New Industry Products

Rotel Introduces APC-Produced Power Conditioners

April 19, 2006 by Jeff Shepard

Rotel Electronics has introduced two new power conditioners developed by American Power Conversion Corp. (APC), the RLC-1080 and the RLC-1040 for high-performance home entertainment systems. Both models provide complete system protection against spikes, brownouts, over-voltages, and RFI noise. In addition, the RLC-1080 can serve as a continuous backup power supply with the addition of extra battery modules.

"Rotel is dedicated to offering its customers a complete suite of audio/video components that succeed in creating that first-hand experience A/V enthusiasts crave," said Mike Bartlett, Rotel's North American vice president. "Knowing that power disturbances can ruin that experience, we are pleased to offer high-performance power-protection solutions. In a co-project with APC (American Power Conversion), the proven global leader in power-protection products, Rotel has developed a solution with which its customers can protect and maximize their systems with a choice of two new high-end line conditioners that match the look and feel of their other components."

Many power conditioners deal only with the electrical supply. But it's not just the power-supply connections to your A/V components that need protecting—it's very common for surges and spikes to enter a system over coaxial, telephone, or Ethernet lines. Rotel's low-insertion-loss protection jacks provide complete protection at all of these entry points. Three pairs of coax jacks are included to protect CATV, satellite, and antenna lines. The RLC-1080 also includes a low-insertion-loss splitter to facilitate splitting a coax line to both a CATV box and a cable modem, for those who have broadband service provided by their cable TV provider.

The RLC-1080 is based on APC's S-15 model and is designed to protect very-high-performance home entertainment systems. It will ensure uninterrupted power, to make any electronics system perform flawlessly. In the event of a complete power outage, or extremely deep power sag or over-voltage situation, the RLC-1080 power conditioner with internal battery backup will instantaneously provide pure-sinewave power from its internal batteries for up to 7.5 minutes with a full load, and for up to 24 minutes with a half load. That's plenty of time to shut down the entertainment system.

In addition to the RLC-1080's built-in emergency batteries, this model comes with the option of adding external batteries to extend the system's working time to a full 70 minutes at full load or 140 minutes at half load. With this option, you could continue watching most movies to the end, even if the power didn't come back on in time.

The RLC-1040. based on APC's H-15 power conditioner, is identical to the RLC-1080, with all of the same critical power conditioning, filtering, custom features, and audible and visual warnings, but does not include internal or external battery backup.

Both the RLC-1080 and RLC-1040 are currently available. Suggested retail prices are $1,599 for the RLC-1080, $699 for the RBB1080 additional backup battery and $499 for the RLC-1040.