HomeTech.fm - Episode 225 - CEDIA 2018 Hot Take

Episode Date: September 9, 2018

We catch up on the CEDIA show floor for a quick show on what we've seen this year at the CEDIA Expo. Fan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash support. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Home Tech. This is Seth Johnson. And Jason Griffin. On location here in San Diego. Live. Beautiful San Diego. Yep. On the show floor. Live and in person, not just like streaming, right?

It's always nice, Seth. I'm used to looking at you through a computer screen, as I do a lot of people these days in my work. And it's been a lot of fun seeing people in face and being able to shake folks' hands. And it's always good to be able to catch up with you as well. I've had a great time out here in San Diego. Today's Saturday, so getting ready to head home this afternoon. But it's been a really fun and really productive week as well. I was about to say, it's Saturday, but here we are. And Jason, where are we? We are at the One Vision booth. Yes, we are recording at the One Vision booth and it's still very busy. We've had a really steady turnout here at the booth and a lot of really just, I think, well-aligned integrators who are really looking to figure out service, right? And convert it from something that can feel like a real pain into something that

can be a real opportunity. And so that's been the theme of the show for us. And we've had a ton of fun chatting with integrators and just learning more about where their struggles are and talking about the ways that we can help. Cool. Yeah. I mean, we were like, let's go over, let's aim for 10 and try and get this show recorded. And here it is like 1030. And we're like, hmm, well, maybe we can just do it now. Do it quick. So I got a small window of opportunity here. So yeah, we're, we're going to power through a quick, uh, you know, so sort of overview of, of what we seen. Admittedly, I have not had a lot of time to spend on the show floor, but you and I, I think just did one of the fastest Cedia crash courses that I've ever done.

Yeah. Uh, and hit about, I don't know, 10 booths in, in a very short period of time. And it was really cool what I'm seeing, uh, just in that short period of time. It's, uh don't know, 10 booths in a very short period of time. And it was really cool what I'm seeing just in that short period of time. It's a lot of fun. I'm glad we had coffee. That's all I got to say. Yeah, exactly. I've got a big Americano this morning. Venti, please.

Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, so, I mean, as a high level, I've been asking everybody I've come across here at the show like what have you seen what's cool yeah and like the majority of the time what i'm hearing from guys is like not much and it feels like a like a like a plateau almost like a plateau like a like it's a building year like there's still like odds and ends that have popped up that look really cool yeah but for the most part it feels just like in the pro channel here it feels just like it does in like the diy channel where everything is just kind of kind of sitting still and we're all kind of waiting on what what is the next big thing and that's the feedback i've

gotten from guys yeah you know it's it's i think it's tough i think we we come to cdia every year and we want to see that big blockbuster story that gets everybody talking. And the reality is that most years we don't have that. Most years what you have is incremental improvement. And I think that's been the theme that I've been hearing mostly this year. It's been what I've observed in the little time that I've spent out there is that as well. But most people stopping by the booth are saying the same thing, but it's interesting all the same to go around and see what companies are doing. A lot of times the fun part is sort of reading between the lines, right,

and thinking about, okay, what's the strategy? Where is this headed? Even if they don't have a blockbuster new product or new technology that they're showing, what are they emphasizing at the booth? What is their story? How has their story maybe evolved since last year? Those are the kind of things I've been paying attention to. And I can't remember the gentleman's name.

His name's Joe. And he is a, I've got his card in my pocket, but he does like a podcast or something. I'll look it up and put his name and info in the show notes. But he's kind of more on the DIY side. And I was asking him, like, you know, what is he like about this? It's like kind of the first time he's been here, but he's just amazed at, like, out of this one small sliver of the industry, they can put all of this in here

and have all these people walking through. You know, we don't really think of it that way, but it is a small slice of the entire industry. Yeah, we've got a couple of folks here at One Vision who come from outside of the industry. Their background is not in the Cedia channel. They're customer service experts. They're people who come from maybe a sales background. And for them, a couple of them, it's their first time here at Cedia. And they had a similar takeaway.

It's just like, wow, the breadth and the depth of these products here on the show floor is pretty impressive, right? So to get a sense for how much is really out there and how much is involved in this channel is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you had time to run around with me this morning. Did you see anything that just, like, stood out, like, crazy? You know, if I had to pick one thing, it would be the display technology. Yeah. Going by Sony's booth there and seeing their new Master Series, the A9F and the Z9F.

Oh, those are beautiful. Yeah, they're gorgeous TVs. The A9F, I believe, is the OLED of those two. And so, you know, seeing those and getting a feel for what they're doing with the display. A couple of the display companies have this new micro LED. They're all calling it like slightly different things, right? But this micro LED technology, which is primarily a commercial technology. They call it like C-LED or something.

Yeah, C-LED, crystal, I think, something. Anyways, these LEDs that are like the size of a fraction of the size of a human hair or something is what the guy was saying. It's crazy. Really impressive, still a very expensive technology, still very much primarily focused at commercial. But to see that it's a beautiful technology and to think about some of the possibilities that could be when that technology starts to make its way into residential is pretty interesting. Yeah, I mean, we talked to the guy over at Sony a little bit, and he's like, this is a commercial product. Yep. If you came to see it and you saw this, and we'll put up pictures of things that we took in the show notes, too.

But if you see this, he said it was a seven-figure product that's there. And granted, it was like 20 feet wide, right? So it's a big display. And they can go any size, though. The one at Infocom, he said, I mean, and I've seen that one. It was like there two years ago. That was probably four times the size of that wall. So it's a scalable solution.

It's interesting. I don't know how well it would work in Resi, but it definitely makes the booth look cool. But I think what more impressed me were those, well, the Master Series TVs that they have sitting on the corner there. Did you have a chance to look behind them, though? I did not. They've got the same, like, horrible, like it's a kickstand that pops out. And then you're supposed to collapse it down and somehow mount that TV flat to the wall like that's the worst design yeah yeah and you know seeing their 4k projectors uh range anywhere from like 5 000 up to 60 000 in price so they've got quite a few solutions there and they're all going

to have that sony quality and so 4k projection is definitely an area that I, I like to keep an eye on and just see how that technology is developing as well. Right. Right. So for me, um, and I I'm, I'm never impressed by much, but what, what has impressed me is actually right outside of your booth here. And we can actually hear them playing in the background. There's these, their origin acoustics seasons, like these outdoor, um, seasons collection. Yeah. I, I, I don't, I'm not impressed by much. Coastal Living actually has some pretty impressive sounding. I've heard a bunch of people talking about those as well. Yeah.

They've got these big monsters that you can crank up and really play some good music out of. And they're good build quality and everything. But if you look over, like right over there, these little pillars, like if you, you know those bows, those green bows, like omnidirectional speakers that you see? Like this would be a perfect replacement or an upgrade from those because it's like an omnidirectional speaker. Every one of them has like a little six-inch subwoofer. And I think the guy I was hearing at the booth, he said they're coming out with different size subs that you can add on the bottom. But it's just a little like aluminum pillar. And they look good

they they look the part of like what you know you and i wouldn't expect just going to a million dollar home or you know even even that would work great in commercial too i mean the different styles they have a square round and a couple of different finish coats on it but they're impressive i i was really impressed by that um yeah and i'm not like like you said, our booth is close to theirs, and so I've had an opportunity to hear them play plenty of times. And they do sound great. And Origin is a company that has a good reputation in the industry for producing great products that are very installer-friendly,

very integrator-centric company. And so, yeah, I've heard quite a bit of talk of those, and the performance sounds good. I know the coastal audio stuff I've heard quite a bit of talk of those, and the performance sounds good. I know the coastal audio stuff I've heard quite a few people talking about as well, and outdoor audio in general, as was the case last year, has been pretty much everywhere on the show floor. We've been seeing quite a bit of that. And so, you know, it's not a surprise, I suppose.

So way over in the corner, and I don't know if you've seen this, there's an automated umbrella, and it's got... No, no, I didn't see that it's an app control it's got a little camera in it it tracks the sun it's solar powered it's smart home enabled

it's got a camera in it for some reason and it's got Harman Kardon speakers built into it too wow so I got a little video that's funny that one kind of it was odd enough I just have to mention it

don't know if it's practical or anything like that for the CD channel. But definitely, I mean, it's an interesting piece that's here. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's funny to see those little solutions that you just don't necessarily expect to see. Oh, and your guy's here. We need your little, is that the mower? The robot mower.

Robot Husqvarna. Yeah, it's like right over there somewhere. Okay, cool. Yeah. I'll have to go check that out. Yeah, speaking of right here around the booth, Seth, I know you and I stopped over there this morning. Scenic, a company called Scenic. Yeah.

Pretty neat little device. You know that once you saw us walking up to the booth, you knew which one I was headed to. A tactile control solution, and I still am a big fan of those. I think people are getting app fatigue a little bit and looking for ways to interact with technology that go back to the way that we've done it for a long time, which is touch and feel. Right. And they've got these cool little, they've got like a tabletop solution and a wall mount solution. And I know at least the wall mount one, I'm not sure about the tabletop one, but the wall mount one is what's really neat is it has no batteries. Right. There are no batteries. Right.

There are no batteries in it. Actually pushing the button on the remote generates the energy to send off a very low frequency sub gigahertz, they said, signal to a hub. You've got to have a hub in the house. Ding. Yeah, ring the bell. Exactly. But really cool, neat design. We'll post some pictures.

And I like it it i love seeing companies like that the design looked really nice uh company out of germany and has a really nice aesthetic to it and somebody that uh you know we may look to get on the show and have a have a conversation with yeah definitely neat when you walked over there i'm like what's he looking at there's ladders right here i'm like it can't be the ladders yeah there's a big ladder booth here this fancy shade solution here i'm like well maybe you look let's look at the shades and then i see them sitting there and like like, oh, yeah. They're actually really nice.

Like the little round one that's tabletop solution, it's weighted. Like I thought it was glued to the countertop, and I picked it up. I'm like, oh, this is really nice. It's got some heft to it, and it's a good build quality. Yeah. So we'll be interested to see where that goes. They said they'd be available on Sonos.com shortly, and then maybe somehow, you know, other way that we can get in touch with them.

So what about some of the big boys, Seth? The Control 4s and the Savants and the Snap AVs of the world? You know, what are you seeing there? Well, I mean, Control 4, we were kind of expecting, I was kind of thinking they would do quite a bit. We'd see a new remote, we'd see new touchscreens. No, none of that. We didn't see very much out of them for this show other than a couple of software updates.

They added Amazon Music and Deezer. And then another thing I think they're doing more and more these days is kind of like giving more control back to the end user to use their system. So they have this little add music driver that you can pop in. And then the client, if they get a Spotify account or whatever, they can click that and then add whatever they want into their system. It gives them a little bit more control over the system that's traditionally been locked down. I think that's an interesting way to do things. I know people like Savant have been doing that in the past. But, yes, so far not much out of them for hardware.

There's a lot of KNX news, and I know that's big news for the guys overseas. Yeah, yeah, so far not much out of them for hardware. They were doing – there's a lot of KNX news, and I know that's big news for the guys overseas. Yeah, yeah. And it may filter here into the U.S. I know BAA is way over there somewhere. So having that ability to control KNX, I'm sure, is huge for the guys overseas, especially in Germany. Yeah. And they're in the booth.

They had the Bazalt keypads K&X system hooked up and going. So it should be interesting to see what comes out of that and how well that takes off, how that helps them. Their bottom line, I suppose, because they are a public company. We'll find out in the future. Yeah, and you know what? We didn't see much of anything at the Control 4 booth was related to Aihiji and their acquisition of Aihiji this past year.

It's quiet. And the merging of it with Backpack. We just haven't seen a lot of progress there. And so you wonder behind the scenes what's going on with that and what's the status. Admittedly, I didn't have the time to stop and really chat with them. And so they may be giving updates there at the booth. I'm just not sure. I certainly didn't see it prominently displayed,

I can say that much. Unlike SnapAV, which is really interesting to me, is you go to SnapAV and literally, I took a picture of it, they've got the front reception desk area and directly behind that, hugely prominently featured is Oversea and remote management. It's front and center for SnapAV this year. And I really think that's interesting. I think SnapAV is investing really heavily in Oversea, and they really believe that being the network and the network manager of the connected home is a long-term play that I see them really going after. And to have Oversea prominently featured that way,

and then right off to the right of that, they had all of their W wop box and some new form factors on the on the wop box with oversee and connected outlets so a very prominent theme right there at the front of the snap av booth was that that idea of remote management i thought that was pretty cool to see yeah and they had a couple of other new products like speakers and sound bars i saw in there but yeah you're right the entire front half of that booth was all oversee and uh and like one of the most impressive things was they had a full rack. It had to have been a six-foot tall rack.

It didn't really... Yeah, full height. Yeah, full height rack with the Oversea logo on top. I took a picture of it. It's got all the Oversea-enabled gear in it. And it includes cameras and everything. You don't really think about it. But yeah, they're pushing that product into more and more of their internal products.

Yep. And I know they're showing a whole bunch of other things. We'll probably talk more about SnapAV on our follow-up show next week, certainly. I think Savant and really Control4, for that matter, the thing that I take away when I walk up to those booths, if I had to sum it up in one word, is really, I guess, consolidation. Meaning you see both of those companies really continuing to invest heavily in bringing in new categories of products.

So Savant is very prominently featuring their shades, which are really a beautiful solution. They're designed by a company called Jay Geiger, which some pros who have been doing shades for a while have probably heard of. That company's been around for a while, and Savant partnered with them, and they make a really a really aesthetically pleasing mounting solution that's very you know fits in with a modern architecture really really well

right and we'll talk about that again in a second when we talk about lutron i think but they're you know they're prominently featuring those they're prominently featuring artisan speakers who they acquired i think just, just this past year, if I recall correctly. Oh, yeah. They were right over there in the corner. So sort of following along the same lines of what you see Control 4 doing, bringing in speaker lines and other products like that to expand their offering and really just be more comprehensive. So that was one of the big things that I observed at the Savant booth. Yeah. The other thing, you know, with Savant, and this is something that I know when Bob Madonna came back a couple of years ago at the Savant dealer conference when I was still an integrator.

One of the big things that he talked about was this move towards embedding their host software into more devices, making it more lightweight so it doesn't require a whole lot of processing. And you see that. No more Mac minis. Right. Yeah, exactly. And how far they've come. They've got a sound bar that has an embedded host in it they've got a thermos thermostat that has an embedded host in it and so you see them really moving in that direction of how can we make the host available in lighter weight cheaper devices so that it's easier to get into the home so it's

a pretty interesting trend there yeah one of the the demo that they had there was a thermos the thermostat on the wall. It looked good. Nice little color touchscreen, I guess, thermostat that's sitting there. And it's got the host controller built into it, so it's actually controlling the AV gear that's sitting right next to it on the display there. I thought that was pretty slick. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was cool. And, again, we'll talk more about Savant on our next show. What else, Seth? I mean, I know we explored around a little bit. We did stop by the Lutron booth. We'll mention that very quickly. I saw one thing that jumped out at me there

was something that they were calling My Lutron and unfortunately did not have time to speak with anybody at the booth about that, but you and I poked around with it a little bit. And it appears to be a modern and much improved solution to what is now SCT, which is their shade configuration tool. And any pro listening to it is probably familiar with SCT

if you've done shades before. And while it is a functional piece of software, it is very utilitarian and old school, and it has been in need of an upgrade for a very long time. And so this looks pretty cool. Again, didn't have a chance to talk with anybody about it, so I don't know if this is available now or if it's something they're just showing as a prototype

to a preview of coming attractions, so to speak. But that was one of the things that jumped out at me at the Lutron booth. Yeah, yeah, no, it looked pretty good. I mean, nobody was there, so we just started playing with it. Like, what the heck is my Lutron? Yeah, it looked pretty cool. They also had their shades, right?

So their shades on display, their new, like, savant-style shades. Can I say that? Yeah. The mounting brackets looked exactly like Jay Geiger's savant. It would be interesting to see how that progresses. Not a coincidence there. Yeah. See how that progresses.

Not a coincidence, yeah. And they were also, I guess the Catra demo is pretty slick now. So everybody is talking about that here at the show. Like, go by and check out the Catra demo. Those guys were here last year as Catra, and between last year and this year, they were purchased by Lutron. So now they're in the big green booth, so to speak. Yeah.

Yeah, one of the other areas I know we stopped by is NEO. Chatted with the folks at NEO. They've got their NEO Pro program now, and it was cool to see. They've got a dedicated remote, a new remote that looks very similar. It's black, not silver. I think that's only going to be available to the pros. And it's got some features that the other one doesn't. I think direct integration with Control 4 they were talking about, Kaleidoscape.

They're working with Crestron, some other companies, to make that remote really seamlessly integrate with professional solutions. There's some margin in it for dealers. I think about 30 points is what they said there. And a management portal that dealers will have access to, multi-brain support. That was cool. So that's pretty cool. You can put a bunch of them throughout the home, and they mesh mesh together and you don't get a single point of failure and you can

distribute that control out through the home a whole lot better than you could otherwise. So some neat things going on there. And it's always interesting to me to see companies like that, that whole theme we've been talking about kind of meeting in the middle, right? Right. There are companies moving down market to try and get cheaper solutions in place that really go direct to consumer. And then you see companies like NIO who have traditionally been very consumer-focused, trying to do a better job at catering to the pro. And I think that's an interesting trend, as it has been for the last three or four years. Yeah, where I see them, especially even at the price point they're at with the finish that they are,

they're like kind of an upgraded version of the Logitech Harmony line. And Logitech's actually here. They have a booth way down at the other end that we didn't make it to. Yeah, I saw that. I think that's kind of like going to be their main competitor. Yeah, they appear to be aiming in that direction, right? I would agree with you there. And all of the Control 4 dealers that have been wanting a new remote

are probably going to slide right over there. Yeah, well, it's interesting that, you know, Control 4 has basically partnered with them, right? And that new Pro remote. No, no, no. So there's a Control 4 has basically partnered with them, right? And that new Pro Remote. No, no, no. So there's a driver that's written by Janus, which is a developer out of the UK. They do a lot of work in the space. They do Crestron and all sorts of other programs.

So they basically make a driver. You put it on the system. And then what's really cool is that the configuration gets sucked into the Neo Remote, and you set up like you would any other device. Yeah. Pretty, pretty cool. So partnered with them is a strong word. Stronger word than it should be.

Yeah. It is now a solution for a handheld remote if you're a Control 4 dealer. So there you go. Yeah, and what I was really impressed by was the dashboard, so to speak. Yeah, the management tool. How you can get in there, do upgrades and downgrades on firmwares and make sure that things are online.

It looked like you could do a little bit of control, like if you're having a problem, there's a little troubleshooting built into it. We didn't have too much time to hang around and play with it, but it definitely looked like a good solution. Yeah, absolutely. I'm interested to see what they do with that. One of the big things that I've seen, and I kind of came to the show knowing that it would be, because it's kind of like my industry and what we do over at Blackwire,

is video over IP. It seems like everyone this year has a video over IP solution. I think Key Digital, which is, yeah, within throwing, we can throw our mic right over there. It's right there. They're prominently displaying a digital signage and enterprise IP 4K, 444 solution. And it looks like it does video tiling as well. There's a ton of these. I think even Savant was talking about having a solution. I've lost count. That's kind of how many I've seen. I know there's a number.

And I know there's guys that aren't even here. They're with Wirestorm, which I can't remember. I think it's Carlos, I want to say, was telling me about at the Home Tech Happy Hour. Yeah, which is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to talk about that, too. He was showing me Wirestorm's version and their app and how it worked and everything. And, man, these things have come so far in such a short time.

And now they're doing video tiling. They're doing video walls with these. And it looks like it's not just a single point solution. You have all these. Oh, we have SnapAV's Moip too. Moip. Good Lord. But yeah, I mean, it's a solution.

And I know a lot of dealers are happy with it. Yeah, totally. Yeah, well, let's wrap it up here. Like you said, we wanted to touch on the Home Tech Happy Hour and thank everybody who showed up there. We had a great turnout this year, really fun time seeing everybody and meeting some supporters of the show really meant a lot to us. And we want to thank, again, Chow Main for being our sort of platinum sponsor there

and helping out with that. We really appreciate that. Again, check out Chow Mein. Great company that does driver development and has a lot of great solutions out there. Yeah, absolutely. I also want to take some time to thank our couple of happy hour friends that came in under the last minute there. Digital Media Zone, which was our friend Richard Gunther there. But check out thedigitalmediazone.com.

Yep. And Synegrationation which is another driver developer company and I don't remember their exact web address but I will put it in the show notes check out those guys they were kind enough to go ahead and help donate some to the cause of destroying a couple of our

livers and getting ready for the party alright Seth well I know you and I both have meetings we got got to run to, so we're going to wrap it up here. I'm glad we were able to do a show here from on location. And like I said, next week we're going to jump into a lot more detail on a whole bunch of this. So be sure to tune into that.

But thank you for tuning in this week. We appreciate it. And, again, thank you to everybody who either stopped by the Home Tech Happy Hour or just came up to the booth and said hi. This year we really appreciate it. Had another great CD. A great time seeing you as well, Seth. And look forward to reconvening next week to pick this apart in a little more detail.

Sounds good, man. Well, we'll sit down in our comfy chair in the basement in the garage. Off our feet. Off our feet, exactly. And have a good conversation about what we saw here. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Seth.

Talk soon. Bye. Bye.