5 Essential Tech Upgrades to Make When Moving Into a New Property
The mayhem of moving day often relegates the tech stuff to the easiest of DIYs: “We’ll figure out where to put the router sometime after we’ve worked out where the kitchen goes.” Only it doesn’t work like that. Or at least, it shouldn’t if you want your new house to be as smart as you’ve dreamt it to be.
Sort your entertainment layout before decorators arrive
Once the plaster’s dried and the paint’s dried the chances are you’ll find trailing cables a bit ‘higgledy-piggledy’, but give that stuff the respect and planning it needs now and you can banish it from view. Don’t leave it until the day you move the TV in to discover the TV won’t go back far enough because there’s a chunky plug in the way. Running power for a TV and a pair of speakers above a chimney breast can get much more complex than many people imagine, and when it’s put off to the last minute it will cost you way more than a good pair of wireless headphones, and you have those ugly cables invading your décor every day reminding you of your folly.
Instead use it as a chance to plan in ways to keep things neat. If you are going to have a range of devices under one TV, consider a high quality power strip if it’s going in a cupboard. Try and make lengthy HDMI or optical-audio cables unnecessary wherever possible. Make sure the power strip is somewhere you can reach it without yanking the TV around as you’re going to want somewhere to plug phones, tablets, games controllers and similar in too.
Check the property’s actual signal situation
Moving to a new house and lamenting the fact you can’t see Big Ben from your window? Better call a TV aerial installation London service to see if the roof’s antenna has a straight shot toward Crystal Palace. A lot of London buildings don’t, instead facing the wrong way because a previous tenant used to work nights and needed the aerial on ‘their’ side of the roof and oh well, you can always just stream TV on your laptop, can’t you?
Another negative. Though it’s not a big job altering the orientation of a TV aerial, it does mean re-running cabling, so finding out when the walls are already open means a much lower bill.
Treat your Wi-Fi network as infrastructure, not an afterthought
A single router placed in the hallway cupboard often doesn’t quite do the job of covering an entire house, especially if you have solid walls or more than one storey. If you’re planning to stream in 4K, Netflix recommends a connection of 25 Mbps per stream for quality, and that’s before you even consider how much your signal degrades passing through plasterboard, floors, and mirrors or other electrical items.
Mesh Wi-Fi nets off most of that, by spreading multiple nodes across your abode rather than relying on one box to do it all. Where you can’t easily run more network points, powerline adapters are a good substitute, as they use the existing electrical circuits in your home to carry a solid connection to rooms where Wi-Fi typically can’t reach. Either way, it makes sense to get all this in place before you start bringing in rugs and furniture, and generally making it harder (and uglier) to route cables.
Pick a TV that covers streaming and live channels
Many new TVs support 4K UHD and HDR to some degree but the devil is in the detail, and the specifics of your living-room setup will determine which are worth the extra cost. For streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, make sure the TV supports the HDR format they use (Dolby Vision, HDR10, or HDR10+). Look for screens that have multiple HDMI 2.1 ports too, to ensure the TV can handle 4K HDR signals at higher frame rates.
Don’t skip the sound
A great picture with tinny built-in speakers is a wasted upgrade. A soundbar, even a simple one, makes a noticeable difference to dialogue clarity and overall depth. If you’re going for a model with a wireless subwoofer, decide roughly where it’ll sit and check there’s a socket nearby – it’s a small thing, but it’s another item that’s far easier to sort while walls are still open than after everything’s furnished.
Voice control through a smart home hub is worth adding here too, mainly because it ties your TV, lighting and speakers into one system instead of three separate remotes fighting for attention on the coffee table.
Get these decisions made early and the rest of the move goes smoother. Sockets end up where you need them, cables stay hidden, and you’re not left retrofitting a “smart” home around furniture that’s already in place.
