Parade of Homes featuring the best of new homes in Manitoba, Canada
Issue link: http://publications.winnipegfreepress.com/i/646566
>> your home is your castle – and increasingly, it's your movie palace, sports bar and recreation centre. Options for home entertainment systems are virtually end- less, ranging from home theatres of epic proportions to unobtrusive built-in units that don't dominate your living space. "you can spend $100,000 for a cutting-edge system with all the bells and whistles or get a great system for far less. It's amazing what you can get performance-wise these days, with all the great products on the market," says Creative Au- dio's Jeff kowerchuk. "Basically, the sky's the limit." Installing luxury entertainment systems is a much bigger part of Creative Audio's business than it was five years ago. Today, kowerchuk says there's no middle ground: Custom- ers are either starting small or they're going all out. In both cases, he advises pre-wiring new homes to accommodate a big system. "Having the home pre-wired can be a huge selling feature when you sell it. And if at some point you do decide to go all out the wiring is there, ready and waiting to be utilized." Advance Electronics' Trevor Siepman says it's much easier and less expensive to pre-wire a new home than it is to ret- rofit later on. Pre-wiring also paves the way toward creating a seamless entertainment space. "With all the wiring in place, you can hide all the compo- nents other than the TV," Siepman explains. "you can then have a clean, uncluttered wall with just the TV on it. Then it's just a matter of deciding whether you want to go with a sound bar below that matches the width of your TV, or if you want speakers placed flush in the wall on either side." Accurate Technology Group's Laurence Rosenberg says the whole idea is to create a home entertainment hub in which all the components are inconspicuous. "The trend today is away from dedicated home theatres and toward media areas where you can gather and watch sports, movies or concerts," Rosenberg says. "Our job is to build ev- erything in so the system is as unobtrusive as possible. Do- ing that frees up space, eliminates clutter and allows people to enjoy the experience that much more." 'Having the he pre-wired can be a huge selling feature when you sell it. And if at se point you do decide to go all out the wiring is there, ready and waiting to be utilized' Cont'd on page 115 Parade of Homes Spring 2016 111