Many home owners are opting to have their home theater system component installed by professionals. Using these services, you can save yourself time and to ensure it is done properly. It also reduces the likelihood of damaging your new equipment, your walls or your existing wiring when you have someone with experience taking the lead.



There are lots of things that you have to ask a custom home theater installer before they get started. You want to be sure you understand as much as you can about their processes, standards and costs in order to ensure your home theater turns out the way you envision.

Most qualified installers will make a good deal of information available to you right at the start. However, make sure you have the following questions answered before you commit to the installation.

Timeline

Ask your custom installer how much time the installation is estimated to take. This way you and your family can better plan for having installers in your home and for the potential noise associated with moving and assembling equipment and drilling holes.

Budget

It is important to understand up front all of the costs associated with the installation. Questions you should ask include:

1. How much will it cost you to have your home theater system installed?

2. If installation comes as part of your home theater equipment purchase, does that include all of the installation, or will there be additional costs?

3. If the installation timeline runs long or there are unforeseen complications, who will pay for that added time? How much will it be?

Structural Changes

If your custom home theater installation includes adding in-wall speakers, mounted flat panel televisions or mounted rear projection screens, ask what kind of drilling they expect to need to do and any issues this may cause with your home’s electrical, phone or internet services. It is important to understand where changes to your wall or ceiling structure may take place.

System Education

It is great to have a custom installer come in and do all the difficult work of setting up and wiring a home theater system. But if the family has no idea how to run it, or how to troubleshoot problems down the road, it can be quickly rendered useless. It is therefore important to ask about the installer’s education or tutorial package. Make sure that they will walk you and your family through using the system and help diagram or explain how the system is connected when it is set-up. Also ask about whether they have a support number that can be reached should you have problems in the future.

Component Upgrades

To make sure you don’t need to completely re-installer a new home theater in a few years, ask your custom theater installer about the best way to upgrade television sets, DVD players or game boxes in the future. As new or better systems become available and your budget allows, you will want to know that you can fairly easily swap out the new for the old.

By asking the right questions before the installation of your home theater system, you'll be able to experience the best that the system will have to offer to you.

~Ben Anton, 2008