The Hidden Costs Behind Setting Up Streaming Devices

As the Smart Home industry continues to evolve, more and more Smart Home companies are finding customers asking them to setup Apple TVs, Amazon Firestick’s, Roku Ultimates’, Sonos Connects’, and other audio and video streaming devices in their home so they are ready to go when the Smart Home installation company leaves.  At the same time, these customers are wondering why these devices can cost so much to setup.  “It should just be  a simple ‘plug-n-play’ device shouldn’t it?” is what we and many other Smart Home Installation companies hear on a day to day basis from customers. In reality, there are quite a few reasons setup can take some time and increase the overall cost as a result.  As such, we thought it would help helpful to share the top 3 reasons for setup delays that result in cost increases and how you can prevent them.

CUSTOMERS DON’T KNOW THEIR USERNAMES AND PASSWORDS

This is BY FAR the most common Smart Home company installation issue these companies have with their customers.  Whether it is because the person that met with the Smart Home company is an assistant or other associate of the owner paying the bill, or because the customers haven’t looked up their passwords in 2 years, customers can spend up to 1-2 additional hours trying to find their passwords.  Some get so frustrated that they reset their passwords so they have them again, not realizing this will disable their streaming services on the other 5-10 devices they setup.  The Smart Home company on site is then invariably asked to help them reconfigure all these other devices affected by the password change, taking much more time to do so. All the times it takes to do all this configuration is billable hours for the Smart Home company so costs can add up quickly. Our best advice is to keep an updated list of usernames and passwords handy  for all your Audio and Video streaming services so you can avoid these extra setup charges.

BAD WI-FI OR GENERAL NETWORK ISSUES

We rely on strong Wi-fi and a fast internet connection for just about everything these days.  However, setting up an optimal Wi-fi system free of issues is not the easiest thing to do. The most common Wi-fi or network issues we see that delay or prevent us from successfully setting up your audio or video streaming device include:

• “Double NATing” which is what happens when multiple routers are installed in a home either because ADT installed one, DirecTV installed a second and Spectrum Installed a 3rd, or the customer tried to improve his Wi-fi by plugging in a second router into the first router issued to them by the Internet Service Provider; all these routers are trying to issue IP address to network connected devices, confusing all of them
• Too many ‘Wireless Access points” or “Wireless repeaters” that are confusing wireless devices and bogging down connection and speed of data transfer in the process
• Insufficient Wi-fi or wired network connection at the location you wish to have the Audio or Video streaming device so it cannot physically connect to the internet no matter how hard you try

Our best advice to remedy this situation is to have the Smart Home installation company fix these Wi-fi and/or Network issues first as a separate project before you attempt to connect any more devices to this network. If your Smart Home Installation company does not have the expertise to do so, find one that does.  An optimal Wi-fi and Wired network is just like the foundation of your house– if it isn’t solid you will have major issues with everything that sits on top of it.

FIRMWARE UPDATES

This last delay is not the customers fault necessarily, but one that is often triggered by the manufacturer. Like most products these days, audio and video streaming products are released to the public as quickly and cheaply as possible.  Often times this means the latest software to run these devices is not fully loaded on them before they are sold to customers.  Thus, in the process of setting up these products, lots of firmware updates are required to be downloaded and installed. Sometimes, these firmware updates and take upwards of an hour to install. Other times a bad firmware update is downloaded to the device by the manufacturer, and updating the device renders the device useless.  Thus, additional time must be spent to call up the manufacturer and get a replacement device sent and then come back on a separate trip to install.  One firmware update issue the customer can cause is if they do not keep up with the firmware updates of the devices that will be connected to the new device being installed, potentially causing compatibility issues.  We recommend to all customers that they keep all network connected firmware devices up to date. If you see a firmware update message pop up don’t ignore it– install it.

We hope you have found this information useful. If you have any more specific questions about installation and setup of audio or video streaming devices, you can reach us at 855-832-4775 of find us on the web at www.technospeakco.com.  If you have more general Home Automation or Home Theater  needs, please feel free to contact us using the contact information above.

And as always remember, at Technospeak, we take the “Techy” out of Technology, leaving our customers with the knowledge they need to enjoy their electronics.