CE Pro Community

Is the Resi CI Business Hitting a Wall?

2009-09-22T21:27:24-06:00

I can’t help but think that CO vNet is the Bear Stearns of this group…a seemingly material casualty that pales in comparison to the dominoes yet to fall. Things to think of:

- On the capital availability side, both consumer and business credit remain tight and will likely continue to be tight for at least 9 more months (I’d guess 15-18).

- On the company liquidity side, most companies (mfrs and CI) set the goal in late ‘08 and early ‘09 to just make it through calendar 2009 ...that they had to do whatever it took to make their cash last through flat-to-negative sales growth. Some assumed NO new sales. But the model was about lasting through 2009. 2010 is about to hit and nothing’s really changed since 1/09 except 12 additional months of cash burn.

- On the consumer spending side, the savings rate has skyrocketed. There’s a fair argument that the recession has spawned a once-in-a-century change in spending habits (like the great depression). It will be a long time before homeowners buy as faithfully into the religion that home prices only go up and home equity loans are easy cash. (That won’t happen until long after that credit loosens again).

- The stock market recovery since March has been essentially a jobless recovery and appears to be somewhat unsustainable. Many are looking at a 10,000 DJIA level as a trigger for widespread profit-taking and a hair-trigger for a big slump on any bad news. Regardless of whether that’s legit, it will keep checkbooks dusty for a while on discretionary purchases.

- On the consumer behavior side, consumers love mobile gadgets—and they’re increasingly sacrificing quality for convenience and features. The gadgets are becoming increasingly sophisticated and extensible without the aid of a professional. They’re ubiquitous, interoperable, intuitive and highly functional. Who needs a whole-home audio system when you can just buy a few ipod docks. I know the response to that question, but it’s a harder and harder case to make—regardless of the economic environment.

So that’s the question: does the pace of pocket/mobile technology and the reticence of homeowners to invest in in-the-wall solutions indicate a non-cyclical contraction of the business?

I’d love to hear thoughtful responses (beyond the typical anecdotes and “Costco will never replace us” rhetoric). And I acknowledge that there are counter-arguments about certain consumers appreciating what we offer and our solutions being robust and time-tested. But that seems a bit defensive and in denial.

This business can always survive as a boutique business…but that can be said of nearly ANY business. The question is whether there is any sustainable scale left for custom over the next five years. If so, what does that scale business look like. If not, is there any role for CI guys in a pocket/mobile CE (or any other growing) ecosystem?

World Series Prediction: Red Sox Beat Dodgers

2009-10-07T10:01:24-06:00

Want to take a stab at your own prediction or call me crazy?

Posters who pick the series correctly will win a T-shirt from CE Pro (we have a limited supply).

Plus, you will have the satisfaction of being recognized by thousands of members of the CE Pro Community as a really smart baseball guru.

iTouch/iPhone

2009-06-25T20:26:50-06:00

Is anyone using an iTouch-iPhone to control a Vantage Controls system?

Jack Goldberg, PE
Westco Smart Homes
Los Angeles

CATV signal meter

2008-12-03T12:46:09-06:00

Does anyone have a recommendation for a CATV signal meter? We are looking for a meter reading 5-approx 900 mhz. If you have a recommended source, please include that, too. Thanks.

Will Wal-Mart TV Installations Catch On?

2009-10-23T13:34:22-06:00

Wal-Mart is now installing TVs, PCs, and home theaters, charging $99 for a basic TV installation $399 for a premium TV service.

How big of a market is there for this? And how does it affect CE pros?

Crestron Mobile Pro - Application Setup

2009-10-13T14:50:53-06:00

Just wanted to give you guys a link to a recent article we put up regarding setup of Crestron’s Mobile Pro iPhone application. It can be difficult when you first try to use these things, so we put together a comprehensive setup procedure to help you get started. There will be a few articles within the upcoming days regarding tips and tricks for the application as well.

http://www.xsdesignstudios.com/articles/article103/

If you have any questions or comments feel free to post here or on our site and we will get back to you. Thanks and hope this helps some of you.

Zune HD vs. iPod Touch: which is better choice?

2009-10-14T00:44:32-06:00

The history of Zune versus iPod Prizefights is long and bloody, filled with enough cutting criticism to send devout fans on both sides of the ring into fits. Now iPod and Zune Prizefight than ever more fiercely with Microsoft introduced Zune HD on September 15. Compared with the iPod Touch, Zune HD has what characteristics and what different advantages, has become the most heated discussion at the topic. Zune HD is a platform without a purpose. It’s a single device in a multipurpose world. Zune HD gamed iPod Touch, with better design, better hardware components, more appropriate size and outstanding digital content consumption experience. It’s a brief summary, let’s go on!
Zune HD’s main features:
· large screen size (3.3 inches), lightweight (2.6 ounces), High-resolution (480*272 pixels), beautiful (Platinum, Black, Red, Green, Blue), large capacity (16GB/32GB), Multi-Touch;
· Battery life ups to 33 hours for music and 8.5 hours for video;
· Glass-covered full-color OLED display;
· ARM 800 MHZ CPU
· HD radio tuner
· Buy, stream, and update your music—and download free games—wirelessly via a wi-fi connection.
· Surf the web anytime, including tap-to-zoom technology, built-in accelerometer, and touchscreen QWERTY keyboard.
· Support 720p HD movies, TV shows, and videos in high definition on your HDTV through the Zune HD AV Dock (sold separately).
· Quickplay gives instant access to your stuff with shortcuts to favorites, recently downloaded or played music, videos, and more.
http://www.nidesoft.com/forum/zune-vs-ipod-hd/zunehdipodtouch.jpg
Compared with iPod Touch, although the Zune HD screen measures a slightly smaller 3.3 inches diagonally, it’s uses cutting edge OLED technology, which delivers brightness and contrast unlike anything you can find in a LCD which iPod Touch applies. And slight another three hours of music may look, the extra 2.5 hours of video stands out to us as a significant advantage.(iPod Touch ups to 30 hours for music and 6 hours for video).
Besides hardware, what differences in other aspects?
For HD Radio
Zune marketing continues to highlight the Zune HD’s radio-tuning ability (which they’ve had since the original Zune) as its break-out functionality over the non-radio iPod. The internal tuner has gotten a little cooler now with HD radio and a feature that lets users “tag” the song playing, so that they can easily buy it later, which is neat.
Both of them are heavyweight media player for videos, audios and pictures. But they are different in many details.
Zune HD supports video formats: WMV, HD WMV, MPEG-4, H.264, DVR-MS and HD MPEG-4. audio formats : Windows Media, WMA, WMA DRM, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, AAC(no FairPlay) and MP3. and video output: 720p with optional dock.
iPod Touch supports video formats: H.264, MPEG-4. audio formats: MP3, AAC(including FairPlay), AAC+, Apple Lossless, WAV and AIFF. And video output: 480p or 576p with optional cable.
Although both are advanced media player, they couldn’t support all of video and audio formats . So I go to Nidesoft Inc to get program Nidesoft Video Converter, which could convert video or audio files between all popular formats. Fortunately, this video converter not only could support Zune HD and iPod Touch, but also supports all of the popular multimedia devices, such as iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Sansa, Google Phone, iTunes and so on. Personally I select an AVI file and have tried it. Below is what I do:
Firstly, I download this software form http://www.nidesoft.com/downloads/video-converter.exe
Install and Run it.
Step 1: Load files.
Click “add Files” button and import the AVI video from my computer.
Tips: EDIT the video with the function button: Crop, Effect, Trim, Options
(1) Remove the undesired area or just convert part of the video area from my video file in “Crop” function.
(2) Select gray effect or Negative effect from Special Effect or tune the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Volume to get special effect movie in “Effect”.
(3) Click “Trim” button to get my favorite segment.
(4) Click the white box besides “Merge into one file” to merge your selected titles into one video.
http://www.nidesoft.com/forum/zune-vs-ipod-hd/video-converter-hd.jpg
Step2. Select the out file format
Click the “format” drop-down list to select the output format. The software provides many profiles to support different devices and players. I select MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4).If you don’t know what formats your device supports, you can just select the format according to the device name.
Step3. Click the “Convert” button and start the conversion. Wait a few minutes before the conversion succeeds!
After conversion, you could open the folder and find the output video files there, try to play it on your PC first, and also you could load the converted file into your player. For iPod, you could use
iTunes to sync the files to the device; for Zune, you need to download the Zune software to manage the media content.
Now you could enjoy video with your favorite player. In addition, maybe you want to enjoy dvd movie with iPod or Zune and need convert dvd to ipod and zune. I also find Nidesoft DVD Ripper could help you convert DVD to all popular video or audio formats easily!

As for connectivity
The Zune HD is able to stream music over Wi-Fi, something the iPod Touch cannot do out of the box. But the iPod Touch can stream music over Bluetooth (via A2DP) to compatible players.

Feature-by-feature, the Zune HD and iPod Touch are very similar and now the lower price puts advantage over the Zune HD. But in long time, iPod has been occupied the major markets. Can Zune HD win iPod Touch? We have to wait.

What’s Wrong With My A/V Receiver?

2009-10-19T14:10:23-06:00

Q After I fried our Panasonic home theatre receiver (which my tech-savvy brother had selected for us), my husband bought a used Harman/Kardon AVS 635 on eBay.

It often refuses to put out sound. Some of the time it freezes up completely. Other times, it seems to come on, the screen provides the right message, you can adjust the volume and the numbers go up and down, but there’s no sound.

Sometimes when the screen turns on, after it cycles through its start-up messages, it says “Unlock”.

I have tried resetting by unplugging from the power, which works sometimes, but not always. It worked yesterday, but won’t work today.

I wonder if the “Unlock” message has some meaning I cannot figure out. I cannot find anything about that in the user’s manual.

I suppose this problem may be why the previous owner was selling this receiver on eBay.

Any suggestions? - Ellen McGuffie

Residential Access Speeds in US?

2009-10-30T15:11:04-06:00

Interested in hearing about average speeds and services available in US to residential customers? Here on the Gold Coast in Australia there are still whole suburbs on dial up! This is due to an historic government owned monopoly and massive under-investment. The Australian government has just worked out they are getting left behind in the world and have started tendering out for a $43 Billion dollar National Broadband Network to give fibre to every premise. Big call in a country this size and it will require 25 - 30,000 staff and 8 years to complete. We have a few FTTH areas that are starting to see the benefits of Smart Wiring premises for the future but with the majority of the country on ADSL1/2+ they struggle to get good quality streaming video! I talk to people about the need to get ready for IPTV and they look at you like you are from another planet. Just interested to hear about whats coming??

Nomos

2009-10-27T09:04:11-06:00

Hello,

anybody know this system ???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WufdKiXCQRE

regards

Mike