Some projects are years in the making. That was the case for a project designed by Vision Audio of Lubbock, Texas. But these projects can also pay off. The immense installation the company performed, for an almost palatial residence in their own hometown, won the company the 2009 Windows Media Center Ultimate Install Contest, which is annually awarded by the Media Center Integrator Alliance (MCIA) and Microsoft.

The project, a new home construction, took four years to complete. Vision Audio was there from the beginning. “I involve us so deeply in these projects, we have our own set of blue prints that go [with the master blue prints] that include all the wiring schematics, etc,” says Dustin Anderson, general manager at Vision Audio. “I worked with the owners the builders, the architect, and the interior designer from day one.”

Though actual installation of the electronics did not take a full four years, Anderson said the high demands of the clients, who were very particular, made every step of the project detailed. The end result was a very intricate and tailored whole-home experience.

The clients wanted their 17,000-square-foot home to network and control a number of different things, from entertainment content, to private family content to home automation controls. For this reason some features from the original plan had to be altered. “We had to switch a lot of the servers over from Kaleidescape to Niveus and Media Center because the family wanted to store a lot of home videos and photos, and access them on the network,” says Anderson.

Crestron controls and a Media Center network provide the backbone of the home’s CE network. Using control pads installed throughout the house, the homeowners can access and operate any of the A/V system and HVAC controls, as well as the home’s security systems and cameras. User interfaces include Internet access, and the pool controls are also integrated into the network. Access can happen on just about any interface—on one of the 13 displays in the home, touch screen control pads, remotes and PCs.

Anderson integrated all of the subsystems through Crestron products and all of the entertainment devices using Autonomic software. Autonomic’s Mirage Media Control software is running on multiple Niveus Pro Series Servers, (five n4 servers and a single n7 server) enabling Crestron and web-browser control of media playback on the servers. The house also has the ability for wireless connectivity, as well. “A lot of control panels are running on wireless,” he notes, “but as long as we can stick to wired I like to do that because of the reliability.”

In total the project integrates six Windows Media Center servers, one Windows Home Server, five dedicated theater-style rooms, 12 media racks, 98 speakers, and 30 zones of distributed audio; the Lubbock, Texas home includes products from key MCIA member companies such as Autonomic Controls, Crestron and Niveus Media.

The main home theater of the home was very high-end, using Runco projection and a California Audio Technology’s (CAT) MBX system. The project wasn’t without its challenges. Anderson says one of the biggest problems was that the architect, who had drawn the original blue prints almost six years prior to actual completion, did not make the home theater room large enough. Vision Audio had to move a wall about eight feet. “That ruffled the architect’s feathers a little, but overall working with (the other contractors) went great," he says.