PREP YOUR HOME NOW FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON WITH THESE NEW PRODUCTS IN MIND

It’s August and the kids are back in school in Huntsville and the surrounding North Alabama area.....

Time for parents to relax by the pool by day in sweet solitude. Perhaps your thoughts drift to the upcoming holiday season and a preliminary wish list of home improvements or enhancements that will provide that “wow effect” for your guests.

As ideas begin to swirl in your head, you realize that much of it will involve additions or enhancements to the high-tech A/V and automation systems that make your sprawling estate a mecca of entertainment for family, friends and business associates -  no matter the time of year. It’s time to schedule a consultation with Steve Douglas at AV Enthusiast for professional integration input during the all-important brainstorming stage.

Here are a few new products that could be included in your project:

COLORSCAPING BY WAC

Bring your landscape alive with tunable white light from 2700K to 6500K and a nearly infinite color palette to create awe-inspiring, bold and dynamic custom lighting scenes that expertly tune your outdoor spaces to the holiday or celebration at hand – whether it be springtime pastels to entice the Easter bunny, a red-white-and-blue palette for sizzling patriotic holidays, burnt-orange, amber, pecan brown and pine green to please both Halloween spooks and Thanksgiving feasters, or crimson red, emerald green, burnished gold and vivid violet to entice Santa to your rooftop.

Customize colors and create scenes, zones and groups using the MyWAC App via Wi-Fi or wired ethernet. Alternatively, perform the same functions using your home automation system, such as Crestron Home® or Josh.ai®.

ORIGAMI™ SHADES BY SCREEN INNOVATIONS

This latest addition to SI’s line of window coverings is a unique and artistically-designed series that fits and covers all window layouts with style and function. This innovative-solution-product provides architects, designers and clients with the assurance that there is a shading product available to cover any creatively-shaped windows that are built into their projects.

Origami™ shades are offered in rectangular, acute triangle, triangle with square base, left- angled triangle, left-angled triangle with square base, right-angled triangle, right-angled triangle with square base, trapezoid left, trapezoid right and pentagon shapes. And they can be mixed-and-matched as needed.

In addition, Origami shades are available in a variety of neutral colors with your choice of sunscreen, light-filtering and blackout fabrics from some of the industry’s most popular manufacturers such as Mermet, Phifer and Wilson.

ZERO G PRO CARBON BLACK PROJECTION SCREENS BY SCREEN INNOVATIONS

Combine Screen Innovations’ Zero-G® Levitating Motorized Rollable Projection Screen technology with its innovative Carbon Black® Screen for the convenience and flexibility of disappearing media technology integrated with the outstanding contrast, color accuracy and sharpness of an LED TV – whether it be in your family room, your master bedroom or on your covered patio.

STRATO 5 MOVIE PLAYER BY KALEIDESCAPE

Kaleidescape is a digital movie platform that provides downloads of movies and shows with lossless audio and full-reference-video quality. Until now, the service required the use of both a movie server and a movie player. To meet customer demand, Kaleidescape now offers a more cost-effective choice that functions either as a standalone device or as a peripheral device connected to a server network.

Featuring a new streamlined interface, Strato V is optimized for navigating a small movie library. When standalone, it stores approximately 10 reference 4K movies on an internal, solid-state drive, and can download a Kaleidescape 4K movie in as little as 10 minutes over gigabit Ethernet during movie playback without sacrificing performance. Downloads become a candidate for automatic deletion 48 hours after playback, making room for more movies.

WHOLE-HOME AUDIO DISTRIBUTION OF YOUR VINYL COLLECTION COURTESY OF CRESTRON

We know what you’re thinking – why in the world would you ever want to distribute the exquisite sound of your vintage record collection anywhere outside of your dedicated listening room?  After all, it takes a specialized space customized for the unique sound characteristics of analog audio to achieve the immersive, true-to-reality sound that you prefer.

But have you ever thought that it could be used as a tool to stoke interest in vinyl albums during large gatherings at your home? Many of your guests may take an interest in it if you take on the role of the DJ, stationed in the listening room to change records and to make short announcements across your whole-home Crestron paging system about each album and the band itself before you spin each new disc. In other words, be your own home-grown radio station and perhaps throw in a call-in contest with prizes.

Schedule a consultation with our Consultant/Designer, Steve Douglas, for details about how this can be done through Crestron Home’s DM-NAX Audio-Over-IP System paired with its paging system capability.