10 Holiday Gifts for Tech Lovers
 You won’t find a $78 Blu-ray player on this HTSA-approved electronics gift list.
CE pros don’t generally experience the holiday shopping bump that retailers do.
They can’t compete with Walmart and its $78 Blu-ray player deals. Nor should they try to, according to the Home Theater Specialists of America (HTSA).
The 59-member buying group wants CE pros to carve out their own holiday shopping niche and it has issued an electronics holiday shopping list for “the tech obsessed.”
You won’t find any $78 deals. Prices begin at $300 and go up very, very high, but at least they’re HTSA-approved.
Of course, the buying group’s list isn’t completely objective. Each product comes from an HTSA vendor partner. But, with 42 vendor partners, it’s a wide field. But we’ve narrowed it down to our 10 favorite.
Click here for 10 Holiday Gifts for Tech Lovers.
By Tom LeBlanc
http://www.cepro.com/article/10_holiday_gifts_for_tech_lovers/
Custom Installation Services, LLC – Home Entertainment Audio and Video services in North Carolina.
Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged audio, audio advice, Best Buy, Blu-ray, Charlotte, Custom home builders, Davidson, diy electronics, dv wise, HDTV, Hickory, home audio consultation and design, home entertainment systems, i-phone, i-pod, innovative systems, Lg, Marantz, Matthews, Mint Hill, Mooresville, multiroom audio, NC, new construction, Onkyo, panamax, Panasonic, retrofit, Sharp, Speakercraft, surround receiver, surround sound, Waxhaw, wii, xbox
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13 Classic Rookie DIY Mistakes to Avoid
 If you’re just getting started or planning your home theater and AV projects, here are some pointers from our custom electronics pros friends.
We asked custom electronics (CE) pros about the blunders they encounter when DIYers or inexperienced pros can’t get their systems to work.
Here are some of the rookie mistakes you should avoid:
Buying the least expensive gear and finding out it doesn’t have the features you need, like discrete control codes (on and off, for example) or enough inputs and outputs.
Hooking up equipment using substandard cables, connectors and adapters, leading to poor performance and, eventually, no performance.
Underutilizing gear that you already have. For example, connecting the DVD player using composite cable when it has component or HDMI outputs, and not setting the TV to the maximum resolution.
Never realizing you could be watching HD channels you’re paying for: “You mean Channel 4 is standard but 404 is HD?! I never knew!”
Compromising setups that you learn to live with, like having to leave a cabinet door open, or moving cables from one device to another.
Forgetting to install Ethernet jacks at the A/V locations.
Skimping on power protection.
Mounting video devices in poor locations: displays too high and projectors not centered correctly when there’s no lens shift available.
Failing to wire distributed audio speaker locations for stereo.
Forgetting to put power where it’s needed: racks, TVs, projectors, powered seats.
Trying to use “rules of thumb” for speaker locations in unusual rooms, such as those with missing walls or angled seating.
Wiring low-voltage cabling parallel with the electrical, often done in retrofit situations when the installer or DIYer simply uses the same holes used by the electrical wires.
Inadequate ventilation for equipment, resulting in burned-out gear (and calls to the manufacturer for their “faulty” products).
by EH Staff
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/13_classic_rookie_diy_mistakes_to_avoid
Custom Installation Services, LLC – Home Entertainment Audio and Video services in North Carolina.
Posted in Home Theater
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Tagged a/v locations, audio, audio advice, Best Buy, ce pros, Charlotte, cool house, equipment ventilation, ethernet jacks, freemans, h h gregg, HD channels, HDTV, home audio consultation and design, Home Automation, innovative systems, lens shift, low voltage cabling, lutron, Marantz, monster cable, mounting video, powered seats, s3-av, Samsung, Sony, sound systems, Speakercraft, surround sound, tributaries cable, whole house audio, wii, zobo
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Inside BB King’s $1.4 Million Tour Bus
 For legendary blues guitarist BB King, the thrill isn’t gone when it comes to touring. The 83-year-old “King of the Blues” is still on the road with his famous Gibson guitar “Lucille” performing 100 concerts per year.
And King gets from gig to gig on more than just a simple set of wheels.
King rides in a $1.4 million, 45–foot luxury motorcoach that has more than $200,000 worth of electronics inside, making it a center of inspiration for laying down tracks, reviewing audio and video, keeping up to date on news and communicating with his fans and crew. But, most importantly, he’s entertained by a first-class A/V setup.
The interior design of the Prevost XL motorcoach was done by Superior Coach Interiors in Nashville, Tenn., while the electronics were installed by Digital Home Lifestyles of Phoenix, Ariz.
The tour bus, which took 100 hours of design time and 300 hours of installation time to complete, has seven miles of of cabling from Liberty Cable, five miles of Cat5 wiring and 3,000 feet of CresNET. The pre-wiring was done before the walls on the tour bus went up, requiring large bulks of wiring in channels and luggage bays that run the length of the vehicle.
King has a music and video server system that allows him to access a collection of more than 20,000 CDs, 6,000 DVDs and “more VHS tapes than I have ever seen,” according to Daniel Henderson of Digital Home Lifestyles.
Electronics Galore
The electronics on the bus would make any electronics lover blush. There’s a distributed audio/video system with eight zones of video and nine zones of audio. The front and rear lounges have 7.1 surround sound systems that are fed through a combination of dedicated and distributed sources. The sources include:
* 4 DirecTV HR21-PRO DVRs (1 dedicated to the rear lounge, 3 for distributing audio and video)
* 4 Kaleidescape 1080p players (1 dedicated to the rear lounge, 3 for distributed A/V)
* 1 Kaleidescape 3U server
* 1 Crestron iPod dock that is distributed throughout the coach
* 4 individual iPod docks for each bunk
* 1 Crestron XM tuner (distributed to all zones with feedback on all the touchpanels
* 1 AM/FM radio (distributed with feedback on all the touchpanels)
* 2 Integra Blu-ray DVD players (1 dedicated to the rear lounge and 1 dedicated to the front lounge)
* 1 PS3 and 1 Xbox 360 in the front lounge
* 1 Sony Professional DAT Player (dedicated to the rear lounge)
* 1 Aiphone back-up camera (for driver’s touchpanel)
* 1 Aiphone PTZ front door security camera (distributed to all TVs and touchpanels)
The coach has a 12-inch touchpanel in the rear lounge, an 8-inch panel in the front lounge, a 6-inch panel for the driver (also for backup camera) and 4-inch touchpanels in each bunk. There also is a 12-button keypad up front. All controls are hardwired.
Other electronics include:
* 7 Crestron touchpanels
* 8 HDTVs, including two 37-inch LGs with Triad LCR speakers
* 13 Lutron motorized shades
* 6 motorized windows
* A proprietary 12-relay lighting control system designed by Digital Home Lifestyles
* 64 zones of lighting
* Loudspeakers in the luggage bays for music during load-in and load-out
* Temperature sensors
* Surround sound systems with Focal and Triad custom speakers
* 8 headphone jacks that can be used to listen to any source
There are multiple satellite dishes (auto-tracking) to enable eight tuners (four dishes with two tuners each) and occupancy sensors for the bathroom. King also has an emergency button in the lounge in case he needs something.
Power Management
King’s electronics require six separate 20-amp circuits and are powered in three different ways: 1)They can be plugged in when the vehicle is stopped; 2)They can run off the engine’s inverters; 3)They can run off a generator.
That constant switching can wreak havoc on the electronics without proper power management. To solve it, the integrator developed some proprietary logic for the Crestron APS unit for switchover sequencing of the power.
The system remotely communicates with Digital Home Lifestyles to let the company know about failures. King can even press a button on the touchpanels to send an email requesting a service call.
BB Loves Technology
BB King is a content hoarder and techie who always wants the latest gadgets, music and movies. Before he had the Kaleidescape servers, he had a tiny table that was cluttered with five portable hard drives and a laptop plugged into a CD recorder.
Henderson says King had 200 movies on the Kaleidescape servers and 100 TV shows recorded on Tivo within the first month of owning the tour bus.
“The coach is his (and the crew’s) home away from home,” Henderson says. “They don’t sleep in the coach, they stay in hotels every night, but they spend a significant amount of time in there.”
Click here to look Inside BB King’s $1.4 Million Tour Bus.
by Jason Knott
http://www.electronichouse.com/article/inside_bb_kings_14_million_tour_bus/C117
Custom Installation Services, LLC – Home Entertainment Audio and Video services in North Carolina.
Posted in Automation
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Tagged 20-amp circuit, 7.1 surround, a/v setup, am/fm, AV Components, back-up camera, Blu-ray, cat5, cds, Cool Homes, cresnet, dat, digital home, Digital Media Servers, directv, dish network, Displays, distributed audio, dual tuner, dvd, dvr, email, focal, freemans, gadgets, generator, gibson, hard drive, harmony, HDTV, headphones, Integra, integrator, iPod, Kaleidescape, keypad, laptop, Lg, liberty cable, lifestyles, lighting control, logic, loudspeakers, lutron, motorized shades, multiroom audio, Multiroom Video, portable, power management, ps3, receivers, rg6, security, Set Top Boxes, sirius, sound systems, superior coach, surround sound, temperature sensors, tivo, triad, vhs, wii, xbox, xm
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