The most common question we are asked when installing audio visual equipment into a home theatre or media room is:
The guy at the shop recommended to get surge protection, is it worth it?
The answer is yes and no. Here, we will explain why.
BENEFITS OF SURGE PROTECTION
This is pretty easy, the major benefits of surge protection are:
- Your goods are protected from unfiltered power, no surges (a rise in voltage) or brownouts (a dip in voltage) will damage your equipment.
- You can leave your equipment on standby in thunderstorms, although, we still recommend not to take the chance, just in case. This can be useful if you have custom programmed remotes that are dependant on remembering what states your equipment was last left on, i.e. TV on HDMI1 when switched off.
- Should your goods become damaged due to a surge, most surge protectors come with a pretty impressive warranty. Which can help buy some nice new gear should their protector be faulty.
CONS OF SURGE PROTECTION
Surely there has to be some cons of having surge protection, right?
There are a couple of drawbacks which are easily bypassed, for example, over the years we discovered if you have the antenna hooked up to your surge protector in case of a lightning strike to it directly, your digital TV reception can suffer as a result, a relatively small risk, just connect your TV to the wall directly and do without the drop in signal quality.
There is currently no way of telling if your surge protector has experienced a surge and damaged the board. We suggest, just like changing smoke detector batteries, to replace your surge protector once every couple of years for a good board, and once yearly in the case of a cheaper one.
At the beginning of the article, we answered yes and no, to “is it worth getting surge protection?”, well, it is worth getting surge protection, but not from a retail store, the truth is, they mark up the surge protection to cover the losses they make from other equipment sales in the store. We can supply much better surge protection at the same price you would pay in a shop.
A small outlay upfront can save you a lot of money in the event of a power surge. Universal Home Theatre can supply top quality surge protection direct from the manufacturer, call us today if you would like to find out more!