HGTV Awards

Thursday, August 12, 2010

August 11, 2010

This is the first year that CEDIA (Custom Design and Installation Assoc), has teamed up with Home & Garden TV to do a "People's Choice" portion of their CEDIA Electronic Lifestyle Awards.

 

Voting is now open! CEDIA Members, homebuilding professionals, and anyone interested in home performance can visit www.hgtvpro.com/cedia to vote for their favorite home theaters, media rooms, and integrated homes from CEDIA’s Electronic Lifestyles® Designer Awards. The main awards, which we are entered, are solely based on technical and design merits, judged by a panel of architects, interior designers and industry experts. Both the HGTV Peoples Choice and Cedia Lifestyle awards will be announced on Sept 25th.

Runco is represented with CineWide projectors and more than 26 flat panels including ‘Architectural Elegance’ in the Home Theater category and ‘Maximum Integration’ in the Integrated Home category.

 

 

Just In Time For Football Season

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

By Pippa Edelen

I am an enormous fan of college football. I plan my Saturdays each fall around my beloved UO Duck games (for those of you who aren’t living within the reaches of the Pac-10 – err, Pac-12? - you likely know the University of Oregon less for its football and more for its completely radical, albeit somewhat unconventional, uniforms). In my house, nothing is better than waking up early Saturday to watch ESPN Gameday, especially when they are in Eugene, then catching the games on the East Coast, watching my Ducks later that afternoon followed by lazy Sunday nights to see the latest BCS rankings. My husband grew up in Texas, went to A&M and loves his Cowboys, so pigskin is dominant every weekend and holiday, from now through January, in our house.

Over the last few years we’ve amassed every UO, A&M and Cowboy piece of team merchandise you can think of, from coolers to pajamas. But today marks the dawn of an entirely new way for us to show-off our support – Runco’s FinishPalette projectors. Because my love of Oregon would likely trump my husband’s fanaticism for America’s Team and the Aggies, we’ll be getting a new LightStyle projector complete with UO colors and logo. And while seeing the examples on the FinishPalette website is really nice, nothing is as impressive as seeing a painted sample in the flesh. I was sold on getting a UO projector after I saw the first sample we had at Runco, which featured Ohio State. As a Duck fan licking my wounds from our recent Rose Bowl loss to Ohio State, it’s no small feat that OSU merchandise could convince me of anything. But the finish is truly so gorgeous and so much fun (my husband even likes the UT version) that it will make any sports fan want to see his colors on a projector. In case you’re not a UO, A&M or Dallas Cowboys fan the FinishPalette offering has more than 60 top NCAA schools and can color match any team. FinishPalette is the ultimate piece of merchandise for the true sports fan. Oh yeah, and beyond the really amazing finish and homage to your team, nothing beats flawless HD football on a 108” (or larger) screen all day Saturday and all day Sunday. After all, the Runco LightStyle LS-5 is more than just a pretty trophy wife and delivers a stellar image. Are you ready for some football?

Runco Dealer Electronic Essentials Wins EH Publishing Award

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

April 28, 2010, from Electronic House featuring Runco Dealer Electronic Essentials in Vancouver, WA

Electronic rock reveals a hidden home theater.

A home theater should have at least one element that really wows its audience. It could be an enormous Cinemascope screen or an audio system hat rattles the rafters. Dimmable lighting can heighten the anticipation of viewing the latest blockbuster film, and elevated seating is one of the best ways to evoke a sense of being inside a real movie theater. The 15-by-18-square-foot Home Cinema room has all of the above, but what really has their friends’ tongues wagging, says John Vandruff of Electronic Essentials, Vancouver, Wash., is the switch that’s built into the surface of a massive stone fireplace in the owners’ gentleman’s parlor. Neither guests nor the homeowners can see the switch—not that it’s much to look at. That’s because it’s connected to and hidden behind one of the stones within the fireplace façade. When pressed, this “secret” stone throws the switch which signals a motorized arm to open a door to the theater. Like the stone, the door is indiscernible, having been integrated into the wooden wall paneling of the parlor.

“There is absolutely no indication that a theater exists beyond the walls of the parlor,” says Vandruff. “And once visitors are inside [the door shuts automatically after being open for eight seconds], no one would ever know there were people inside.”

The hidden door has a lot to do with this; so does the room’s level of soundproofing. By way of house design, room design, special construction techniques, and acoustical materials, a collaboration between the Architect Blondino Design, the builder Tamarack Homes, and Electronic Essentials. They were able to greatly reduce the sound transfer to the rest of the house “When the door shuts you can hear a pin drop,” says Vandruff. “When the 9.2 surround-sound system is playing at a normal volume level, nobody in the rest of the house other than the parlor can hear it.”

However, people in the parlor can see what’s playing in the Theater room on the 110” Stewart Filmscreen CinemaScope screen if they wish. An Elan distribution system routes HD video from the house components racked in a nearby closet to both the Runco CineWide RS-900 projector in the theater.