Audio & Video Installation near you

Nothing about a wall mount is visible once the screen is up, which is why it is worth asking about before the installer arrives rather than after. In a timber-framed wall the fixing must reach the studs and the bracket has to suit the stud spacing, not the position that happens to centre the television on the wall. In brick veneer the plasterboard is not structural at all and the masonry behind it may be forty millimetres away or ninety. In double brick or rendered blockwork the fixing is into masonry and the right anchor depends on whether it lands in brick or in a mortar joint.

Lightweight steel framing, common in newer Australian housing and in most apartment fit-outs, needs its own fasteners; timber screws in steel studs strip and pull out. Fibre cement sheet on battens gives you almost nothing to fix to between the battens. An installer who asks what the wall is made of and then proves it with a detector before drilling is doing the job properly.

The other invisible risk is what is inside the wall. Australian wall cavities carry mains wiring, water pipes and gas lines, and a masonry drill through any of them is a very bad afternoon. Ask how the installer locates services before drilling, and be especially careful in bathrooms, kitchens and laundries and on the wall behind a switchboard or a hot water unit.

Once an audio and video system can record, it stops being entertainment equipment in the eyes of the law. Under Western Australia's Surveillance Devices Act 1998, a person must not install, use or maintain a listening device to record, monitor or listen to a private conversation to which they are not a party, or to record a private conversation to which they are. Section 6 does the same for optical surveillance devices and private activities. A private conversation is one carried on in circumstances that may reasonably be taken to indicate that any of the parties desires it to be listened to only by themselves, and a private activity is defined in the same terms for observation.

The principal exception is consent: the prohibition does not apply where each principal party to the conversation or activity consents expressly or impliedly, and there is a further limb where a principal party consents and the use is reasonably necessary to protect that party's lawful interests. The offences carry both fines and a maximum term of imprisonment, with higher fines for corporations.

Every state and territory has its own Act with its own wording, so the rule that applies is the one where the device is, not where the brand is from. The practical translation for an AV installation is straightforward: think about where a microphone or camera is placed, tell the people who live in or visit the house, and be deliberate about any device that records rather than merely listens for a wake word. A conferencing camera in a room used by the rest of the household deserves a physical shutter and a discussion.

Built-in speakers disappear, which is usually the point. What you give up is placement: a ceiling speaker fires down at people's heads rather than at ear level, and in a room with a raked ceiling or exposed beams, the positions that would sound best are frequently the positions you cannot cut. For background listening through a house, that trade is worth making. For a room where someone actually sits and listens, or for the front of a home theatre, it usually is not.

Built-in also means committed. A ceiling speaker is a hole in the building lining, and changing your mind later means patching and repainting rather than moving a box. In an apartment or a townhouse, cutting into a ceiling may also reach a fire-rated element or common property, and either of those turns a simple installation into an approval question.

The compromise many Australian houses land on is built-in speakers for the general living areas and outdoor spaces, with freestanding speakers in the one room where sound quality actually matters. It looks less tidy in that room and sounds considerably better.