Gary’s Rants & rAVes

Have you ever heard of scope seep? I hadn’t until I read Omar’s blog! And I’m guilty of it too. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Gary was joined today by InfoComm’s Senior Director of Development, Pamela Taggart, to discuss their plans at ISE in Amsterdam. With 3-tiers of educational offerings including 30 FastTrack (20-minute long classes) and 3-hour as well as half-day workshops, InfoComm is bringing the best of their professional development to ISE in 2016. Listen to today’s podcast […]

It’s important that you pay attention to the 4K products you’re specifying — do you know what they’re actually capable of doing? Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

A new company called Twist has an interesting take on the combo light/speaker for your home. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Earlier this week, Nureva launched the Span classroom collaboration system in the form of two models, the WM210e and the WM220e. Designed for use in classrooms, media centers and innovation labs, the Span classroom collaboration system draws upon familiar, simple and flexible tools already widely used in paper-based creative processes in the classroom including sticky […]

Gary’s already written blog about this but here the audio version of the story of the breadmaker from Joel Spira of LUTRON. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Today’s podcast is all about getting involved with our industry’s association – volunteer! Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Mackey Barron of HB Communications passed away last night at 95 years old. This podcast is all about him. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Listen to Gary’s podcast so you’ll know why your 4K and/or iOS AV systems might not be working. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Obviously, I had to talk to the holder of the biggest booth at CEDIA, CORE Brands (www.corebrands.com) – they’re spending more money than anyone else. So, Joe Lautner, CORE’s Director of Control, joined me to explain their strategy and where they are in the market now. They’ve made a lot of acquisitions over the past […]

AMX (www.amx.com) literally was only represented by a table inside the HARMAN booth and I suspect many, many integrators missed them. Too bad as they demo’d the makings of a totally-new control system interface – and it is impressive. I asked Adam Gershon, AMX’s Residential Product Manager, to join me on a podcast to explain […]

Tannoy’s Inside Sales Manager, Amy deBruyn, lives and breathes Tannoy – and she’s proud of her company. As you’ll learn in this podcast, Tannoy has a 70-some year history in HomeAV and what’s old is new again. Oh, and she and Eric Warren, also from Tannoy, and Amy make a great team – listen and […]

The control system market has changed a ton over the past 10-years. A segment of the market that was once dominated by just two big players – Crestron and AMX – is now over-crowded. And, new players Apple, Google, Amazon and others are flooding the entry-level of the market and solidly stealing the DIY’ers. And, […]

Legrand is here at CEDIA Expo with all four of their HomeAV brands: Middle Atlantic, OnQ, Nuvo and Vantage. Middle Atlantics VP of Sales, Dan Tarkoff is a great representative of the Legrand Brand as he’s been with them for over 18 years and he talks about where he sees HomeAV right now. Their booth […]

EPSON is using CEDIA Expo to launch a new series of 4,000- to 6,000-lumen projectors that are all priced below $7,000. So, no need to turn off the lights, install them in a dark room or even think about building a dedicated home theater. These projectors can project nearly everywhere. Brian Savarese, EPSON’s home theater […]

On Thursday, October 29th, the Drunk Unkles will play a benefit concert at The Cutting Room in New York City. The Drunk Unkles are an all-AV’er band that have been raising money for the NSCA Education Foundation for the past 10 years through benefit concerts in and around InfoComm. This time, they’re holding a concert the first […]

For years, the one big complaint I have consistently heard from at CEDIA from CE ’s and Integrators is the lack of margins in selling and installing residential AV gear now. Well, a company called RoseWater Energy Group may be the solution to all those complaints as they demo their Energy Management Hub and Energy Storage […]

Barco Residential made its debut at CEDIA Expo 2014 and they’ll be back in a bigger way in Booth 1310 at CEDIA Expo 2015 next week. Not only do they have a live theater this year, but they’ve also designed the booth to be a “lifestyle” environment. They’ll even show you how you can re-imagine […]

ISE debuted a few exciting new things and made one bit announcement today here in Germany. ISE’s Managing Director, Mike Blackman, led a press conference this morning in Munich, Germany and we grabbed Mike for a one-on-one about the exciting additions and changes for the world’s largest AV show www.iseurope.org Podcast: Play in new window […]

On today’s podcast, Almo Executive VP Sam Taylor explains all the details about how ProAV integrators can sell high-speed Internet access (aka bandwidth) to clients and get recurring revenue from it. It’s yet another service-focused offering from Almo Pro A/V. This podcast is worth watching because Gary and Sam end up discussing the state of […]

rAVe is covering the COMM-TEC S14 Conference live here in Germany. COMM-TEC is Europe’s largest AV distributor and has been in business since 1986. Gary had a chance to sit down with Wolfgang Lenz here and he talked about the company’s beginnings. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

We’re heading to Germany next week to cover Europe’s largest regional show, COMM-TEC S14 – a ProAV and HomeAV trade show plus educational conference. It’s hosted by COMM-TEC, a leading pan-European distribution partner and manufacturer of future-based communication technologies. As COMM-TEC Managing Director Sales & Marketing Rainer Sprinzl explains in today’s podcast, S14 is supported […]

In today’s podcast, Gary introduces us to Christie’s new Captiva product line. But, he hints of a laser phosphor future. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Are you a dealer for VDO360? If not, we’re trying to draw your attention to them, by partnering with them, in a speakerphone giveaway. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

We all need to start paying attention to this guy Mark Coxon a little bit more often. He’s got a great perspective regarding sales, which I talk about in today’s podcast. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Whether you’re going to CEDIA or not, we will be there. And, our coverage of CEDIA has already started. Listen to this podcast so that you can follow it now. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Every year we cover the Almo E4 AV Tour with rAVe NOW. I’ll be leading the keynote with my smart buildings session and you can get all the details on how to attend if you’re in Texas or the New York area by listening. Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Corey Moss is penning an incredible series on the BYOD – are you reading it? Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Are you scared of the trend that you’re seeing from control manufactures moving towards configurable control systems? Do you think the only one way to make money with control systems is via a fully programmable system? Do you hate all-in-one products? Don’t! Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Only one product each year received rAVe’s Best of InfoComm Award for the top new product introduced at the show this year. That company — Nureva — is looking for new dealers to sell their product. Listen in to hear why you should be one of those selling it. Podcast: Play in new window | […]

Do you even know what that means?  Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: RSS

Gary finally caught up with new Proxima owner Sam Malik to talk about the company’s future and how it plans to differentiate itself from the myriad projector companies out there. Proxima is a familiar brand name — it actually dominated the install segment of the market in the late 1990’s (before being bought and destroyed […]