There are many things to consider when shopping for home theater equipment and automation systems. We wanted to answer the question: “is peace of mind of a quality system worth the extra investment?” After a visit to the recent CES Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada we found that some of the quality systems and equipment were getting down in price to compete with some of the less expensive newcomers.

After reviewing many of the newcomer booths this year, we came to the Crestron home automation booth. As expected it was over the top, and yes, the automation was perfect. No fiddling around, and excuses from the sales representative that said, “we just haven’t set it up yet” or “that function will be added within 6 months”. The styling of the touch screens and environmental control systems we could rate somewhere between 8 and 9 on a scale of 10 (we have not given a 10 in 6 years of reviews).

After deciding on a clear winner at this year’s conference we headed back to our vacation rental and got to talking. If the equipment is being rated an 8 or 9 it could still have it’s rating raised or lowered depending on the quality and knowledge of the install team. So we went looking for a company in Las Vegas that had experience installing Crestron in Las Vegas home automation systems and theater equipment. After a quick Google search we found YBET Inc of Las Vegas.

We arranged a meeting at our vacation rental that was located in an upscale neighborhood in Las Vegas. We told the representative that we were interested in installing a Crestron Home Automation in Las Vegas into the house and had him give us his recommendations as to the proper upgrades and models that would be a best fit for this particular home. To our surprise the representative did not recommend his most expensive options nor did he recommend the entire package that we were supposedly willing to buy. It was a refreshing change to find a company that was not trying to take us for everything we had. It does seem that after this pleasant experience we had no choice but to add another half point to our 8-9 rating (remember we have never rated any home automation equipment at 10).

I guess that leaves our Las Vegas Crestron experience with an 8.5 – 9.5 rating. Looking forward to next year, this one’s going to be hard to top.