ST. LOUIS -- “Forty points ain’t enough,” HTSA Executive Director Richard Glikes told vendors Wednesday at the fall meeting of the Home Technology Specialists Association. The comment followed a detailed presentation by HTSA member Bob Gullo, president of Electronics Design Group, Piscataway, N.J., on the design, labor and subcontractor costs involved in large-scale custom home-electronics projects. “Our vendor partners need to be educated,” Glikes said, “because some of you sell us projectors but you may not know what goes on beyond that.” He said manufacturers understand their own product categories “but may not know the depth of what we do."
Rebecca Day
Rebecca Day, Senior editor, joined Warren Communications News in 2010. She’s a longtime CE industry veteran who has also written about consumer tech for Popular Mechanics, Residential Tech Today, CE Pro and others. You can follow Day on Instagram and Twitter: @rebday
LCD TV unit sales in North America fell 3 percent year-over-year in first half 2010 due to economic pressure from high unemployment and the slow housing market, according to the DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report. Paul Gagnon, director of North America TV Research at DisplaySearch, said continued economic pressure combined with a “sharp slowdown” in price erosion have “pushed consumers to the sidelines” as they wait for the economy to improve or prices to drop.
ST. LOUIS -- “Revivify” is the theme of this fall’s Home Technology Specialists Association meeting as specialty audio/video dealers -- hit hard by the economy, changing technology and a fading customer base -- seek to energize their business with new products and fresh approaches. In his opening remarks to dealer and vendor members, Executive Director Richard Glikes outlined changes that have taken place in the customer base and retail landscape that have reshaped how specialty dealers have to adapt to survive.
The remote monitoring market for custom integrators is gaining traction, according to companies like Panamax/Furman, Nuage Nine and ihiji, which are hoping to build a high-margin service category for integrators increasingly slammed by product discounting. At CEDIA, ihiji, which began its monitoring product in March, unveiled a two-way service said to provide real-time remote systems restart, reboot and repair, and the company expects the market for IP-based remote monitoring to break open in 2011. “There are enough devices out there now that are intelligent and more are coming online every day,” President Stuart Rench told Consumer Electronics Daily.
The Z-Wave Alliance will host a summit in Chiba, Japan, this week, as part of an effort to expand into the Japanese market at CEATEC, Marketing Director Mary Miller told Consumer Electronics Daily. The move into Japan follows an announcement by the alliance at CEDIA last month that it had certified its 400th product, the Vera gateway from Mi Casa Verde. Certification ensures that products bearing the Z-Wave logo “will work with every other one” in a connected home and will remain compatible with future products, she said.
When ESPN 3D televises its fifth college football game Saturday, it will be using a custom rig built by camera equipment company Chapman Leonard that places a robotic 3D camera on the first-down marker cart to give viewers a 25-foot-high perspective from the sidelines. Phil Orlins, coordinating producer of ESPN 3D, called the custom rig “the first major enhancement” in 3D coverage for the network in a constantly evolving effort to balance the “impactful visual experience” with “solid documentation” of a sports event. The camera moving along the line of scrimmage is high enough for an overview shot similar to the view from the press box, but with the proximity required for compelling 3D, Orlins told Consumer Electronics Daily in an interview Wednesday.
Bose unveiled its first video product Tuesday, a $5,349 46-inch, 120Hz, 1080p LCD TV with an integrated multi-speaker audio system, outboard console switcher and a game-changing remote control. All sound comes from the screen, with no subwoofer, and the system was designed to create “spaciousness, to reproduce low notes” and to “transport listeners to another place just by using sound,” according to Santiago Carvajal, business director for Bose video products.
ATLANTA -- While audio and video companies talked at CEDIA last week about adjusting to a changing market and next-gen consumers, home automation company Control4 had its sights firmly on the future. Lower revenue, slim margins and the continued malaise in home construction continue to weigh down dealers and manufacturers, but Control4 has remained in “a bubble” separated from the struggles of the overall custom electronics market, CEO Will West told Consumer Electronics Daily. “We've been growing and adding market share,” he said.
ATLANTA -- With the audio/video receiver fighting for relevance amid a growing market for powered speaker systems and streaming media devices, Denon is holding fast to the AVR as the “hub” of the entertainment experience while trying to keep its custom models ahead of the curve with Internet streaming, networking and control features. At CEDIA, Denon announced it was the first receiver company to incorporate Apple’s AirPlay wireless streaming technology, which lets users access all content from their iTunes library -- including DRM-protected content -- as well as album art.
After “not hitting our targets” with its Renovia multi-room audio system that began shipping last spring, Nuvo Technologies adapted a system headed to international markets for the home crowd and unveiled it at CEDIA, David Rodarte, chief operating officer, told Consumer Electronics Daily. “We didn’t get as much pickup as we wanted,” Rodarte said, when the company began shipping powerline-based system to dealers last spring. Ironically, the no-new-wires system, based on the HomePlug 1.0 standard, required an electrician to connect the in-wall amplifier to the electrical mains in the outlet. When dealers found out the company was readying a freestanding model for international markets where solid walls preclude in-wall amplifiers, they asked for a freestanding model for the U.S. that doesn’t require an electrician for installation. “Our dealers told us it took additional time and another trades person to put in the amplifier,” Rodarte said. “So we have a new form factor,” he said, “and all you have to do is plug it in.” The company lopped $1,000 off the retail price in the process, to $999, he said, and will ship the new version next month.