the market and remain the best to this day. Early plasma TVs were plagued by an extremely high price tag, relatively short lifespan and image retention (or “burn-in”) issues. Thankfully, advances in technology have allowed these issues to fall by the wayside. With a plasma TV, each pixel is its own “bulb” so you are looking directly at the light source. These TVs are also the brightest available and higher-end models from Panasonic and Pioneer have great black levels, or contrast. However, these TVs have gained a reputation for consuming a lot of energy and glare off the plasma’s glass display. Bottom line: if picture quality is paramount, plasma is your answer.LCD TV - LCD TVs consist of a light source and a lens. Original LCD TVs used CCFL fluorescent bulbs as the light source. New versions are using LED backlight technologies in “edge-lit” or “full array” configurations. LCD TVs have taken over as the inexpensive alternative for flatscreen technologies. Although they do not have the brightness, contrast and off-axis viewing advantages of plasma, they are less expensive and do a nice job in a high glare environment. They are the most energy efficient TV made, so if price and/or energy usage are most important, LCD TVs are the solution.As the North Bay’s TV experts, SoundVision can help you choose a TV solution that’s right for you. Give us a call or send us an email today!