CEDIA EXPO was bursting at the seams again this year at Denvers Colorado Convention Center, with media servers, 1080p video products, speaker innovations, and control system improvements all vying for our attention. Its hard to put it all in a nutshell, but because we all love a list, heres a quick rundown of my observations from the show
Best Integrated Home Theater Demo: St. Johns Groups theater featuring Screen Research screen, iSky LED ceiling, and Cabasse speakers
Best Integrated Home Demo: Exceptional Innovations dueling wired and wireless Life-ware homes outside the Convention Center
Best Audio Demo: Wisdom Audios ribbon speakers
Best Video Demo: I missed the Runco demo, so Ill have to go with the best that I saw personally, which was SIM2s new 3-chip DLP
Best New Booth Concept: Come Play at SpeakerCraft
Most Clever Change to an Existing Technology: Middle Atlantic’s side ventilation on its RSH Series rackmounts.
Best Use of Gear at a Booth: Boston Acoustics colorful speaker cluster hanging from the ceiling
Best Unplanned Moment: Colorado Rockies relief pitcher LaTroy Hawkins pitching as himself on the baseball simulator at Visual Sports Systems booth
Most Ubiquitous Technology: (Tie) Audyssey Labs calibration package and HD Radio
Best New Player: MechoShades
Biggest Surprise: Nortek’s “A-BUS killer” Digi5
The Were Here to Stay Award: Control4
Most Over-the-Top New Product: Richard Grays Power Companys PowerVault premium whole-house power conditioning product
Most Comprehensive Product Line Changes: (Three-way Tie) AMX, Crestron, and ELAN
