Demo Alley Review: Who Won and Why

Taking a cue from President-elect Barack Obama, this year's Demo Alley was all about change.

Replacing the endless line of theater exhibits were multiroom audio sessions from OnQ/Legrand, home control demos from Lifeware and video-only displays from JVC.

Collectively, each of the rooms stepped up their games by providing some informative and entertaining demonstrations. The clear winners were the attendees who visited Demo Alley.

AVAD, which clearly learned from its past experiences and vendor partners like Atlantic Technology, put forth an excellent demo presentation that highlighted its product knowledge, its stable of brands and its educational capabilities.

This helped it win 2 Best of Demo Alley awards: Most Informative Audio Demo and Most Informative Video Demo.

The following are my thoughts on each of the rooms.

AVAD Hits a Homerun with Quality Demo

AVAD demonstrated two systems using a selection of its brands. The first system features electronics from Marantz, a 103-inch plasma from Panasonic, the 8200e speaker system from Atlantic Technology and a Philips TS9600 Pronto remote to control Lutron lighting.

The second demonstration system was more a technology showcase using two RS projectors from JVC. Using 3D content, each attendee was provided some 3D glasses to view a movie trailer that featured undersea animation and a clip from "Beowolf."

AVAD's presenter was enthusiastic and informative as she explained what we were about to experience, what to look for and the client and end user benefits of the system.

She later explained the profit potential of offering a 3D system and how it could be installed using the lens shift capabilities of the JVC projectors.

The demo was a homerun on every aspect we evaluate a quality demo; it was entertaining, informative and it provided a nice takeaway for consumers and installers.

This is the type of demo I would expect from one of the nation's largest distribution companies. As an outsider to AVAD, I hope this demo translates to their offices throughout the country to help installers sell their solutions.

OnQ/Legrand Focuses on Training

I chose not to include OnQ/Legrand in the Demo Alley competition because the company was running two-hour training classes for its Lyric product line.

OnQ/Legrand's use of the room in the opinion in my opinion and the rest of the judges did not lend itself to comparison with the other rooms.

Lifeware Lives Up to the Challenge

Taking on what may have been maybe the biggest challenge in the entire show, Lifeware demonstrated the ease of its automation programming.

Using two demo room setups -- a home theater with lighting and HVAC and a smaller living room environment -- Lifeware showed how quickly an installer can use its drag-and-drop software to set scenes, set room temperatures and access Media Center entertainment files as an end user would.

Comparing home control to traditional theater is a difficult task because of the obvious sizzle that home theater offers with music and movies.

However, I found Lifeware's demo to be informative and organized. I believe that its end user aspects would easily translate to a showroom demo that installers could employ.

Onkyo, Atlantic Technology, Mitsubishi, Draper Labs and Dolby Labs Offer Affordable Demo

I found it interesting to sit through AVAD's and Onkyo's demo rooms because they were very similar.

There were several differences, however. The total cost of the system in Onkyo's room checked in under $20,000, and they used "Eleanor Rigby" from the Beatles' "Love" disc in the demo.

The reason why I mention the system cost is because it was significantly less than any other demo, proving that consumers don't have to pull a second mortgage in these tough times to enjoy a quality theater.

Walking through the demo process, Atlantic Tech's Peter Tribeman briefly explained each component, why they chose to work with Dolby Labs and what to look for within the demos.

I found the Beatles cut to be excellent with the surround mix panning the instruments hard to each side of the sound stage and for revealing how the engineers felt about placing a dry vocal track in the center channel.

Overall, the only point that was missed was the video combination was hot spotting slightly just to the left of center on the screen. Other than the hot spotting, the image looked great and the whole experience was fun, which is of course the ultimate goal of any demonstration.

JVC's Projectors Speak for Themselves

Running a simple but completely effective room, JVC kept its demo straightforward: one RS2 projector and one DLA-RS20 projector.

I was disappointed that the demos weren't more organized to explain what content we were seeing, but the images produced by the projectors are so stunning they practically spoke for themselves.

There's no disputing that JVC's projectors are some of the best projectors on the market and that I would love to see one under my tree this holiday season, but with a little explanation about the products and some audio to tie everything together, JVC could have made a bigger impression on show attendees.

With that said there was no doubt which room had the best video on the floor.