Sam Runco, Sandy Bloomberg Inducted into CE Hall of Fame

When I first read this I thought it said “Indicted” not “Inducted” which makes for a much funnier story.

All kidding aside, congratulations to all of them. Sam’s a great guy, and has always been a friend to CE journalists.

And a special shout out to friends Ivan and Lance.

Grant, you must be thinking of Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco fame. We have a feature coming up based on a recent interview from his jail. No joke.

Then don’t forget to ask Dennis about the connection from Tyco to Smart House.  One of the first, but not the last, attempts at franchising in this industry.  He probably doesn’t even realize the impact (or lack thereof) that he had on the history of home automation.

Kudos to all of the inductees, but particularly to high performance pioneers Sam Runco and Sandy Bloomberg. Your inclusion is long overdue and all of us who have had the honor and pleasure of working with you are better for the experience.

What a privilege it was for my wife Cindy and I to be in San Diego for Sam’s induction into the CE Hall of Fame this week.
I can’t overstate the impact Runco has had on my professional life. In 1993 Joe Frattasi (Big Apple Audio) introduced me to Sam and his Executive VP, John DeSilva, (both soon to be CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award winners). My fledgling new Rep firm was off to the Home Theater races. In his acceptance speech in between the funny ‘how I met my wife’ stories, Sam outlined what he saw as the Runco milestones; 1. earliest big screen TV’s for sports bars and homes, 2. the Super IDTV 800 line doubled system (the first Runco system I ever sold), 3. the ARCIV aspect ratio controller which included the 1.85:1 Academy flat cinema format, and 4. the DTV-852 first integrated line doubled projection system with AR control. We all recalled an impressive past through these products that shaped the first decade of home theater design. But for me no milestone in Runco history had more impact than the introduction of our CineWide system (first demonstrated at CES 2003). It used the anamorphic process of Fox CinemaScope to allow us to design theatrical format screening rooms for the first time. CineWide put all of Sam’s passion into focus; it was a passion to be better than real cinema, and today, thanks to CineWide, we are truly there. At the 3-chip reference DLP level we have duplicated the professional cinema viewing experience in geometrical terms for the first time. Image quality superiority over commercial cinema has be a given from Runco for more than a decade, but it is only since CineWide and the arrival of 3-chip DLP at the 1080p level that we’ve been able to compare our residential rooms directly to the viewing experience of the Samuel Goldwyn Academy Theater from rows 9 through 18 (the SGAT is a reference 24 row, 1,000 seat movie palace in Hollywood). Before CineWide we were watching home cinema as if from rows 20 to 24!
Designing residential screening rooms based on the best experience professional cinema can offer has become a passion of mine, a disease of sorts, which I caught from Sam. As founder of the Society of Personal Cinema Architects, my dealers and I are now designing screens into 18’x24’ rooms that are 7’ high by 16’ wide using the latest Runco projection engines. And they are Cinematically spectacular to behold.
So congratulations to Sam, Lori, Sara, Sammy and Nicky; from our family to yours. What a night it was to enjoy. I myself was there to honor the name and the man who literally; Brought Hollywood Home for our high end segment within a great CE industry.
Congrats also to my friends and colleagues who were also inducted; Sandy Bloomberg, Ivan Berger, and Lance Braithwaite.  It was a fun occasion to witness leaders of our specialty business as they were all honored by the industry at large. As Sandy said, ‘we ain’t selling insurance policies, we sell something that gives our customers a thrill’. Those are words worth remembering.
John Bishop b/a/s/
Personal Cinema Architect