John Sciacca Writes...

You’ve finally sacked-up and decided to take that next step into the home theater Big Boy club; you’ve made the decision to abandon that weak-sauce, girly-man flat panel display and go with a strong-like-bull front projector! First things first...bring it in. We gotta hug this bitch out. Congratulations! For today, you are a man!

So, now that you’ve made this momentous decision you’re probably...

I had the unique, two-hours-only-a-parent-could-love, pleasure of attending my daughter’s ballet recital this past weekend. And if you’ve never had the opportunity, I can assure you that watching dozens of 4-12 year old girls dancing ballet and tap to covers of Michael Jackson hits is every bit as fun as it sounds. (Did I mention that there was no intermission? Or bar? And that it was two hours?)

Here's a picture of Lauryn-don...

The world’s largest technology distributor, Ingram Micro Inc., owners of CE distribution powerhouses AVAD and DBL Distributing, hosted a vendor expo for resellers this past week in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the absolutely beautiful Fairmont Scottsdale Princess resort, a AAA 5-Diamond rated property. (You can read all about this ...

Last week, I attended a vendor expo in Scottsdale, Arizona hosted by the world’s largest technology distributor, Ingram Micro, Inc. The theme of the expo was “Plugged In to CE,” and along with the manufacturers and venders on hand, Ingram invited representatives from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), including CEO Gary Shapiro, and senior research analyst Chris Ely.

Both guest speakers shared some interesting i...

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C Clarke

Home automation. Smart house. Advanced home control. If those words conjure images of lights mysteriously flashing on and off at random times or of fat piles of cash and sweaty technicians huddled over their laptops programming for weeks at a time, then you need to read on. The truth about home automation today is that techno...

A little over four months ago, Kaleidescape unveiled an industry leading download store that offers Kaleidescape owners a revolutionary way to add content to their systems, by easily browsing and purchasing movies that automatically downloaded to their systems. Kaleidescape installed a fiber link between its Sunnyvale facility and its data center ...

Judging from the interest in my first post on Prima Cinema (“I’ve Beheld the Future”, currently the most popular story to date on Theo Kalomirakis’ website, Theo’s Roundtable) I thought I would circle back to the topic.

First, if y...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I think the next big boom won’t be having home theaters in dark, secluded dedicated rooms but in the large, open, multi-purpose family and great rooms many homes have.

After talking about the home theater system in my family room, I thought there would be nothing better than to...

Last month I wrote a post titled, “How I learned to stop worrying and love the soundbar,” a play on the Dr. Strangelove title. That post detailed all of the reasons why I used to be prejudiced towards soundbars, and why we didn’t really capitalize on that segment of the market. But our company finally came around and realized...

A recent blog post I wrote titled "The Death of the Dedicated Room" got me talking about my family room home theater system.

I’ll be honest, when I installed it, I felt like installing a theater in my family room was a compromise. I really wanted a dedicated room to house my system, but, well, I could eit...

When you think about it, we custom integrators work in a strange industry… An industry unlike any other.

 Often we encounter people that not only aren’t sure exactly what it is we do, but also aren’t sure they even want or need what we offer. This is a dynamic pretty much unlike any other shopping/buying experience.  

As an example, consider a typical purchasing encounter...

Most people love movies. And since you are currently reading a tech site, I’m going to assume that you are probably more a movie lover than most people. But while people love movies, what they don’t love so much is the experience of actually going to the movies. Take your pick from the many possible reasons: Inconvenience, poor performance, the glaring red EXIT light that shines on the screen like a vengeful Overlord, the floors sticky with food and DN...

There was buzz at CEDIA last year surrounding NFC – Near Field Communication – technology causing one publication to call it one of the “Top 5 Home Technologies for 2012” claiming it “could be the next big thing in home automation” and described as “living in the future” by The Wall Street Journal.

Crestron said that NFC brought “new meaning ...

I’m bombarded with questions on a near daily basis. “Why is this so expensive?” “Why can’t I just go wireless?” “Do I really need all this stuff?” “Are you even listening to me?!” and "When are  you going to pick up your clothes?" (The last two -- and many others! -- perennial favorites of Dana...)

My recent post on Prima Cinema’s game-changing day & date home-delivery system elicited a comment from DarkOrion69 that got me thinking. As background for appreciating Mr. 69’s comment, the Prima hardware currently sells for $35,000 and each movie viewing costs $500. The comment was:

...

My colleague, Andrew Robinson, has espoused the need for movie studios to change their paradigm and embrace the idea of day-and-date release and viewing outside the cinema. Essentially, give us the a...

(That’s a Dr. Strangelove reference for all you non-cinephiles out there...)

There are many parts of this industry that I like… There’s that moment when you turn on a system for the first time and all of the keypads spring to life, come on line and start reporting metadata just like they’re suppose...

The idea of hunting through stacks of discs until you find the one CD you’re looking for, popping the disc into a player, and then sitting down to listen and hoping the disc isn’t scratched beyond playability is preposterous in this digital, rip/click/play era. Now even my tech-challenged mom expects everything to be automatically sorted by album, artist, song, and genre, and to be presented with cover art that can be streamed to any location f...

If you watched the Super Bowl – or even surfed the Web at all in the past 24 hours – you likely read about the little power disruption that occurred just after halftime at the Superdome in New Orleans. (Insert jokes here about New Orleans forgetting to pay the power bill, or Beyonce’s halftime show being too much for the power grid or whatever...)

Had the Niners gone on to come back and win the...

This pretty much sums up the whirlwind which is CES… I started dinner my first night at the same time I was climbing into bed the previous night! It’s Vegas, baby, so you’ve got to just suck it up! Fortunately it was an amazing dinner.

I thought that my dinner dance card had been filled up, but a look at my Sunday night schedule showed an opening that GoldenEar Technologies Sandy Gross was only too kind to fill. (Sandy a...