Grand Opening

Phew...  After weeks of scrambling preparations, our Grand Opening was last night.  Other than the weather SUCKING and traffic being really bad for no reason (one person who usually has a 20 minute ride took an hour and 45 minutes) it turned out great!  We had about 75 people show up, did guided tours of each room, had great food and drinks, door prizes, a cartoonist doing caricatures (on a paper with our logo and information at the bottom... sneaky...) and just a good time for all.  Now our 'builders' can see the custom stuff they never knew we did and the 'custom builders' got to see the sheer volume of work we can handle.  Nice.

So why was it stressful getting set up for this?  Here's why... I had about 2 weeks to revamp what all the equipment in each room could do.  Didn't have to hang TVs or install speakers or anything like that, but I redid the entire control system and made every source, including 3 cameras, available everywhere.  To summarize, here is what was installed when I started here back in Feb.  This was simply a design that wasn't planned out in a single vision; it was let's add this here, let's add that there, etc.  No one was in a position to step back and see what could be done.  It's not that there wasn't anyone who could pull it off, there was just no time to do it and I just don't think anyone saw how close they were to the potential that was there.


It was:
Room A
You could view one DirecTV receiver or Escient Fireball via composite video

Room B
You could view one DirecTV receiver, Bose Lifestyle, Blu-Ray, (all component video, thank god) and do some good/better/best speaker demos.  MX-980 for control.

Room C
Four-screen video wall; only displayed one DirecTV receiver full screen and played audio through 1 pair of ceiling speakers

Room D (theater)
You could view Blu-Ray, PS3, Wii, and one DirecTV receiver.  MX-810 for control.

Main racks - MRF-350 tied to everything.  MSC-400 installed in a nice RSH shelf, but wasn't hooked to anything LOL!  :)

Here's what I changed.  I have to give most of the credit to the bosses who OK'ed spending the money on the stuff I suggested.

Main Racks
Left MRF-350, pulled MSC-400 out.
Added RTI XP-8 and Zektor Clarity Elite 8x8 component video and audio matrix.  If you haven't heard of them, I HIGHLY suggest checking them out.  This piece of gear is unbelievable for what it is.  The control is incredible, performance is transparent and fast, and it does things you wouldn't even think of.  (analog/digital and digital/analog conversion, three composite/s-video to component transcoded inputs in addition to the 8 component inputs, input gain control, audio delay control, timed volume fade commands, follow-me zone control [pay attention - this one sounds confusing...  you're playing a source in one room and are about to go into the next room but want to shut the first room down.  One command fades the volume out in room 1, puts that source into room 2 and fades the volume up to the exact level where you had it.  That is ONE COMMAND.... INSIDE THE MATRIX, not in the control system!  One serial string!]) 
Much thanks to Jeff Haynes from Zektor for getting us this unit in perfect time to get it installed for our show!
http://www.zektor.com

Room A
View 4 DirecTV receivers and Escient Fireball.  Control from MX-810 (the one that used to be in the theater)

Room B
View one DirecTV receiver, Blu-Ray, and Bose Lifestyle.  Didn't change much in here since there was already so much to do with the speaker demos and all... Control still from MX-980.  Adding sources is just a programming change away...

Room C
View 4 DirecTV receivers, Blu-Ray, Escient Fireball, and 3 security cameras on any or all screens of the video wall, all independent of each other.  Ceiling speakers and new wireless headphones (two different audio zones) can play audio from any screen or video wall.  Plus that audio zone will follow if you change sources.  So the ceiling speakers aren't just playing DirecTV 3, they're playing DirecTV 3 but a tracking the Bottom Left screen.  Change the source on the Bottom Left screen and they follow suit.  Same goes for wireless headphones.  Doesn't sound like much but it took some thinking to figure out how to do it with only set flag/clear flag/test flag commands available to me.  Control is now via T4 (with 2-way feedback through Wi-Fi).  T4 is also programmed to control the theater.

Room D (theater)
In addition to the PS3 and Wii, you can now view all 4 DirecTV receivers, 3 security cameras, and control the Litetouch system in that room.  Control is now a T3-V.


All in all a fun night. Only 2 or 3 minor technical glitches and everyone seemed to walk away impressed.  That's all you can ask for, right?  Oh, and my friend won a $25 Outback giftcard as a door prize.  :)