Did the many dozens of distributors who carry RTI, who will also sign up anyone (with no opening order I might add) all of the sudden become more selective?

Many of you raise some great points. Control systems are a unique animal in the AV industry. People get very emotional, defensive, and even critical of their own control lines. Yes, some other products, like speakers, matrix switchers, cables, AVR, amplifiers, etc. they will switch in and out of without any concern. This is actually a topic for a blog I am currently writing, but some of the reasons are because when selecting a control system you are making a commitment to learn, train, sell, and put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, no matter what the line. You are also making a sacrifice - because let's face it, every control system you select, you are gaining some advantages, and making some sacrifices. But if we weigh in on what these are, then the "better" control system is just relative to the dealer's needs. If they were all created equal, we wouldn't be as passionate about this subject.

In terms of RTI, my job is to not run around and discrediting control systems. My main objective is to discuss the advantages we offer, and to be honest, to clear up some of the misconceptions by bringing people who may have old information up to speed. At the end of the day, everyone is going to pick the system that caters to their clientele, level of technical experience, profitability, and what they can do to set themselves apart from the competition. Obviously, there are other factors like return policy, support, quotas, sales pressure, etc. and all of this goes into the research. Because of the passion dealers have with control systems, however, and this is unfortunate, it is hard to get a fair analysis of any control system company, or at least one with a high degree of accuracy.

Truer words never spoken!

Vincent, RTI / Pro Control has had way to many failures for me to even to remotely think of going back to them. I counted in my last year with them, 75% needed a return visit, base station fail, screen fails etc. Yes, I got an advance replacement, but nobody pays for my services calls. Nobody compensates my unhappy clients.

There is no other company I despise more right now.

I know RTI is trying to change, but until your quality improves you are going to be fighting a uphill battle.

1 - That's one reason why I never wanted to pick up C4. I have friends who install tons of it, but they're employees - they're not running their own companies. Once you're on that side of the fence, maintaining the jobs for the long term becomes a major consideration.

The market I work in has me doing only 2 or 3 major jobs each year. They're big, slow jobs. Probably not enough activity to stay on with C4.

2 - That's another reason...where I'm at, there's gotta be 10-15 dealers serving this area.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

LOL. :)

See, someone else just posted "15 c4 dealers in my area". Why would someone want to make it 16.

And how many in that are are URC or RTI "dealers". I bet you will never know because those products are obtained from distribution and available to even more Tom's, Dick's and Harry's.

Not Total Control, tweet. Direct only. Its a blessing and curse that URC has such small market share.

Cant compare URC CCP to RTI/C4/TC/Elan etc. I couldnt care less who sells CCP in my market.

i Understand RTI being offended by this thread, but the reality is their product is a PIA to work with. On top of it being more complicated to program than C4 or Elan, to do it correctly, you have to also be a graphics designer. I don’t feel like having to learn photoshop to create a full icon set to program an average system. And then after the remotes are done, you have to build the tablet interfaces. Then when something goes bad and the original dealer skips town, the client is *&$#ed because the programming can’t be extracted for the phone and tablet interfaces.

I tried URC TC. I found it a little better than RTI and Complete Control. But it was still a bit cumbersome to get through. I don’t know how it’s mobile device interface setup is, because I never got to that point. The touch screen and music server were so slow, we boxed it up and sent it all back.

| i Understand RTI being offended by this thread, but the reality is their product is a PIA to work with. On top of it being more complicated to program than C4 or Elan, to do it correctly, you have to also be a graphics designer.

Everyone has a right to their opinion, and we all have individual skills and expectations. However, I want to separate the opinion from the actual facts. RTI does not require any skills in Photoshop whatsoever. Before going to RTI, I made a good living as a programmer and programmed various control systems without any knowledge of Photoshop. Having certain skills in some type of graphics software is great if you want to develop your own graphics, but besides built-in graphics and stock templates, here are some resources available:

[Link: blackmancustoms.com]
[Link: customcodecrafters.com]
[Link: kuhnmedia.de]

There are many other resources and sources for graphics.

As far as being more complicated than other control systems, it is important not to confuse "complicated" with "custom". If you go and buy anything with the word "custom" in it, chances are there is another level of work involved. The reward is that you separate your interface or product, and can steal a job or two even when the installer you are competing against is offering the same exact system. It also allows you to get into jobs you otherwise can't and tap markets where an opportunity arises. However, not sure if have seen our new platform which takes all the complicated tasks away and is getting better which each version. However, don't take my word for the programming speed. If you have a dealer account, I will happily send you a video which shows a five source, one room solution with an iPad and touchscreen controller fully programmed and customized in about 25 minutes. (IP control and all else).

I don’t feel like having to learn photoshop to create a full icon set to program an average system. And then after the remotes are done, you have to build the tablet interfaces. Then when something goes bad and the original dealer skips town, the client is *&$#ed because the programming can’t be extracted for the phone and tablet interfaces.

No photoshop necessary! Wish I knew it, but never needed to. While it is true that the programming cannot be extracted, most installers decide to lock up their systems anyway, which they have the right. We are moving towards the cloud, so this may be something that is possible in the future, but in my opinion, if the person who programmed the system is the type to do that to a client, his programming is probably negligible and you might want to take over the system anyway. You don't want to inherit his problems. I don't know many control platforms where this is possible in all cases.


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I can't really speak to problems or issues you have had with other companies, but we are very proud of our music distribution and ability to integrate with just about anything. If our software engineers wanted to create a wizard-like programming platform that programs in less time and removes the ability to customize, we would probably do it. But we want to be a fully customizable platform that offers an automated side as well. I think we have that with our new platform and it is something we are very excited about. If you give me a call I would love to be able to show you some of these features and speak to some of these comments.

At the end of the day, control systems are designed with different attributes and features and may or may not appeal to everyone. Everyone offers distinct advantages, and there are always caveats and obstacles. One thing in common is that they do evolve over time, and I always try to clear up any information that might need to be refreshed.

In TC 2.0 you create one device layout, it spreads out to all TC 2.0 devices. Pretty simple actually.

It may be cumbersome, I dont know really. Its all we've done and I just know the in and outs. I might find all others cumbersome at first until i figure it out. After I learned it, I may very well say "oh my god that is easier!" lol. But, what we do now is not hard and i surely have no desire to bring on another line and learn it. I think it a big hurdle for manufacturers. There are only and will always only be a set number of dealers, thus their growth comes from getting dealers to switch. Aint happening for me. Not worth it. Zero desire to start over lol. I would hate to be a control manf rep.

Vincent, you can say that no photoshop skills are required, and technically that’s true. But the reality is that RTI has never provided a complete set of icons for one theme in their library for all the normal sources. Their defense for this has always been the same “we are a custom solution” defense you just used and that dealers can make their own icons.

As for the “custom” thing, not once have I ever had a problem with elan over a customer wanting me to change the interface in a way that I couldn’t do it. That argument has come and gone. You guys need to catch up with the times.

As for speed, I can have a whole house system (6 to 12 zones, 6 or 7 sources) programmed and working in less than your 25 minutes. I could probably have climate and security with door locks included in your 25 minute mark. With Elan’s new cameras and NVR, include surveillance too. And, it has NVR play back inside the Elan interface. I don’t think anyone else has NVR play back through their control system.

I hope that this will be optional. I don't like to do programming in the cloud because the cloud slows things and I often work in areas that don't have any practical connection or the connection is very slow. Having the ability to (optionally) save a copy of the program in an RTI administered cloud would be handy as a backup and could allow program recovery by an abandoned customer.

I was never a fan of RTI either. Just didn't like the way it programmed compared to Control4 or even URC. It felt very cumbersome to me.

Also was not impressed with RTI tech support. Time after time the TS folks were pretty arrogant and nasty. Never experienced that level of offensiveness before with tech support calls. This was a few years back and it really turned me off to the brand as well.