madAssist Takes madVR Envy Support Into Wild New Territory

Todd Anderson · 2026-08-30T21:48:55-0500

(August 30, 2026) madVR Labs has been on a serious run. Over the last several years, the company has continued to advance its Envy platform with features that represent meaningful leaps in how a video processor can enhance the home theater experience. Last year at Audio Advice Live 2025, that story centered on Dynamic Subtitle Overlay (DSO). Now, with CEDIA Expo 2026 set to open in Denver, madVR is turning its attention to an AI-powered product expert that could make one of the industry’s most powerful video processors easier to understand, optimize, and support.

It’s called madAssist, and it might be one of the more important AV product announcements we see this year. madVR Labs describes madAssist as the A/V industry’s first AI Product Expert for complex products, a patent-pending platform built to answer questions, guide users through expert-designed processes, and, when connected to a supported product, analyze and configure that product directly. That last part is the sizzle. This isn’t just a chatbot sitting on top of a PDF library. It’s an AI-powered assistant designed to understand a product ecosystem, walk users through complex decisions, and, with permission, actually help execute changes.

Launching now with support for the madVR Envy video processor, madAssist gives Envy owners, dealers, integrators, sales teams, and support personnel a 24/7 product expert that can assist across nearly every stage of ownership. Before a purchase, it can answer questions about compatibility and system design. During setup, it can guide users through system-specific recommendations. During ownership, it can explain features, assist with optimization, troubleshoot problems, and help users make sense of the Envy’s deeper capabilities.

Envy is one of those rare products that can be simple on the surface and incredibly deep once you start peeling back layers. At its most basic level, it’s built to make video look better and make theater operation more seamless. But under the hood, Envy offers a remarkable amount of control over dynamic tone mapping, aspect-ratio management, subtitle handling, motion processing, image enhancement, and installation-specific adjustments. madVR already supports owners with its excellent Envy Academy video series, which remains free and incredibly useful. madAssist takes that idea and pushes it into an entirely new category.

madVR Labs built madAssist after searching the rapidly expanding market for AI bots and general-purpose platforms and coming away unsatisfied. The company says typical chatbots can search documents and generate plausible answers, but they aren’t designed to combine manufacturer-curated knowledge, support experience, guided walkthroughs, messaging control, and direct product interaction. So madVR built its own platform from the ground up.

“We are fortunate to have technical experts who are among the best in our industry, but no human team can be available to every customer and dealer across every time zone, every minute of every day,” said Richard Litofsky, Co-founder and CEO of madVR Labs. “madAssist extends their knowledge and reach so people can get expert help on their own timeline. With the Envy, it goes even further by analyzing the product’s configuration, recommending the right settings and, with the user’s approval, applying those changes automatically.”

For Envy owners, the most exciting part is the integration with Envy Commander, madVR Labs’ upcoming web-based interface for controlling and configuring Envy. That integration is already operational for authorized participants in Commander’s private beta. Through natural conversation, madAssist can securely connect to an authorized Envy, analyze and explain its current settings, identify potential issues, recommend changes, apply approved changes, switch profiles, report firmware status, and download a backup of the complete configuration.

Sweet, right?

You might want to read that again, because the concept is wild, but also almost expected from madVR at this point. An owner or dealer can ask a product-specific AI assistant what is going on inside a processor, have it inspect the configuration, explain what it finds, recommend a better path, and then make approved changes through Commander. For advanced users, that could mean faster experimentation and better documentation. For dealers, it could mean less time chasing obscure setup issues. For owners, it could mean gaining access to expert-level configuration help without needing to understand every hidden layer of a sophisticated product.

The roadmap goes even further. In a future update, madAssist will ask about the customer’s equipment and viewing preferences and, with permission, automatically perform a complete, expert-level Envy setup tailored to that system. That includes taking into account the display, AV sources, AVR or processor, system integration, and viewing preferences, including whether the user favors a more purist presentation or a more enhanced image. If madVR executes this well, it could be a huge step toward making high-performance video processing more approachable without stripping away the power that makes Envy special in the first place.

Julian Scott, Cinema Specialist at Habitech Ltd., the exclusive distributor for madVR Envy in the United Kingdom, has already been using madAssist. “The Envy has always stood out for its best-in-class performance and madVR Labs’ rapid pace of innovation, and madAssist takes that innovation in a genuinely new direction,” Scott said. “I’ve used it extensively over the past few months, and its depth of product knowledge is superb. It helped me isolate and resolve challenging EDID and HDMI 2.1 issues while getting MotionAI dialed in, then produced a clear, client-ready report. I can see madAssist saving dealers and support teams tremendous time while helping them deliver an outstanding customer experience.”

The bigger industry story might be just as interesting. madAssist is launching with Envy, but madVR Labs says the platform is also available to other A/V manufacturers with complex products. Those manufacturers can receive branded deployments built around their own products, knowledge, support workflows, policies, and brand voice. Where suitable APIs or control platforms are available, madAssist can also analyze and configure those products, perform authorized actions, verify the result, and document the outcome.

madAssist will be demonstrated at CEDIA Expo 2026, September 2 through 4, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, inside madVR Labs Booth 2047. Attendees will be able to see it answer everyday and advanced questions, guide setup and troubleshooting, analyze an Envy configuration, recommend and apply settings through Commander, show each action live through Follow Mode, revert changes after experimentation, and document the outcome.

madVR Labs will also demonstrate several other Envy technologies at the show, including Dynamic Subtitle Overlay, MotionAI, patented HDR Dynamic Tone Mapping, AI-powered image enhancement, instant aspect-ratio management, and the popular Envy Core with high-end televisions. Dynamic Subtitle Overlay is especially worth seeing in person, because it solves a real-world projection issue by keeping subtitles visible while integrating them more naturally into the image and preserving contrast.

But make no mistake, madAssist is the headline. If DSO showed how madVR could keep finding smart ways to improve the viewing experience, madAssist shows the company thinking even bigger, not just about what Envy can do, but about how owners, dealers, and manufacturers interact with complex AV products in the first place. That’s revolutionary territory, folks.

You can try madAssist now at madassist.madvr.com. Manufacturers interested in madAssist launch partnerships can contact sales@madvr.com.

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madAssist Takes madVR Envy Support Into Wild New Territory

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