Another CEDIA Expo is in the books and the 2024 edition served as the perfect showcase for the latest smart-home technologies, including video walls, immersive audio and lighting.

Admittedly, my focus was on AV, along with the CE Pro Band, which supported the annual CEDIA awards ceremony, but after spending a couple of days on the show floor a few trends were quite apparent that we can briefly discuss.

Smart Home Industry Responds to Public Appetite for Big Screens

For those writing off home theater and AV entertainment, the eulogy may be premature. Symbolic of the popularity of home theater and AV, AcousticSmart’s Richard Charschan introduced his book, Home Theaterology: The Art of Creating the Perfect Home Theater, and Charschan casually said the book has been extremely well received by the industry.

If that isn’t enough of a testimonial on the state of home AV and home theater, all anyone needed to do was walk the CEDIA Expo 2024 show floor. The smart home showcase event featured many home theater demo rooms from top companies, including Harman Luxury Audio, Indy Audio Labs, PRO Audio Technology, Trinnov Audio, StormAudio, L-Acoustics, as well as many other exhibitors.

Serving as the new driver for these smart home AV systems is the video wall category. Sure, there were many great projectors from A-list manufacturers such as Sony, JVC, Epson, Barco, Christie Digital, Digital Projection, and others. This list doesn’t even include the UST (ultra-short throw) products from hot companies like AWOL Vision, Samsung and Epson for example.

2024 Lighting Controls and Fixtures Report

Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.

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One of the system demos in the Epson room included its Q Series projector showing images on a 180-inch screen in an area with lots of ambient light. (photo credit: Bob Archer CE Pro)

Getting back to video walls, Sony of course gets a lot of attention for its Crystal LED product line, as well as Samsung for its popular The Wall series of microLED displays. Beyond these two giant global electronics companies, Quantum Media Systems hosted some very impressive system demos, and other brands such as Just Video Walls were quite active too. Entering the category with their solutions, AWOL Vision a brand that is known for its UST products showed a video wall product line, and LG, a leader in OLED technologies has quietly begun through its commercial division to offer video wall solutions.

Over the past few years AWOL Vision has shook up the UST projection category and now the new home video company is taking aim at the hot video wall microLED category.

It should also be noted that mini-LED products were all over the show floor from companies such as Sony and Samsung, as well as TCL. TCL, a relative newcomer to the home video market has been making waves with its reasonably priced mini-LED TVs and screen sizes that include 98 and 115 inches.

Immersive Audio Immerses AV Industry

Rounding out the smart home AV equation at CEDIA Expo 2024 was spatial audio.

Spatial audio or immersive audio depending on someone’s preference, could be found in seemingly all of the demo rooms. It was demonstrated in the booths, and it could be found with components such as soundbars, along with massive Trinnov Audio-level systems.

Harman Luxury Audio showcased a number of its brands, including JBL. This system includes retrofittable height speakers to address immersive audio in existing homes. (photo credit: Bob Archer CE Pro)

Arguably, the most encouraging aspect related to immersive audio and surround sound is the level of education the smart home industry is committing to the audio category. Looking beyond the automated calibration systems, which dot the home audio component landscape, educators such as Anthony Grimani and Gerry Lemay have consistently preached the benefits of system design and acoustics.

Reentering the smart-home industry as an education resource is THX. At CEDIA Expo 2024, THX held a Level I training session in which the organization covered its history and some fundamental elements associated with home audio. Running the training was Gerry Lemay, the famed Home Acoustics Alliance (HAA) instructor who pointed out during the session some of the common problems associated with “small-room acoustics” and some strategies to deal with these issues.

A Few Final Thoughts

Putting aside what was a fun and informative CEDIA Expo 2024 show and my observations on where AV stands in the smart-home paradigm, I’d like to thank the guys that dedicate their time to the CE Pro Band.

We were fortunate to play to a full room during the CEDIA Awards ceremony and despite the uncertainty with not exactly knowing how the program would run, we were able to play two sets of live music.

To briefly explain how the band approaches its performance, I consult with Dave Silkin of DSG Distributors/DSG Metro and Tim Bigoness of D-Tools on what songs we should play and the order of our setlist. I then present these songs to the rest of the band, and we finalize the songs. For example, a couple of years ago we were going to play I Will Survive but after discussing the song, Bret Jacob of Malibu Access Control suggested The Distance instead. Based on the input of everyone including Bret we ended up playing The Distance.

This year we settled on a setlist, which we were still hashing out up until late July and we met up to rehearse the songs at Rocket Space Studios in Denver. Dealing with everyone’s busy CEDIA show schedules we were able to practice enough to pull the songs together for our performance during CEDIA’s awards. The real point I’d like to emphasize is that because of everyone’s hectic schedules most of our practice team is done on our own throughout the summer.

I’d also like to thank Emerald and its executives, Brian Pagel and Jason McGraw for supporting the band. It’s great that Brian and Jason understand the band’s passion for music is extension of the industry’s passion for the smart home industry.

Summing things up, it is appreciated by me how well prepared the guys are before we take the stage. Playing music cohesively takes a lot of practice and while it may seem like we are winging it, the reality is these people put a lot of time into the band to make the music possible.

Here is the 2024 CE Pro Band:

• Dave Silkin, bass and vocals, DSG Distributors/DSG Metro
• Mitch Klein, bass, CEDIA
• Jim Garrett, drums, Harman Luxury Audio
• Tim Bigoness, drums and vocals, D-Tools
• Brian Staller, drums, Amp Genie
• Jason Barth, keyboards, The Premier Group (dealer)
• Rick Santiago, saxophone, Indy Audio Labs (Acurus and Aragon)
• Bret Jacob, trumpet, Malibu Access Control
• Vince Luciati, guitar, Apex Technologies
• Richard Charschan, guitar, AcousticSmart
• Kevin Kent, guitar, Harman Luxury Audio
• Jason McGraw, guitar, Emerald
• Bob Archer, guitar, CE Pro (Emerald)
• Patrick Shaughnessy, vocals, AudioQuest
• Diana Gallagher, vocals, KBIS (Emerald)

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