Extend Your Home’s Audio and Video Entertainment Outdoors

It’s been a wet, cold, and not-so-sunny winter in Dallas this season. But this is Texas, and we know that warm weather and sunnier days are just around the corner. With warmer weather, we can plan to spend more time outside. The pool may not warm up till May, but there will be beautiful Spring weather to enjoy on the patio. Whether your thing is relaxing outside with a good book, working on planting some new annuals or tending to a rose garden, or enjoying a meal outside with friends and family, the great outdoors beckons.

While we enjoy our outdoor spaces, the lure of our home’s audio and video entertainment sometimes keeps us inside. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The same entertainment sources that you have in the family or media room or anywhere else – TV, streaming music and video, your music collection – can all be enjoyed outside with the right additions to your home audio video system.

Bringing your AV outside is a great way to get more out of your outdoor spaces. If you have an outdoor kitchen, imagine grilling to great tunes. Or how about inviting friends over to catch the upcoming March Madness basketball outside on the patio with your favorite drinks and food? Keep reading for a couple of ideas to bring your entertainment outside this season.

SEE ALSO: Take Your Music to any Area of Your Home

Rock Out Outside

You might be surprised to learn about just how many options are available to get rich audio to enhance the ambiance of your outdoor areas. Some speakers can hide in your garden on stakes, some hide in plain sight disguised as rocks, and subwoofers that can hide underground. You can have excellent sound quality outdoors, and barely ever notice where the speakers are.

Our speaker partner Sonance – one of the oldest names in built-in residential speakers – has two outdoor speaker lines specifically designed for outside use. Thecables, connectors, housing and internal componentsare constructed to withstand heat, cold, and wetness.

The SLS line employs buried subwoofers and smaller satellite speakers that hide in your garden – looking much like landscape lights – to deliver a sonic punch that will have you saying, "this is an outdoor speaker?"

The Sonance SONARRAY SR1 system similarly features buried subwoofers and satellite speakers that can be hidden in the garden, and this system is designed for smaller areas up to 2000 square feet. With either system and our professional layout and installation, your outside space can be blanketed in sound that seemingly comes from all over your landscape.

If you just need sound in a covered patio area, Sonance has that covered too. The Sonance Mariner line can mount to outside walls and provide years of high-quality sound impervious to all the weather Texas can throw at them.

Bring Sports and Movies Outside

Some people will mount a standard indoor TV outside on a patio and bring their video outdoors. You can do that, but we have heat and cold temperature extremes in Texas that could affect the longevity of that TV in your patio, not to mention the bugs that might decide to take up residence inside it.

Besides lacking protection from the outside elements, indoor TV screens aren’t designed for brightly lit or changing light patterns. For the best performance for your outdoor viewing, we recommend purpose-built outdoor models like those from Sunbrite.

Sunbrite TVs employ sealed aluminum casings that keep out bugs and protect against the weather extremes. The TVs are also thoughtfully designed with well-integrated ports to allow for solid cable connections and the ability to plug in streaming devices like a Roku or Apple TV. The screens are also designed for outdoor light situations, offering superior brightness and reduced glare in bright and partial sun installations.

Seamless Control and Professional Installation

Outdoor audio video systems can get complicated. If you are tying it to your home system where you might want a smooth flow of music from inside to outside, the right installation matters. There is more than one way to do it, whether it involves taking an extra zone or two from your current family room AV system or designing a complete, centralized, rack-mounted AV distribution setup for your home.

You may need home network additions or upgrades to get you the right connectivity outdoors, and you may need to tie into an existing AV control or automation system or add a new one. Depending on how many speakers you want outside, you need enough amplification to drive them to the sound level and audio quality you are seeking. Fortunately, this what Texas Custom AV does – we will make it easy for you to bring your entertainment outside, customized to your lifestyle.

Call us today at (972) 250-0006 or click here to get in touch. We’d love to work with you.