If you are a sports fan, having a tiling feature on your TV is truly the ultimate way to watch.  Tiling means you can send multiple video signals to a single TV.  Imagine picture in picture on steroids.  Now, Savant offers 4, 6, and 9 source versions with the release of their SmartView Tiling.  For most sports fans, I'm sure the 4 is plenty.

OK, so you’ve got your big projection or flat panel TV.  Think how cool it would be to see one big picture with 3 smaller pictures off to the side!

Yes, you might have seen that before, BUT…with the Savant app, you just touch the screen icons on your iPad.  Up pop the sources and you can choose which source goes where.  Then, if you want, you can just double tap any of them and it will fill the screen.  Or, slide a small icon to the large one and everything flips.  But the coolest part of all is tracking which video source you are listening to.  The current one playing has a little speaker icon on it. All you do is slide that across to another screen and the sound flips!  That is just so slick!  Check out a demo here on this quick video.

With SmartView Tiling, Savant is just pulling way out in front of the pack in making it simple and fun to put the best technology at your fingertips.

If you don't want to miss any of the action in America's stadiums,  fairways, courts or tracks, call us!  We can bring it all home to you!

Anyone who's ever had a newborn sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) knows all too well the anxiety that goes along with such an event.  For the mother in particular, her strong natural urge to bond with her baby is interrupted and limited by her baby's need for specialized medical attention.

One of the most basic desires for the mother is to be able to reassure her baby that she is not far away.  But in NICU, that can be extremely difficult to do.  She knows her baby is in a totally foreign surrounding absent of anything to remind her child of his or her mother.  Unless the hospital is equipped to house mother and child together there will be a great deal of time in which they are separated.  But perhaps technology can help!

Mommy’s Hear™ is a device designed to allow mothers to both see and speak to her baby while in NICU.  With technology borrowed from remote access security systems, this device is located right at the baby's incubator so the parents and family members can see their infant from any remote device like a smart phone or iPad.  This is especially vital in the case of long-term NICU care as with infants born prematurely, for example.

When the parents can't be at the hospital such as while caring for the baby's siblings, the family can talk to their infant at any time, night or day, via the phone or iPad--much like using Skype or FaceTime.  Telling baby "good night," singing a lullaby, or just watching baby awaken in the morning can be so reassuring to newborn and parent alike.

This ability to communicate directly is significant, as recent studies show the introduction of sounds like the mother’s voice reduces cardio-respiratory events common to premature infants.  Not only that, but it can aid in the child’s development while promoting bonding when parents can’t be at the hospital.  And should a family member be a little "under the weather," they can still see and talk to their baby without risking exposing their newborn to infection.

You may own a car that unlocks the door for you as you approach it with the key in your pocket.  How about your house doing the same thing?

CEPro, the trade magazine for the consumer electronics industry, just did a story about a "smart lock" by Goji.  In place of the round brass deadbolt lock we're all familiar with would instead be a circular disc of  a brushed metal finish with a blue LED display.  The Goji Smart Lock is a smartphone-connected electronic security deadbolt with a built-in camera that sends real-time picture alerts and emails for visual confirmation of who is opening the door.

The device replaces a key with a smartphone, activating the deadbolt lock when the homeowner approaches the door. Homeowners can grant day- and time-specific access privileges to people, for example, to visiting friends and family; service professionals such as contractors, house cleaners and dog walkers; and to short-term renters who use services such as Airbnb. Goji digital keys are encrypted using bank-level encryption and cannot be transferred, stolen or copied like a mechanical key can. In case the homeowner misplaces his phone, Goji offers 24/7 customer service to provide assistance.

To learn more about additional features and safeguards, you will want to check out their brief video that you can access by clicking here.

Homeowners can install it themselves in the place of an existing deadbolt and includes four digital keys and two conventional keys. Programmable fobs are also available.

Back in the 60s, showing Super 8 movies on a sheet was just about as good as using that projection screen you tucked away into a closet.  Over 50 years, the movie experience has changed vastly with digital projection coupled with amazing innovations in screen surface technology.

Screen Innovations is a company whose name says it all.  Their Black Diamond screen does a fantastic job of creating the kind of luminous visibility you'd love to find with your video projection by night OR by day!  Its easier if we just let you see the difference for yourself.

Typical Daytime Lighting

(Click the picture below for a quick demo of Black Diamond in brightly lit areas)

 

Typical Evening Lighting

(Click the picture below for a quick demo of Black Diamond in softly lit areas)

Pretty convincing don't you think?  So creating your own home theater doesn't mean having to add on a windowless room.  With the right screen, an unused room can now serve as your movie room without the need for boarding the windows, installing blackout drapes and killing all the lights.

Call us if you'd like to learn more.

by Bryan Naquin.  Follow Bryan on Twitter @ACIexperts.  And you can always contact him at 225.906.2589 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Bryan Naquin is president of Acadian Home Theater and Automation based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  CEPro Magazine has ranked Acadian in the top 100 consumer electronic companies in the U.S. for the third year in a row.

The newest technology in TVs is clearly 4K...no pun intended!  That's because 4K (aka Ultra HD) is simply HD quality at twice the number of pixels both horizontally AND vertically.  So 4K is HD resolution multiplied times four!  Put another way, 4K compresses four times the pixels in the same amount of space that Hi Def does.

Why is that important?  Well, if you prefer smaller screens and have a smaller room where you watch TV, its not important, quite frankly.  But the clear trend is people buying ever larger TVs.

Some TVs might feel like jumbotrons in an ordinary room!  But that kind of size is what it takes to have a great media room or home theater experience.  The problem is when the same number of HD pixels are stretched over  increasingly larger formats, the appearance can become ever so slightly grainier.  4K solves that!  There's also 8K out there that doubles resolution yet again to near IMAX clarity, but that's another story.

Like any newly released technology, most media content isn't yet formatted for that resolution, but the content IS already out there.  Blu-rays are already capable of 4K content but nearly all agree the future of the 4K advancement is in streaming video.  Netflix, which already shoots its successful original series, House of Cards, in 4K recently offered that it plans to deliver 4K content within the next two years.  Sony already has a big investment in 4K by way of the cameras they sell to the movie and television industries and the projectors they produce for theaters.

So 4K is not a fad, but neither is it for everyone right now.  Still, when you consider "upsizing" your video experience, you will definitely want to keep 4K as a strong contender in your plans.