Overview

• Customer gives overview of needs and mini tour of the home
• We provide company overview, history and philosophy
• Education on audio and video standards & gimmicks
• Discussion about products we recommend and why
• Zone by zone walk thru to discuss options and quote requirements
• Housekeeping regarding payments, invoicing, labor charges, and other requirements to make the job go smooth

Overview of Customer Needs

We walk the house with you and you tell us where you want TV's located, what size and type you were considering.  We ask you where you want sound and what type (ambient background, party, music listening, movie watching, etc.)

Company Overview, History and Philosophy

Digitainment was founded in 1992 by Russ Stover.

It started out as hobby and grew into a business.

Customers would routinely wait 4-6 months for Russ to be able to fit them into his schedule.

He built a reputation for knowing what type of equipment, what brands and what modesl delivered the best performance and value.

In 2002, Russ left his lucrative corporate job to pursue his home audio and video business start up.

After an initial mailing of postcards to new homeowners, Digitainment grew by referrals and never really invested in marketing.

By 2007, Digitainment had 17 employees and sales of $1.9M without a retail showroom, yellow page ad or marketing campaign.

Digitainment perfected a scalable solution for home audio and video sales and installation that delivered a high performance (but not over-the-top) focused on value and simplicity.

Audio and Video Standards & Gimmicks

A detailed discussion about audio and video standards can be found in the "More About Audio and Sound" and "More About Video and TV"

The standard for audio for high definition television (including cable and satellite), Blu-Ray DVD's, regular DVD's is Dolby Digital 5.1.

Companies pushing Dolby Digital 6.1, 7.1, 9.1, 10.2 and THX are usually overselling you stuff you'll never be able to hear the difference with in your own home.

The standard for video is 1080 interlaced or 1080i (not 1080p) which means a full HD signal plays 1920 columns of pixels by 1080 rows of pixels or 2.07M pixels.  That doesn't mean you need a TV with 2.07M pixels.  All things being equal, the further you sit from a TV, the less pixels you needs to see a clear picture.  We call this inversely proportional.  Typically, though, the further you sit from the TV, the bigger the screen you want to get.  Screen size is proportional to resolution all things being equal. So one can cancel the other and make it tough to figure out what you need.

Here's the rules we use.  If you sit closer than listed to the TV listed, you want full 1080i (a way to ensure full 1080i is with a 1080p TV as some 1080i screens don't have to play full 1080i and are still called 1080i)

• 42" TV--4.0' or closer
• 50" TV--6.5' or closer
• 58" 11' or closer
• 65" 19' or closer

 Products We Recommend and Why

Every product we recommend, we recommend for a reason.  That reason that could be a feature or function we find our customer's want, a level of performance that is robust without being over -the-top, better quality with lower failure rates, better warranty or service, or equal function, performance and quality with a better price.  In other words each component we use delivers that perfect balance of value-performance.

With a couple thousand customers and a lifetime customer service warranty, we hear about every problem and know first hand things about products you might never even think about.  It could be a silly as the location of cable connections on a TV that make the cables visible from a side view or prohibit mounting the TV extremely close to the wall.  It could be a function like HDMI switching and upconversion that sounds like a bunch or mumbo-jumbo, but that without it, switching between various devices is a pain.  It could be a lifetime speaker warranty or a better crossover.  You get the idea.  When you recommend basically 1 or 2 models in each category of products and back them with lifetime customer service, you have to know your stuff...AND WE DO! 

Room by Room Walk Through

This is my favorite.  As you walk us through your home with your goals, we will also be bouncing ideas off you based on requests we get from customers.  Its common to hear, "You can do that?" or "That's a good idea--I never thought about that".  The idea is to build your dream system quote.  Not dream in the sense you could only dream of affording it, but dream in the sense of, "This is everything I could want in my home audio/video system".

Once you we know the dream, we can get to work figuring how to make it affordable.  By using high quality, value-performance components and leveraging technology, we put together a detailed quote for both equipment and labor and separate it by room.  This allows you to look at costs by room and decide 1 of 3 things:

1. Must Have
2. Nice to Have
3. Don't Need

Housekeeping

Lastly, after we educated you on the current technology and steered you clear of gimmicks and gathered enough information to build you a detailed room by room quote, we cover a few other issues:

• Fixed vs Variable Labor
• Cable/Satellite Scheduling
• Furniture & Cabinet requirements
• Deposits & Payments
  • Cash/Check Pricing
  • Financing Options
• When to Expect the Quote

Okay, you called us, you scheduled a consultation, you took the time to get educated and get a basic understanding of home audio and video so you can make an informed decision.  What's next?  Well, we will prepare your quote and E-mail you a PDF attachment and a cover letter to summarize the quote and cover some of the "fine print".  Once you get the quote and digest it a bit, call us and we will walk you through it and make whatever changes are necessary or read on and learn how one of our quotes is layed out.