There are only a few things we like as much as installing cool home theater systems in Staten Island homes. One of them is visiting the homes of repeat customers to upgrade their home theater systems after years of enjoyment.

We recently returned to a Staten Island home to upgrade the homeowner’s RGB component TV system with HDMI throughout. When we say this homeowner is fortunate enough to have “the ultimate man cave” in his Staten Island basement, we’re not kidding. He thought of everything. And now it’s all broadcast over high def cables with no degradation of signal quality. While he was at it, he got a few new Samsung LED HDTVs and a Universal Remote Control MX-3000. Now, get ready to drool.

One Basement, Four Zones, Four HDTVs

The homeowner took advantage of the open floor plan in his basement to quadrant off the large room into four separate areas, all designated as separate audio/video zones:

• The bar, with a 42-inch plasma
• The gym, with a new 24-inch Samsung LED
• The game room, with a new 24-inch Samsung LED
• The home theater, with a 55-inch Samsung rear-projection DLP, which accepts DVI inputs

We switched out the old RGB component system with HDMI via Atlona HDMI over Cat-5 baluns. We discovered we couldn’t use conventional HDMI for a few reasons:

• Cable runs from the main AV closet to the HDTVs were further than 50 feet; the Atlona solution gave us 120-feet without loss of quality
• The pathway wasn’t easily passable with conventional HDMI cable; it would have destroyed the cables

The end result? The cable runs went in more easily and the signal looks great. The customer now gets the best picture quality available… and we got to re-visit a dream system. Let’s just say his house is the place to be on Sunday afternoons… and now it looks even better.