LG Announces First TV with Control4 Automation Built in

LG Electronics is launching TVs with Control4 automation built in.

The manufacturer is the first to incorporate the Control4 operating system into TV sets, giving the automation vendor a boost in its quest to become the "home OS."

Control4 CEO Will West, noting the LG demonstration in Control4's partner pavilion at CES 2009, says, "There's no Control4 controller in the booth. It's built in. The product is done. That's real hardware."

The LG TVs, however, are not geared towards the consumer market at this time. They are coming from LG's commercial division and will most likely work their way into hotels and boardrooms.

"They haven't announced anything on residential," West says, "but they tell us that most of their consumer products start with commercial."

The other big CE vendor in Control4's partner pavilion is Panasonic, which has incorporated Control4 in some of its PBX telephone systems.

Demonstrated for the first time at CEDIA in September, the phone interface has vastly improved, according to business development manager Larry Hershkowitz.

"Since CEDIA, we have tightened integration," he says. "We are 100-percent replicating the [Control4] remote."

Using navigation buttons and the LCD screens on the Panasonic phones, users can browse the various menu items, including music, automation scenes and thermostats.

Metadata such as songs and artists are displayed on the screen.

Users can even program the hard buttons on the Panasonic phones to launch scenes, like "Dad's Playlist." The phones, then, become just another (very large) keypad in a Control4 network.

The beauty of the Panasonic solution is that "we are creating an intercom system that Control4 doesn't have," Hershkowitz says.