Opening its doors in October 2013, the Union Street Café in London is a restaurant creation by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Serving up Mediterranean-inspired food from an open-theatre style kitchen, the five-star restaurant delivers a luxury dining experience in an industrial setting complete with ducting and concrete framing. A key feature of the Union Street Café is its Media Room, a private, intimate dining room for business meetings and private lunches, which is decorated with work from local artists and outfitted with state-of-the-art A/V technology installed by London-based integrator Tateside Ltd.

In addition to Wi-Fi^® and HDMI^® and VGA laptop connections, the Media Room is equipped with a 60-inch Panasonic display, Onkyo TX-NR1010 A/V receiver, Artcoustic surround sound system with hidden in-wall subwoofer, c-burn music server, Mode Lighting system, Apple^® TV, and Blu-Ray™ player. With all of this high-end equipment in place, one of the most important aspects of the room became system control. For that task, Tateside chose RTI.

“Providing simple, intuitive control over all aspects of the Media Room was essential,” said Jack Cornish, project manager for Tateside Ltd. “A wide range of users would be operating the system without technical assistance, and all of them would be completely unfamiliar with it. So it was important that it was as easy to use as possible. To provide this level of control, we utilized solutions from RTI, which beat out the competition due to their high functionality and low price point.”

The Media Room control system is powered by RTI’s XP-6 control processor, which offers a variety of control options to meet the Union ’afé's needs, including IP control for the Onkyo A/V receiver; IR for the display, Blu-Ray player, and Apple TV; and built-in RS-232 for the Mode Lighting system. The XP-6 utilizes a two-way driver for seamless integration with the Onkyo receiver, providing users with instant feedback from the unit on the room’s control interfaces. When the system is powered down, the XP-6 automatically resets the Onkyo receiver to a specified volume so that it won’t be too loud or quiet when the next user turns it on.

Users interact with the technology via an iPad^® running RTI’s RTiPanel app or the KX-7 in-wall touchpanel. To ensure a consistent control experience, both control devices feature an identical user interface. Each element of the interface was created in Photoshop^® to reflect the venue’s branding and design aesthetics. Easy to navigate, users are presented with a graphical layout of the room and simple source selection options. If needed, a “help” page guides them through connecting a laptop to the system via HDMI or VGA.

“The client is very pleased with the technology in the Media Room, from the power of the sound system to how simple it is to control all the equipment,” added Cornish. “They’ve also received very positive feedback on the system’s performance. The customized graphical interface is a hit, and users haven’t had any trouble operating the system.”