Jim Hardiman Joins The AVC Group as Vice President of Engineering

Moving strategically to strengthen the long-term R&D and product development programs for its ELAN®, NILES®, Xantech®, Sunfire®, and ATON® brands, The AVC Group today announced the appointment of Jim Hardiman to the position of Vice President of Engineering, effective January 3, 2011. Hardiman will report directly to Mark Terry, President of The AVC Group, and will be based at the company’s Carlsbad, California corporate headquarters.

“Jim Hardiman brings more than 35 years of proven innovation and standards-setting thinking to his new position at The AVC Group,” Terry said today. “A world-renowned technologist, Jim’s work over the years has advanced the state-of-the-art in countless product categories. As our new Vice President of Engineering, he will play a critical role in developing and deploying new technologies throughout each of our brands, resulting in a new generation of system solutions that offer clearly defined value propositions to our dealers and consumers.”

Jim Hardiman comes to The AVC Group from Harman International, where he served as Vice President of Engineering for the Harman Specialty Group from 2005 until 2008 and then as Vice President, Consumer Global Engineering for Harman International — Consumer Group. Prior to this, from 2000 until 2005, he served as Vice President of Hardware Engineering at ThinkEngine Networks, a leading manufacturer of cost-effective, highly scalable carrier-class NEBS3 compliant Network Media Servers with intelligent switching and speech recognition.

Prior to this he served as Director of Advanced Development from 1992 until 2000 at Media 100, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Previous to this he held engineering and product development positions at Data Translation, Digital Television Imagery, Integral Data Systems, and Data General.

An active member of AES, AVB, China Professionals, and the HDTV Group, among others, Jim Hardiman is the recipient of three United States patents in the area of video compression and decompression and a 2000 Emmy® for Television Sciences awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the pioneering development of full motion broadcast quality PC video and compression plug-in cards utilized in the manufacture of non-linear editing systems or video servers.

Bob Farinelli, who had served as Chief Technology Officer of The AVC Group and, previously, as President of ELAN Home Systems is retiring but will remain with the Group as a consultant.

About The AVC Group, LLC:
Headquartered in Carlsbad, California, The AVC Group, LLC is a portfolio of pre-eminent manufacturers and marketers of state-of-the-art consumer and commercial audio, video, and control system solutions. The AVC Group is comprised of a group of companies with the following industry leading brands: ATON®, ELAN® Home Systems, Niles® Audio, Sunfire®, and Xantech®.

The AVC Group, LLC is a subsidiary of Nortek, Inc. and is part of Nortek’s Home Technology Group, an over-arching designation for a segment of home electronics companies that includes manufacturers producing nationally-recognized brands in categories such as stereo and home theater speakers, distributed audio and video systems, lighting controls, structured wiring systems, residential and commercial security and access control equipment, and Internet connected media products. Nortek is headquartered in Providence, RI and is a worldwide manufacturer and distributor of innovative, branded residential and commercial ventilation, HVAC, and home technology convenience and security products.