Audio Video Installations: Rent Com Inc.: Audio Video Rental

Eye-popping video displays like synchronized videowalls and monitor systems are the lifeblood of Chicago-based Rent Com Inc., a company that takes the exhibitor's ideas and brings them to life with technology and technical expertise.

"We work with some of the most creative minds in the industry," says Dan Evans, Rent Com's rental sales manager. "And to meet their needs, our technical solutions have to be as creative and fresh as the ideas of the producers we work with. We have to think 'outside the box.'"

Evans recalls a job they did a couple of years ago that involved converting seven 40-passenger school buses into touring road shows. Installation included generators, stage lighting, permanently mounted and camouflaged speakers that were specially fitted to withstand the shocks of the road, head-worn and handheld wireless microphones and other equipment. The buses rolled out of Rent Com's facility fully equipped with everything the company needed to bring its new product to the "playgrounds of America" on an extended three-month tour.

A family-owned business that has served the audio/video industry with rental, sales, system design and installation services for more than 25 years, Rent Com and its sister company, RC Communications, are still managed by their original owners: Ron, Glen and Keith Steinberg.

Rent Com is a popular "Exhibitor Designated Contractor" (EDC), providing A/V equipment and services for exhibitors all over the country. From its 30,000-square-foot facility located near O'Hare Airport in Chicago, Rent Com serves many Fortune 100 companies and provides A/V support for tradeshows in all the major convention cities, including Orlando, Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. The company provides full crews for installation operation and dismantlement, and guarantees its work.

This year, some of the hottest technologies at Rent Com include sandwiched (back-to-back) thin, plasma-display panels, and FRED Systems. "FRED is an electronic signage distribution network capable of worldwide distribution that can be used with displays, such as plasma screens, video cubes or monitors to provide for instantaneous remote updating of any number of signs and graphics displays from one location," explains Evans.

Rent Com maintains a large inventory of equipment that can be shipped anywhere at a moment's notice. "We carry all kinds of large-screen computer-display devices, and every kind of video projection
technolgoy--from LCD to DLA, CRT and digital mirror (DMD)," says Evans.

Rent Com's inventory of more than 10,000 items also includes video switching and computer interfacing equipment, a complete line of audio and teleconferencing equipment, even a large selection of walkie-talkies and teleconferencing systems. As Jim Anderson, rental account executive, says, "It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."