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Hollywood · Los Angeles County
Onsite and remote tech support across Hollywood — Hollywood Hills, East Hollywood, Thai Town, Little Armenia, and Los Feliz.
Hollywood is the post-production heart of LA, and it's one of the last places the work still physically happens: Paramount on Melrose is the only major film studio left inside Hollywood itself (and the longest continuously operating one), and Netflix runs its LA operation out of the Sunset Bronson lot on Sunset Boulevard. So a lot of our calls are creative-workstation work — storage and RAID, render and editing-software slowdowns, external-drive headaches — for the editors, colorists, and streamers who live and work around those lots. It's also one of the most renter-heavy, oldest-apartment districts in the country (roughly nine in ten residents rent, much of the stock built before 1940), which means thick walls, crowded airwaves, and DSL-vs-fiber install puzzles are constant Wi-Fi culprits. East Hollywood holds the country's only officially designated Thai Town (along Hollywood Blvd since 1999) and Little Armenia (since 2000) — dense immigrant small-business corridors of family-run restaurants and shops that need POS, receipt printers, cameras, and guest Wi-Fi — and Hollywood Boulevard's heavy tourism supports a strip of storefronts and short-term rentals that need the same plus smart locks. What none of those businesses can plan around by instinct is the street itself. Hollywood Boulevard closes far more often than a visitor would guess, and not only for the two events everyone has heard of: the Hollywood Entertainment District's business improvement district, The Hollywood Partnership, keeps a running alerts page for exactly this, so tenants can "know in advance when streets in Hollywood are closed or impacted by movie premieres, special events, filming and construction." That is the real rhythm of a Boulevard address — your access, your deliveries, and our van are all governed by a closure calendar somebody else publishes — so the work gets scheduled backwards from it. If the card reader is flaky, the receipt printer jams, the guest Wi-Fi drops at the back of the room, or the camera over the register has quietly been offline since spring, the week to find out is an ordinary one, not the morning the barriers go up. Crowd weeks are also when a shop tends to discover how few days of footage its cameras were actually keeping. The other half of Hollywood is uphill, and it's a completely different service call. Above Franklin the streets turn into canyon roads — Beachwood, Outpost, Laurel Canyon, the ridges below Mulholland — and the houses are stacked down the slope on lots that fall away from the street, so the router sitting in the living room is a floor above or below half the rooms it's meant to cover, with the gate, the driveway, and the detached garage all well out of range. Beachwood Canyon is where the whole idea of Hollywood-as-a-place-to-live started: the sign on the ridge went up in 1923 reading HOLLYWOODLAND, a $21,000 temporary billboard for the hillside tract at the top of that canyon, and the developers handed the sign and the land around it to the City of Los Angeles in 1944. The 1920s stone-and-stucco houses that tract left behind have no spare conduit to fish cable through, so up there we're usually solving coverage with a wired-backhaul mesh or the existing coax rather than opening up walls. The hills also come with their own power company. Hollywood is part of the City of Los Angeles, which means the electricity is the Department of Water and Power — the largest municipal utility in the country, more than 1.5 million electric customers, delivering power in the city since 1917 and running its own distribution inside the city limits since it bought out Southern California Edison's in 1922. In practice that means an outage here gets reported to DWP rather than Edison, and there's no Edison shutoff map to check: what DWP tells hillside customers is that under red-flag conditions local fire authorities may ask it to de-energize lines, and that homes in Tier 2 and Tier 3 high fire risk areas should be ready for outages "potentially lasting over 48 hours," because crews won't re-energize a canyon circuit until they've patrolled it. The aftermath is what we get called about — a modem or fiber ONT, a router, and a mesh that all have to come back in the right order, and the cameras, printers, and smart-home hubs that never rejoin the Wi-Fi on their own. The rentals are worth spelling out too, because the rule behind them decides what the work actually is. Hollywood is part of the City of Los Angeles, so a short-term rental here runs under the city's Home-Sharing Ordinance — adopted December 11, 2018, in force since July 1, 2019 and enforced since that November — and the first condition is that the home has to be the host's primary residence, "where they live for more than six months out of the year." A second unit is not your primary residence even if you own it, the registration number has to appear on every listing, it is 120 days a year unless you are approved for extended home-sharing, and a host who rents needs the landlord's notarized written approval. The condition that quietly decides who in Hollywood can do this at all is the next one: the residence "must not be subject to the City's Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO), which applies to most non-single-family rental units constructed before 1978." Hollywood's flats are exactly the kind of building that describes, so the address goes into the city's ZIMAS lookup before anyone buys a lock. What that leaves is what makes these calls different from a desert vacation rental: a legal home-share in Hollywood is somebody's own house, with their whole life already on the Wi-Fi — the drive full of photos, the work laptop on a company VPN, the printer, the smart-home hub, and cameras that went up years before the first guest ever arrived. Handing over the house password puts all of it one network away from a stranger's laptop, so the job is to split it properly: a real guest network with client isolation on, storage and work machines kept off it, and a lock code and guest Wi-Fi password that change with each booking rather than once a season. Cameras are the other trap, precisely because you live there — indoor cameras are not allowed in a listing at all since Airbnb banned them outright in 2024, so anything pointed into a room comes down, and what stays is a doorbell or an outdoor camera that gets disclosed. The city does not care whether you are home for the stay — Los Angeles explicitly does not distinguish hosted from unhosted bookings — which is why hosts here want the front door and the router visible from a phone. Cross into West Hollywood and it inverts: that is a separate city, incorporated November 29, 1984, and its Home Sharing Business License goes only to an owner who lives in the unit for the paying guest's entire stay, with renters not eligible at all. Two rulebooks, one app, a few blocks apart. There is one more layer on these streets, and it decides where the equipment is allowed to go rather than whether it will work. Parts of Hollywood sit inside city-designated historic districts — Historic Preservation Overlay Zones — and Los Angeles City Planning's own rule for them is blunt: "all exterior work proposed in an HPOZ, including landscaping, alterations, additions, and new construction, is subject to additional review." Whitley Heights, the Mediterranean-village tract north of Franklin Avenue just east of the Hollywood Bowl whose houses A. S. Barnes designed between 1918 and 1928, has been an HPOZ since the City Council adopted it in 1992, and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Hollywood Grove — Craftsman and Colonial Revival bungalows on a former avocado grove in the foothills — was adopted in 2011, and on the western edge Sunset Square, bounded by Hollywood Boulevard, Vista Street, Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax, was adopted in 2017, with Spaulding Square just south of it since 1993. Each district has its own adopted Preservation Plan and a volunteer board that meets twice monthly, and those plans are far more specific about our kind of work than anyone expects. Whitley Heights' plan, adopted December 9, 2010, names "satellite television or broadband internet systems" as mechanical appurtenances and says dishes "should be located in the rear yard, in a location not visible from the public way, whenever possible," with small ones under two feet allowed on lower rear roof surfaces, rear facades, rear-yard accessory structures or the rear yard. Anything mounted on a historic structure has to be "attached using the least invasive method, without damaging significant architectural features." And the line that actually changes how we work: wiring "can be run through the interior walls of a structure instead of along visible facades." So the question on these blocks is not what to install, it is which elevation it faces. Work on a rear-facing facade, roof or garage roof that is not visible from the street is delegated to planning staff, and mechanical equipment sitting in the rear yard is exempt from review altogether, while the same box on the front of the house is a slower conversation with a board. "Not visible" is defined tightly, too — the plan counts anything that "would be visible but are currently obscured by landscaping" — so a hedge is not a hiding place. Half a mile east the rule inverts, which is why we check the address and not just the hillside. Beachwood Canyon's Hollywoodland tract is not an HPOZ at all: it runs under its own Hollywoodland Specific Plan, Ordinance No. 168,121, effective July 8, 1992, which bans rooftop heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment "except solar heating panels, receiving antennas and exhaust vents," and then requires every other appurtenance added to a building to be "screened from view from any public right-of-way in Hollywoodland." Read forwards, that is an unusual permission — up in Hollywoodland a receiving antenna is the one thing the rulebook lets you leave in plain sight, and in Whitley Heights it is the thing most likely to be asked to move. What neither list exempts is everything people actually want to mount now: a camera, a video doorbell, an outdoor access point on the garage, a mini-split condenser. Nor does the federal antenna rule simply override any of this. Its own text permits a restriction that is necessary to preserve a district "included in, or eligible for inclusion on, the National Register of Historic Places" — which Whitley Heights is — provided the restriction is no more burdensome than necessary and treats comparable modern fixtures the same way. So on these streets we plan the install around the back of the house and the penetrations that already exist, reuse interior chases and the coax already in the wall rather than stapling a new run across a visible facade, and if somebody has their heart set on something street-facing we say so before the drill comes out instead of after.
Where we drive in Hollywood.
If you're near these, you're in our area.
We're independent — we'll work with whichever provider you have, and tell you the truth about whether switching is worth it.
We're independent — we'll work with whatever you buy. We service desktop and tower computers and swap out parts — drives, RAM, power supplies, graphics cards. Laptop repairs are more limited, since many parts are soldered in. We don't repair phones or tablets, so the shops below are where we send those — along with the closest places to buy gear.
Shopping online? For most parts and peripherals — drives, RAM, cables, webcams, routers — we recommend Amazon or Newegg. Tell us your setup and we'll send exact links so you don't overpay or buy the wrong thing.
From real Hollywood jobs we've done — what's actually worth buying for the kinds of homes and businesses we see here.
RAID + editing-workstation tune-up for a Hollywood colorist
Mesh Wi-Fi in a 1920s East Hollywood apartment building
POS, guest Wi-Fi, and camera setup for a Hollywood Blvd shop
Receipt printer and guest Wi-Fi for a Thai Town restaurant on Hollywood Blvd
Wired-backhaul mesh and a driveway camera for a 1920s Beachwood Canyon home built down the slope
UPS battery backup and camera-system restore for a Hollywood Hills house after a red-flag outage
Guest network, per-booking lock codes, and a doorbell camera for a registered Hollywood home-share host
POS, card reader, and camera-retention check for a Hollywood Blvd storefront ahead of an Oscars-week street closure
Rear-elevation outdoor access point and an interior cable run for a Whitley Heights HPOZ home
Camera and doorbell placement worked out around the screening rules for a Beachwood Canyon house
Free, plain-English help — whether or not you call us.
Onsite and remote — we come to you.
Often yes — call before noon for best chance of a same-day appointment. Otherwise we schedule next-day.
Yes — editing-workstation performance, RAID/external storage, render slowdowns, and fast networking for post-production pros are some of our most common Hollywood calls.
Yes — the East Hollywood stretch of Hollywood Boulevard is full of family-run restaurants and shops, and we handle the POS, receipt printers, cameras, and guest Wi-Fi that keep them running, set up onsite.
Usually yes. Pre-war Hollywood buildings have thick walls and very crowded airwaves; we fix placement and channels or add a small mesh, no rewiring needed.
Yes, and it's one of our most common Hollywood Hills calls. A single router never covers a house stacked down a slope, so we place a mesh with a wired or coax backhaul across the levels and add a weather-rated access point or camera out at the gate, driveway, or detached garage.
The power itself is LADWP, since Hollywood is part of the City of Los Angeles rather than Edison territory — but if the lights are already back and the internet isn't, that's usually ours. The modem or fiber ONT and the router need to come back in the right order, and cameras, printers, and smart-home hubs often need a nudge to rejoin the Wi-Fi. We can also fit a UPS so the modem, router, and camera hub just stay up through the next one.
Separately from your own, because in Los Angeles a legal home-share is your primary residence, so your things are already on that network. We put guests on their own SSID with client isolation turned on, keep the NAS, work laptop, and printer on the network you keep for yourself, and set the door code and the guest Wi-Fi password to change with each booking. Cameras stay outside — indoor ones are not allowed in a listing. What we can't do is the paperwork: registration, the primary-residence rule, the 120-day limit, and the RSO exclusion are the city's, so check the address with LA City Planning first and we'll handle the tech side.
Before it closes, and earlier than most people expect. For the 2026 ceremony the Academy's own notice had Hollywood Boulevard shut from Orange Drive to Highland Avenue for thirteen days — March 5 to March 18 — with other streets and sidewalks going earlier still, so a van at the kerb and a ladder on the pavement stop being options well ahead of the show itself. We book Boulevard storefronts in the quiet weeks beforehand and do the till system, card reader, receipt printer, guest Wi-Fi, and camera recording and retention in one visit. The dates to work back from: the 99th Oscars on Sunday, March 14, 2027, the 100th on Sunday, March 5, 2028, and the Hollywood Christmas Parade on Sunday, November 29, 2026.
Yes, and the answer is nearly always about where rather than whether. Whitley Heights, Hollywood Grove, Sunset Square, and Spaulding Square are HPOZs, where the city reviews all exterior work. Whitley Heights' own Preservation Plan puts satellite and broadband equipment in the rear yard or on rear roof surfaces not visible from the street, allows small dishes under two feet there, and says cable can be run through interior walls instead of along a visible facade — and work in that rear-facing position is handled at staff level rather than at the board. Beachwood Canyon's Hollywoodland tract runs on a different rulebook that lets receiving antennas stay on a roof but wants other added equipment screened from any public right-of-way. We design the install to the rear elevation and the cable paths that already exist, tell you up front if what you want is street-facing, and leave the permitting to you and City Planning.
Check before you buy the equipment. Los Angeles City Planning publishes a boundary map and the adopted Preservation Plan for each HPOZ, and the city's ZIMAS parcel lookup will tell you which overlays apply to a specific address — the same tool people here use for the rent-stabilization and home-sharing questions. It is worth doing because the districts are small and a neighboring street can be outside them: Whitley Heights sits north of Franklin just east of the Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood Grove is a handful of bungalow blocks in the foothills, and Hollywoodland up Beachwood Canyon is a Specific Plan area rather than an HPOZ, with its own rules. We will read the plan with you and design the work to fit it, but we are not permit expediters and we do not give planning advice.
Yes — Los Feliz, Silver Lake, West Hollywood, Burbank, and Koreatown are all within our Hollywood-area coverage.
Los Feliz · Silver Lake · West Hollywood · Burbank · Koreatown
Hollywood is cut by the US-101 (Hollywood Freeway), with Sunset and Hollywood Blvd as the main surface routes. The 101, tourist traffic on Hollywood Blvd, and frequent event closures snarl the peaks; midday and later evenings move better.
General guidance based on typical conditions — not live traffic. Call and we'll give you a realistic arrival window for right now.
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Tell us what's going on and we'll get back to you within a few business hours. For something urgent, call us — we usually answer on the first try. We come to you across Southern California, or fix many issues by remote support.
