French chateau - finished !

It's been a while (over year and a half) and it is finally completed!

Everything is in place, thoroughly tested and used over the last six months. 14 zones of audio and 4 zones of HD video distributed throughout the house; dedicated home cinema with 150" projection screen; vine cellar and a massive function room / barn with enough speakers for serious party! High speed home network handling audio, video, data and Wi Fi throughout the house and massive, one acre garden. All technology is seamlessly integrated with interiors,with massive AV racks hidden in utility rooms. 

If sound and picture are not enough to blow visitors socks off, Nicole Masset's wacky interiors will definitely do the job! 

For more technical info and work in progress pictures, please check older posts

 Salon / Media room

  65" Plasma screen on pull out and swivel brackets in Media Room

 Programmable LED lighting 

Custom made AV wall with 65" reference plasma screen

and sound projector hidden behind acoustic cloth.

Huge salon / TV room

 NuVo OLED touch panels

Kitchen area

All bedrooms have access to huge music library and tens of thousands of 

internet radio stations.

Function room / barn

Vine tasting area in vine cellar

 150" Screen Excellence Enlightor projection screen in cinema room

Shabby chic cinema room

AV Racks side by side:
Main house AV & Network rack on the left
and Cinema & Hi Fi rack on the right.

Cinema room AV rack from behind

WyreStorm Enado remote control

Just spent a day with Wyrestorm / Habitech crew on Enado training day. Great UI (user interface) and it runs on just about anything ! From iPhone / iPad to Laptop and from iOS to Windows to Android.

Looking forward to integrating one of those later in the year.

 Screenshot - Sky+HD page, work in progress

New projects news!

We are excited to announce two new projects confirmed!

Large 70 sqm, purpose built underground cinema with 4K projector and seating for 12 people in Holland Park, London.
Expect classic look with lots of wood carvings and exotic colors!

Second project is whole house AV with underground media room / cinema room in Grade II listed building in Kensington. Expect cutting edge contemporary look with lots of clever details!

Planning is under way, first pictures to follow soon!

Also, coming soon - another two page feature in leading AV industry magazine.

French chateau - finishing touches...

We are nearly there, last bits are going in. 

HDanywhere 4x4 HDMI matrix connected to Sky+HD, Sony BDP-S790 Blu Ray player, Apple TV and Dreambox DM800 is finally in place. Feeding HD picture via Cat6 cable to salon, sitting room, barn and master bedroom.

Two URC MX-5000i touch screen remote controllers programmed & tested.

Home cinema screen - 150" Screen Excellence Enightor 4K

First piece of cinema furniture have arrived. Awaiting black out curtains with acoustic properties, 

carpet and few more comfy arm chairs, before we run final audio adjustment.

Barn is fitted with ten Kef Ci500AW outdoor speakers, providing background music for events and also used for occasional speech or presentation. Music is fed from 12TB server through Cat6 home network.

THX Calibration disc in action!

HD satellite feed from Dreambox DM800

A day in the life / Essential Install Magazine - January 2014

Big shout to Daniel and everyone else at Essential Install Magazine for spreading the word!

French chateau pt.7 - Nearly there...

Cinema Rack

Cinema rack is now fully populated! Alongside Onkyo PR-SC5509 AV processor and
Onkyo PA-MC5501 9 ch. power amplifier combo, there is a Denon DBT3313 Blu-Ray player, Dreambox DM800HD Satellite tuner / receiver, QNAP 12TB NAS drive, Imerge S3000 music server and Cisco 24 way Ethernet switch, connecting everything with home network and Internet.
Bottom half of rack is populated with high-end Hi Fi gear
(Two Conrad Johnson pre-amps and two David Berning ZH-270 valve power amps.
driving a pair of Kaiser Acoustics Kawero speakers) Turntable TBC

Cinema room rack wiring nearing completion...

One of two URC MX-5000i Two-way network remotes with color touch screens that will control both cinema room and main house AV.

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Cinema Room

Finally we stretched and mounted 150" Screen Excellence Enlightor 4K, acoustically transparent projection screen. Behind a screen are three Sonance Cinema Series LCR2 speakers.
Everyone was delighted with quality of picture on this big screen.
HD TV (courtesy of Dreambox HD800 tuner ) also looked pretty amazing too.

Just to give a sense of scale...and size of the screen!

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AV Wall

Also completed is custom built, floor to ceiling AV Wall housing a massive Panasonic TH65VX300 65" FHD reference grade plasma screen. Screen is mounted on a large pull out and swivel bracket. Under the screen is Yamaha YSP-5100, top of the range sound bar, hidden behind acoustic cloth. Bank of ethernet sockets behind screen is feeding Android XBMC TV and media player, URC IR/RF over Ethernet emitter and HD Connectivity HDMI over Ethernet box that brings
Sky+HD, Apple TV and Sony Blue-Ray to this room, from the rack on the ground floor.
It looks great even though it is just painted with undercoat!

 Pull out and swivel plasma bracket in action.

 Panasonic TH65VX300 65" FHD, professional grade Plasma Monitor

 Yamaha YSP-5100 Sound projector - hidden behind acoustic cloth.
DVD & Blu Ray storage at the bottom.

 Android - XBMC TV / media player / streamer.

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Network

Finally, last bits of this large home network are in place, configured and fully tested.

Two additional Drytek routers, five (!) Cisco 24 way switches, three indoor and two outdoor WiFi antennas. We used specialist software to determine best possible position of WiFi access points for best coverage of this large property and even larger garden!

One more bit of kit to go into this rack (HD Connectivity 4x4 multiroom HDMI over Ethernet matrix) and the rack is full !!

 One of two Drytek routers.

 Fully configured network with Ethernet patch bays and Cisco switchers.

Network & NuVo rack from the back.

New additions to AV rack - Fully racked, latest generation Sky+ HD box with WiFi 

and Sony Blu Ray player.

Empty slot awaiting HD Anywhere 4x4 HDMI Matrix

Full AV rack!

 One of two outdoor antennas.

It's all in the name...

Lots of people are asking what M.E.G.A. in our name stands for.

I can say that it took us a while to work that out, too...honestly !

But now, it is all revealed :

Massively Entertaining Greatly Appreciated AV Installations

French chateau pt.6 - Network

It was time to address 100+ Cat 6 network cables laid around the house and adjacent buildings.
All of them are terminating near main house AV rack and will populate bottom half of it.
House wifi will be divided into couple of WLAN networks with various access privileges for owners and guests alike. Once configured, as well as wifi, network will provide TV/Video/music streaming.

Start with stripping hundreds of Cat 6 cables...

Two days later, ethernet patch bays all wired and in place.

Back wiev...

Boxes that will hold (and hide) 150+ network patch cables are in place.

AV Rack is nearly full. Still to come 4 x 10 Gigabit switches, HDMI matrix, Sky+ box, Blu Ray player and 12TB rack mount QNAP NAS drives.

Leftovers...