Sonance Parent Debuts New Trufig Designer-Fixtures Subsidiary

At a CEDIA Expo news conference here, Jason Sloan, vice president of sales, described Trufig as “something completely new” and an extension of the concept behind Sonance’s Architectural Series of in-wall speakers that use a flangeless design for grills that mount flush to the wall. The luxury-level Trufig fixture panels use a mounting kit that enables custom installation professionals to provide the utility functions of a typical audio/video job, including power outlets, cable jacks, volume controls and light dimmers in an elegant, uniform design for single-, double- and multi-gang outlets.

Sloan said the concept is in response to dealer requests for a product that can get them into the high-end home design or renovation process earlier than CEDIA installers are typically brought in. “The interior designer’s vision doesn’t include loudspeakers,” he said, adding that they often wind up being disguised into moldings or baseboards after the fact, which was the genesis of the Architectural Series of recessed speakers from Sonance. Similarly, interior designers and architects also have to take into account the various finishes, sizes and shapes of wall fixtures to accommodate electronics, and Trufig wants to leverage the recessed concept of the Architectural Series speaker mounting system to keypads and wallplates.

The company is exploring various partnerships with the Trufig design, which the company calls “aesthetic solutions” versus actual products. In its CEDIA booth, Trufig showed treatments for wall controls from Lutron, Leviton and Crestron, among others, but had no specific announcements regarding relationships.

“We want to help homeowners minimize the visual impact of electronics products,” Sloan said. “That will help installers get further upstream in the design stage of a project and result in a higher percentage of landing it.” He added that the Trufig initiative builds upon CEDIA efforts to reach out to the design and architect communities. “A lot of manufacturers have been trying to teach dealers how to do that, but they haven’t had the solutions to gain the interest of the design community. We're giving something to the custom installation channel that enables them to be important and relevant to architects and designers.”

According to Trufig General Manager Rob Roland, the company’s sales force hopes to initiate the dialog with the design community. “We're calling on interior designers and architects to try to pull them through the channel,” he said. The company also hopes partnerships with other manufacturers will expand the space.

How far that expansion will extend remains to be seen, executives said. When asked if an offshoot of the custom Trufig line might appear in Home Depot or Lowe’s in the future, Sloan didn’t rule it out, but said, “We're going to be very high end out of the gate. But the profile of the company isn’t as important to us as finding passionate dealers who will do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.”

The Trufig line comprises 15 products in three standard finishes. Prices for the kits are $300 for single-gang versions and $400 for double-gang versions. Sloan minimized the learning curve for integrators, saying installation techniques draw on the existing skills of installers. Future applications will include smoke detectors, HVAC controls and security keypads. -- Rebecca Day

CEDIA Expo Notebook …

Toshiba postponed delivery of its standalone Netplayer set-top box that was to be paired with Regza LCD TVs until 2010 as it tries to firm up content plans, Scott Ramirez, vice president of marketing, told us. Toshiba was to demonstrate product at the CEDIA Expo combining Intel’s CE 3100 chipset with Microsoft’s digital media extender technology, but shelved plans in the face of “infrastructure issues,” Ramirez said. Among the issues were that discussions with content providers had changed since plans were first disclosed at CES (CED Jan 8 p1) for a NetPlayer. The NetPlayer was to display a tool bar at the bottom of the screen offering news, weather, finance, Flickr and Yahoo widgets. Some content providers are shifting from being available as a widget to requiring a full browser for access, Ramirez said. “Their business models are constantly changing and there is more and more competition” among content providers, he said. “We wanted to make sure that whatever we bring to market has a life to it. We wanted to take a little bit more time to make sure what we had was full proof. We wanted to make sure we had the right partners.” Meanwhile, Toshiba will ship a 55-inch LCD TV based on its Cell processor this fall in Japan, Ramirez said. Toshiba is expected to demonstrate the 55-inch set at CEATEC in Japan in October, Ramirez said. Plans for the U.S. haven’t been finalized, due largely to the issues surrounding CableCARDs, Ramirez said. The Cell processor will be in a separate set- top box that also will have a wireless feature and be paired with a panel with 4,000 x 2,000 resolution, Toshiba officials have said. The Cell has the ability to support six 1080p streams simultaneously and the STB will have a hard drive. Pricing hasn’t been set for the 55-inch, but in the past Toshiba officials have said retails will fall between $5,000 and $10,000. Toshiba is holding off adding wireless to its TVs until demand for it picks up, company officials said. While Toshiba is a WirelessHD supporter, the premium that’s required to cover the cost of adding it to a TV remains a major barrier, Ramirez said. Vendors offering WirelessHD- equipped TVs are charging a $600 premium for it. “We're in a little bit of a down economy right now and if you are getting the same picture quality and feature set is it really the right choice to make in the market today?” Ramirez asked. “I'm not sure that it is.” Despite unveiling plans for its first Blu-ray player (CED Sept 4 p1), Toshiba will continue sales of the XD-E500 up converting DVD player, a Toshiba spokeswoman said. While entry-level Blu-ray player prices are expected by year-end to be in the same range as those charged for the XD-E500, there is a market for consumers not yet willing to switch to the advanced DVD format, she said. “We are going to keep that in the line,” the spokeswoman said. Toshiba, which has a strong presence in combo standard DVD/LCD TVs, will consider adding Blu-ray in the future, but a final decision hasn’t been made, the spokeswoman said. Toshiba held off introducing a Blu-ray player for more than year after scrapping plans for the rival HD DVD format. Toshiba’s decision to introduce a model was prompted by dealers’ requests and the need to round out its CE product line, the Toshiba spokeswoman said. -- MS

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Monster Cable brought its need-for-speed message to this year’s CEDIA Expo with new HDMI cables boasting faster data speeds and a new line of Ethernet cables designed to work with Internet-ready TVs. Hoping to ride the coattails of the Internet TV trend, Monster Cable founder Noel Lee told journalists at a news conference Wednesday that the company’s new Ethernet cables require the same high-speed data transfer rates as HDMI cables, while introducing what he termed the world’s fastest Ethernet cable at 10.2 Gbps. The CAT 6 cables will be priced at $1,199 in 1,000-foot lengths when they ship in December. New HDMI cables from Monster include a thin, flexible type for use in installation scenarios where such a cable is required. Lee noted that as TVs become thinner, the HDMI cables used with them have to adapt as well. The cables pack active technology that eliminates the need for an external power supply and heavy-duty copper shielding. At roughly 65 percent thinner than standard HDMI cables, the thin wires measure 3.5mm in diameter, the company said. Pricing ranges from $89 to $169 in four- to 16-foot lengths, with October availability. In its conventional HDMI lineup, Monster has boosted data transfer rates to address higher speed requirements for the upcoming HDMI 1.4 spec. The latest Ultimate High Speed cables will be rated to speeds of 15.8 Gbps, which Lee said will handle consumers’ needs for the HDMI 1.4 spec and beyond as well as advanced, future video technologies including 3D, higher pixel-count TVs and higher bit, color depth. List prices for the new HDMI cable lineup range from $39 to $69 for non-speed-rated HDMI Basic cables to $99 to $499 for the Ultimate High Speed HDMI 1000 line in 0.5-meter to 75-foot lengths. Monster also beefed up its GreenPower PowerCenter line, promoting its energy-saving features. The $349 and $249 units, which don’t yet have a ship date, turn off home theater components when they're not in use to reduce standby energy usage. The products also incorporate Monster’s surge protection technology and interference-reduction filters. - RD

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Reinforcing its message that it regards motorized shades as an extension of lighting control, Lutron on Wednesday introduced a new version of its Radio RA lighting control system that manages artificial and natural light along with heating, ventilation and air-conditioning integration. Radio RA 2, in limited distribution next month to a few choice retailers, will ship to Lutron’s full dealer roster in January, the company said. Version 2 allows integrators to program scenes combining shades and lights, and with astronomical clocks built in to the product’s repeaters. Dealers can set scenes based on thermostat readings and sun levels for a given time of year to make best use of indoor or natural light for optimum energy savings. The scalable system uses up to 200 dimmers and is PC-controllable, unlike the previous version. The system can be updated via USB or Ethernet and supports integration with a spectrum of industry control systems. Lutron positions Radio RA 2 as a mid-market total lighting solution designed for homes valued in the $750,000-$1.5 million range, both for retrofit and new construction. The system can include the company’s Radio Powr Savr sensors, which use passive infrared technology to communicate presence to lighting dimmers and shades. To avoid unnecessary power-on conditions, the sensors can require manual turn on and then automatically power off after no one is sensed for a period of time. -- RD

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NuVision will plunge into the front projector market with three DLP-based models, said Jim McGall, senior vice president of business development. While NuVision previously focused solely on the flat-panel TVs, it added front projectors to give the dealers the ability to combine the two in a custom install job, McGall said. NuVision will field three models starting with an entry-level ProVu Cinema projector ($8,995) containing a single 0.67-inch DLP chip with 1080p resolution, 200-watt UHP lamp with 1,000 lumens. The mid-priced projector features LEDs delivering 400 nits and a single 0.67-inch 1080p DLP at $18,995, while the top- end is anchored by a three-chip, 0.95-inch DLP model ($36,995) with up to six different lens configurations. In entering the projector market, NuVision hired former Runco Manufacturing Director Ed Gurr, who also handled mechanical and industrial design, and engineer Tinh Ho, who was responsible for gamma curve correction, said McGall, who also is an ex-Runco executive. NuVision also took the wraps off the Lucidium LED-based 55- ($5,999), 46- ($4,495) and 40-inch ($3,495) LCD TVs that feature 400 nits, 1080p resolution and 120 Hz panels. NuVision sources some of Lucidium panels from Samsung, including the 55-inch, but uses other suppliers as well, McGall said. NuVision also fields a 65-inch LCD TV, having purchased a year’s supply of panels from Sharp, which is shifting some its line to 60-inch, McGall said. NuVision, which switched to sell flat-panel TVs after dropping DLP- based rear projection models several years ago, is expanding its roster of distributors, having added Rothman for the Northeast, McGall said. It has 400 dealers, about half of whom are “active” accounts, but will double that number within two months, McGall said.

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JVC is bringing its high-end D-ILA front projector with 4,096x2,400 resolution into the custom install in October at $175,000. The DLA-RS4000 uses the same three 1.27-inch D-ILA panels as the model deployed for simulators and will compete with a similar projector that Meridian sourced from JVC last year. The projectors uses a 825-watt Xenon Arc lamp to deliver 3,500 lumens and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. It has a 1.22:1 power zoom lens and uses a separate Anchor Bay set-top box for the video processing, Chief Engineer Rod Sterling said. It also has an Astro integrated processor. JVC also is shipping new D-ILA home theater projectors starting this month with the DLA-HD550 ($5,000) and DLA-HD950 ($8,000) models that feature 30,000:1 and 50,000:1 contrast ratios, respectively, 1,000 lumens and use three 0.7-inch D-ILA panels with 1080p resolution. JVC will carry over from last year the DLA-HD350 ($4,500), which also contained 0.7-inch panels with 1080p resolution, company officials said. The top-end model is the DLA-HD990 ($10,000) which also has 1,000 lumens, steps up with a 70,000:1 contrast ratio. All three models use Integrated Device Technology’s (IDT) Reon processor, which IDT purchased from Silicon Optix in 2008. The projectors also use JVC’s 120 Hz Clear Motion technology for motion compensation. JVC also is about one to two years from introducing projectors based on a 1.75-inch D-ILA panel that’s in development featuring 8,192x4,320 resolution, Sterling said. JVC is working with Japanese broadcaster NHK on the chip.