About Us
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Our story
About Wicked Home Theater
Back in 1977, a 16 year old teenager went and saw a sci-fi film called, “Star Wars”. He loved the movie so much he watched it another 11 times in the theater. To him, it was amazing, and at that time he wanted everyone to have that same chill down the back of the neck that he had when the Star Destroyer flew over his head the first time. Now it did take another 29 years to start that realization (little things like the US Army and computers got in the way), but in 2006, Wicked Home Theater became a reality.
After starting PC Networks in 2002, and Wicked Machines (high end computer gaming systems, audio/video composition/editing systems, visual effects workstations) in 2003, the thought of going into the home theater business was not really at the forefront. Primarily because at that point in time, the Audio/Video industry had not settled on a communication protocol and was still dependent upon Infrared (IR) and Radio Frequency (RF) to communicate. They also had a communication protocol called AtBus, which some companies used. Finally in 2005 they discovered, ethernet and TCP/IP (even though it had been a standard for over a decade with computers). At this point in time, Paul Clemmons, founder and president of PC Networks Inc, decided to throw his hat into the AV/Home Theater realm.
Our Story
The Bet
2005/2006 was the year the Seattle Seahawks made a successful run to the Super Bowl. During the playoffs, Paul made a wager with his wife, Veronica, that if the Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl, he could get a new TV. They made it (and lost to the Pittsburg Stealers) and Paul got a 62″ rear projection TV by Mitsubishi. Mind you the average TV size at that point was 40″. At the same time, Magnolia Hi-Fi was being bought by Best Buy and all the contracts for their premiere products (Mitsubishi Diamond, Klipsch Reference Premiere, Denon, and Yamaha) were up for grabs, as Best Buy has the lower end products already and the manufacturers wanted a company other than Best Buy to sell and service their higher end products. This is when Wicked Home Theater was established. With our background in computer networking and gaming, this was a great way to experience gaming at a whole new level.
Our Story
Early Years
The first few years, Home Theaters were not the focus of PC Networks, it was in computers and computer support. Home theaters were something that if the opportunity came up, we could handle, from simple TV and projector installations, and some of the first Sonos installations in the Pacific Northwest. Because the use of wireless and wired IP networks was not wide spread in AV, these installations were not complicated. This was also the time of building up relationships between the company and manufacturers and distributors. We were very picky about who we partnered with, as support was a key element to every selection. Even if a company had a great product, if it had a high failure rate, or had crappy service, we would drop them and hopefully at a later date, would improve. This was what happened with Optoma and Sonos. Both when we started had great products, but the support was severely lacking. We had a 10 year break with Optoma over this very reason, in which they were able to significantly improve.
It starts with you
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Disabled, veteran owned, local business. Wicked Home Theater is a subdivision of PC Networks, Inc. celebrating it's 21st year in business.
