Theater Design Northwest was called to install a new HDTV and upgrade the AV source components in this great downtown Seattle condo that overlooks Pike Place market and Elliot Bay. The clients had a high end system that was a bit older with Pioneer Elite 5.1 surround sound and a 42″ Panasonic plasma. They wanted to add a current gen Apple TV to the system, and discovered the very common issue of incompatibility of HDMI to older systems that have component video only connections. Due to FCC DRM regulations there is no reliable converter available as a solution.
Since they already had a nice THX quality audio setup and did not want to replace the whole system, we recommended an upgrade of the HDTV to a larger 1080p model. We chose an LG 60″ plasma with great performance/value. They also really disliked their URC remote, it worked fine and the problem was clunky programming which is something we often see. Our programmer reset the remote to factory default and reprogrammed from the ground up, leaving them with streamlined control that made sense to operate. The surround sound system was setup improperly and not performing to potential, but a THX audio calibration improved things dramatically. The sound and picture on this Seattle media room installation was of excellent quality by the end of the day.
