With changes in demographics and unemployment peaking at unheard of levels there appears to be an oversupply of home entertainment retailers in Ottawa.

As of this writing we are surrounded by 14 of these retailers within 1 km. Plus, with cheap long distance rates we compete with 5,553 home entertainment dealers across North America.

We must continue to differentiate ourselves from the "wanna-be's" who sell based on - "they have the best price!"

As a result, we continue to do the most intensive training program at a retail level in Canada.

When the legendary film-maker George Lucas established the Skywalker Ranch to further the quest for innovative audio in movies, he created a school to educate retailers in the science of surround sound and home theatre.

Eight of our crew members have successfully completed the Lucas Film THX® Dealer Certification program. There are no other graduates in Ottawa.

Within the TV/Broadcast recovery industry, Joseph Kane Jr. is also legendary. He believes that the North American broadcast standard (NTSC) is quite good. The weakness lies with individuals not doing their best.

Let's start with a little background. This system was set out on paper, by mathematicians, in 1953. Their ideal system was not easily implemented. In fact there are still some parameters that we have difficulty implementing today. They have been set up as goals for the coming of HDTV. In the mean time, we've been improvising around some of the original ideas.

More than any other factor, the lack of a single workable standard for setting colour picture monitors to include monitor environment, has contributed to NTSC being known as "Never Twice the Same Colour". In the original concept of the NTSC system, the monitor was supposed to be a fixed device, with all variability controlled at the picture source. Several things went wrong with that concept.

green
	red
blue

First, usable green phosphors couldn't produce the ideal primary green point of the NTSC system. The right colour of green had a long decay time relative to the red and blue. It's the same green used in storage scopes. Basically, there was not a complete set of workable phosphers. Manufacturers produced picture tubes with whatever red, green, and blue phospherous they could make.

Second is the retail environment. Overly flourescent-lit stores with too many television sets competing for your attention. Manufacturers decided to dazzle the eye and numb the brain with extremely bright pictures.

As they attempted to out do each other, they moved from a specified color temperature of 6500-0K up to as much as 15,000-0K.

The result was an uncharacteristicly bright cool-blue picture without any natural colours.

This increased brightness caused "phosphorus-decay" on the inside of the picture tube. This actually means that your television set will wear out prematurely.

A Imaging Science Foundation Joe Kane Jr.'s solution was to run a school for retailers. He teaches the method of correctly calibrating TV sets.

Once again, Dewar's has successfully completed this course.

CEDIA is reg. trademark of Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association. ISF is reg. trademark of Imaging Science Foundation. Lucasfilm THX® is reg. trademark of Lucas Film. SMPTE is reg. trademark of Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

How do we select the products that we represent? Research and development.