Dropping by to See Draper (not Don)
By Jeremy Glowacki
Posing outside their surprising large Spiceland, Indiana, headquarters are Draper's advertising manager Penny Sitler and home theater sales manager Bob Hadsell. There’s a small town Indiana projection screen manufacturer that put the name “Draper” on the map well before a television series called Mad Men went on a run of four straight best drama Emmy wins, with a womanizing adman named Don Draper as the lead character. Don Draper may be struggling to regain his mojo following an ugly divorce, but Spiceland, Indiana’s Draper is still quietly going strong after almost 100 years thanks to a ...
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NuVo's Renovia: The Homeowner's Perspective
By Jeremy Glowacki
A couple months ago I received the type offer that you can’t refuse. Yet there I was actually trying several different ways to turn it down. My initial reluctance to try out a Renovia multi-room audio system from NuVo Technologies had a little bit to do with my growing concern about having too much technology in my home, and a lot to do with (I hate to say it with CEDIA EXPO right around the corner) the custom installation industry’s reputation for not always getting things done right for their clients. The phone call had come from NuVo’s very helpful PR rep, Barbara Stracner, who told me ...
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Polk Audio Offers Bright Spot for the Audio Biz
By Jeremy Glowacki
I’ve gotten used to filtering out positive spin from companies trying to position themselves in a down economy. That’s why I took what Polk Audio’s Al Baron said to me back in May 2009 with a grain of salt.
The Polk Audio team with the top tower speaker in the planned flagship LSi M series (from left): product line management VP Mark Suskind, senior systems engineer Scott Orth, engineering VP Stu Lumsden, product line manager Al Baron, marketing and customer experience VP Al Ballard, senior sales and marketing VP Ben Newhall, and COO Joseph Tristani. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always like ...
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Is Wireless HD Closer to Primetime?
By Jeremy Glowacki
There’s been a lot of talk since the housing bubble burst a few years ago about the need to embrace retrofit technologies in the CEDIA industry.
WHDI is one wireless HD technology that promises low latency in multiple rooms of the home. In equal measure, there’s been an apparent reluctance on the part of many ESCs in the channel to accept either “no new long wires” products or wireless solutions in any significant way. Personally, I’m already a big fan of Powerline-based products from the likes of Russound and NuVo, and I’m starting to warm to the idea of wireless HD video options as ...
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Maybe HDMI 'Acceptance' was the Wrong Word
By Jeremy Glowacki
Sometimes you write or edit something that you know will set off a firestorm with readers. Other times, you think you’ve got it completely right, but hit a hot button anyway. Sometimes, all it takes is one wrong word.
Register for CEDIA's HDMI Webinar, taught by Steven Venuti, HDMI LLC. Last month, I edited a supplement to Residential Systems, called The Integration Guide to HDMI,” where these seemingly innocuous words were written in the introduction:HDMI has been on the market for nearly seven years, a time frame in which its rapid development can be charted from a misused, ...
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SurgeX Offers Big-Bang Theory
By Jeremy Glowacki
There’s a lot of entertaining stuff on youtube these days, especially when it comes to science experiments that end in an explosion. That’s what you’ll find when you type “SurgeX vs. MOVs” into your web browser for an entertaining and informative demo that harkens back to the days of “Mr. Wizard’s World.”
SurgeX's Martin Dornfeld on the YouTube, right before he starts making things "pop." The clip from North Carolina-based SurgeX shows how the company’s Surge Elimination technology matches up against an unnamed competitive product that uses MOVs (metal oxide varistors) to reduce and ...
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A Letter from Mike Detmer to Niles Dealers
By Jeremy Glowacki
Last week, Mark Terry, president of The AVC Group LLC. (formerly called the Linear Group) promoted several executives, including Mike “Sparky” Detmer from Niles Audio’s VP of sales and marketing to president of the brand, calling him “a truly iconic figure in the custom installation industry.”We at RS had been curious about how the various AVC Group executives had addressed management changes at their respective brands with dealers and their own employees. Fortunately the Niles PR team saw it fit to share Detmer’s letter to Niles dealers, which was sent out last week. For non-Niles dealers, ...
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Do Your Vendors Want to ‘See Other People?’
By Jeremy Glowacki
The news last week that B&W was offering its loudspeaker lines to the big-box-ish Magnolia stores was the CEDIA dealer’s equivalent of learning that a significant other wanted to “see other people.” Are you feeling unloved or at least under-appreciated lately? I wouldn’t blame you one bit. Friday’s B&W announcement was just one more sign that the CEDIA channel just ain’t cuttin’ it anymore in the eyes of AV product manufacturers desperately holding it together during the Great Recession.In recent years more and more specialty-oriented audio suppliers have expanded distribution to new ...
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Heiss Reports on E3 for the BBC
By Jeremy Glowacki
Earlier this month, Residential Systems contributing editor Michael Heiss provided his in-depth report about E3, the annual technology convention for the gaming crowd.In his blog, Heiss noted, “If you have any doubt about the place of games [in the CEDIA channel], particularly consoles and handhelds from the “Big Three” of Sony (PlayStation and PSP), Microsoft (Xbox 360) and Nintendo (Wii and DS/3DS), wipe those thoughts from your mind. For those of us who are hardware freaks, this was a banner year at E3.His reporting apparently also caught the attention of the BBC, who interviewed Heiss ...
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ELAN Targets 'G' Spots
By Jeremy Glowacki
ELAN’s Eric Harper is convinced that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result borders on insanity. That old adage is what inspired the director of marketing and communications for the Lexington, Kentucky-based manufacturer to launch an aggressive new promotional campaign, called “See G! Run,” meant to drive consumer interest in its new g! residential control platform.
ELAN is thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing its new "g" platform. The campaign proved to be a success for three chosen dealers in the Atlanta “pilot” market, with Dallas ...
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Tips for Standardizing Your Organization
By Jeremy Glowacki
The CEDIA channel is made up of approximately 3,000 electronic systems contracting companies, each with an average of fewer than seven employees. In small firms like these, most people naturally wear many hats and are often responsible for a variety of functions within the organization. In this model, everyone subscribes to a “do what it takes to get it done” philosophy and the fact is that this type of approach has worked reasonably well for a lot of ESCs over the years.Unfortunately, this has also resulted in the reinforcement of the idea that more formal business practices are not ...
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Savant: Join the Apple Feeding Frenzy
By Jeremy Glowacki
Savant's opening night cocktail reception featured the famous NYC skyline. During the opening keynote for Savant’s fourth-annual dealer event, held June 23-25 in the SoHo section on New York City, company CEO Bob Madonna encouraged dealers and reps in attendance to “join the Apple feeding frenzy,” by selling home automation based around the Apple iPad, which, he said, is a format consumers around the world already understand and embrace.Savant has been completely Apple based since 2005, when Bob Madonna and Jim Carroll co-founded the company based on a business model from their previous ...
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My Retrofit Home Network Install was a No Brainer
By Jeremy Glowacki
The Wi-Fi network in my home provides relatively thorough coverage throughout our 5,000 square feet, but lately I’ve been streaming Yankees baseball games in HD to my laptop, and sometimes the picture locks up due to bandwidth limitations. Thanks to Plaster Networks’ PLN3 powerline Ethernet adapters, however, I was easily able to extend my home network over existing AC wiring and maintain a more interference-free video stream.
Plaster Networks' two PLN3 adapters Founded by Silicon Valley networking pioneer Paul Baran (who is known as inventor of packet switching), Plaster Networks had ...
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What Do Crestron and the Kamasutra Have in Common?
By Jeremy Glowacki
While I’m not much of an apps guy, personally, I do appreciate the creativity of developers who come up with such clever designs (my latest favorite is the virtual Bic lighter designed to summons an encore from your favorite rock band.)
A screenshot from when Crestron and iKamasutra shared the spotlight in the Apple iPhone apps store. So, it was cool to learn that Crestron’s Mobile Pro App for iPhone recently reached #6 in top-grossing iPhone apps (the only industry app in the Lifestyle Category’s Top 30, according to Crestron). Can you believe it? Our little-old industry found a way to ...
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Holiday Service Calls Pay Off for Illinois ESC
By Jeremy Glowacki
What do Memorial Day weekend, graduation week, and Chicago Black Hawks hockey all have in common? For Digital Home Technologies (www.adigitalhome.com) president John Goldenne, the answer is: emergency service calls. Goldenne, a Palatine, Illinois-based integrator friend of mine, said that he had planned for two weeks to spend his holiday weekend with family and landscaping both his home and office. But, before his plans could get into full swing early Friday afternoon, the office phone rang. It was 2pm, and the boss had already sent his staff home for the three-day weekend and had begun his ...
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