Sorry it's been so long since I visited this one. I've actually experienced both. Not all AC power supplies are created equally. I've consistency had the best results in A/V use cases when working with networking equipment by manufacturers who have a history of designing equipment with datacenters in mind. The power may be redundant but it's often shared by hundreds or even thousands of other devices and it can get pretty foul.
When it comes to network switching, I've been supremely disappointed by the offerings from reputable A/V manufacturers like Crestron, AMX and Control4. To be perfectly candid, I have no idea why they bothered to make the attempt. They're not really any better than off the shelf brands like Netgear and Linksys. Fine for basic stuff but if you're getting into any of the interesting multicast applications that are creeping into the world of A/V, spend a few extra bucks on even a used enterprise grade switch.
Most of the A/V applications will have good enough documentation that tells you what you need to configure to get everything working. The big bonus with enterprise grade network switches come into play when you start working with QoS (Quality of Service) queuing to guarantee levels of bandwidth and priority to specific network traffic. Without it I'm sure you can well imagine how bad your knucklehead son can affect your HD video or audio stream when he launches a 5GB bittorrent download. With a little bit of tweaking you can throttle him down and make your HD streams bomb proof.
When it comes to network switching, I've been supremely disappointed by the offerings from reputable A/V manufacturers like Crestron, AMX and Control4. To be perfectly candid, I have no idea why they bothered to make the attempt. They're not really any better than off the shelf brands like Netgear and Linksys. Fine for basic stuff but if you're getting into any of the interesting multicast applications that are creeping into the world of A/V, spend a few extra bucks on even a used enterprise grade switch.
Most of the A/V applications will have good enough documentation that tells you what you need to configure to get everything working. The big bonus with enterprise grade network switches come into play when you start working with QoS (Quality of Service) queuing to guarantee levels of bandwidth and priority to specific network traffic. Without it I'm sure you can well imagine how bad your knucklehead son can affect your HD video or audio stream when he launches a 5GB bittorrent download. With a little bit of tweaking you can throttle him down and make your HD streams bomb proof.