HomeTech.fm - Episode 226 - CEDIA 2018 Wrap-Up! #NerdsOnBirds

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

On this week’s episode of HomeTech: Our annual, super-sized CEDIA wrap-up special! This year, we are joined by Richard Gunther of the Digital Media Zone’s Home:On podcast and Matt Scott from AV Nation’s ResiWeek for a very special episode! Join us as we take a deep dive into all of this year’s most important show takeaways. This is one you don’t want to miss!

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by listeners like you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, September 14th. From Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. From Sarasota, Florida. No hurricanes. I'm Seth Johnson. Yeah, yeah. You got to enjoy a full, what, week out at Cedia? Seth, how long were you out there? Yeah, no, we were out, let's see, I showed up really late Tuesday night, so that really doesn't count. So Wednesday through

Saturday, I guess that's the entire show period. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good. That's it. Really? Yeah, yeah, I was out there Tuesday through Saturday. I did, as I have mentioned on the show, did three workshops this year, which was a ton of fun. Those went really well. And the first one of those was on Tuesday afternoon. So I flew in very, very early Tuesday morning and had a great time out there as well. Really another great show. And we've got a really fun episode here where we're going to talk all about it. We have a couple of good industry friends who came on. One has been a multi-time guest on the episode here, Richard Gunther of the Home On podcast. And then Matt D. Scott, whose name will likely sound familiar to the professionals in the audience, anyone who

works in the industry or follows it closely. And Matt does a lot of great work over at AV Nation, hosting the ResiWeek podcast and also runs an integration company called Omega Audio Video. And so we had both of them come on and we've got a monster CDA wrap up here that we're really excited to share. And we'll get into that here very shortly. Yeah, absolutely.

And if you haven't seen it on our YouTube channel, there's a video of our shenanigans there at the Irish pub for the Home Tech Happy Hour. So if you haven't seen that, go check it out. I did a little time-lapse thing. I got a GoPro and set it up in the rafters. Oh, cool. I didn't even realize you did that. Yeah, no, it was sitting up there recording most of the time.

And at one point, I had adjusted it for the lighting that like i was there when it started with and then at some they must have come through and i saw it a couple of times they kept turning off the lights like one at a time and it got darker and darker so the the video is kind of grainy and you know uh you know as drunk as we were i suppose with like you can just pretend you're there continue there that's right we did have a great time. We had a really, a really great turnout for the home tech happy hour that we held on Thursday. This was the second time that we've done that.

And like I said, it was a ton of fun. You know, we, we've got a great community that we've built up around this podcast over four years of doing it. And a lot of people that we've had the privilege of interacting with and sort of getting to know online in various mediums, but to replaces that face-to-face interaction. And so to be able to gather there

with a whole bunch of interesting folks who come from various parts of the home technology industry and get to shake some hands and exchange some stories about the show, I had a blast. It sounds like you did as well, Seth, but, uh, I know that it was a lot of fun and look forward to doing it again next year and CDA here in Denver. Oh yeah. So Denver, Jason, you, you probably know all the good, the good downtown, the downtown area bars that we can, you know, the last time I was downtown, I forgot two kids. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure I can do some recon though. Absolutely. Yeah, well, please do. Yeah, so we will definitely be repeating this next year.

And I do want to give one more final shout out for the year for ChowMain for being our happy hour host. ChowMain Software, they do develop drivers for Control4, Crestron, Elan, RTI, Q-SYS, and URC. And they have dealer drivers. They have manufacturer-sponsored drivers. So if you're looking for a driver to be made, they're the guys to go to. So go check them out. That's right. I think it's chowmeinsoft.com.

But we'll put a link in the show notes to their website for sure. And then we also had two friends uh, friends, uh, happy hour friends show up. Uh, and of course one of them was the digital media zone and the other one was disintegration, which is another, uh, software house. So want to give a shout out to those guys and I'll put links to every, those in the, in the show notes as well. Yep. Absolutely. Big, big, thank you. Uh, I'll echo what you said to our sponsors. We really appreciate that. And Seth, I know that the, um, I'm not sure how you departed the happy hour, but when I left, I had another event to go to. And like, I didn't have a ton of time to get there. I was running a little bit late.

And so, you know, for anyone who is uninitiated here, the way to get around in, in San Diego, apparently is, is on what's called a bird. A completely unsafe scooter with no helmet. And it's probably fallen apart three times and been snapped back together with hot glue. Electric scooters. They're pretty amazing. Yeah. We drove across town on them.

And the batteries. It was a blast. I had a blast. And I know the phrase has been going around and making the rounds. And I think Eric Teese, who actually is still a good friend of mine, runs an integration company out in Los Angeles, DSI, and is also involved in the Home technology association with josh christian friend of the show who was there and i had to give them a plug because they came up with the fantastic term that i think encapsulates cda perfectly and that was nerds on birds yeah at some point during the week i i was using that at and i don't know I can't really tell you what time it was. I was using that as a rallying cry as I was, I would hit that scooter in like two steps and then scream nerds on birds

as we, we all drove off as, as you know, a rallying cry. And I've got a picture of what this looked like. I'll put it, I'll put it in the show notes. It pretty much encapsulates like the, the senior show this year with nerds on birds. And, uh, it was, it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun. Anyways, we did have a great time out there in San Diego, but we also had a fantastic time recording this episode. And like we said, at the beginning, it is a big one. We covered a ton of ground and really, really enjoyed hearing everyone's perspectives. I think we had a really good, a well-rounded sort of perspective on Cedia, and we covered a whole bunch of different categories. So Seth, I think without further

ado, let's go ahead and jump into our Cedia 2018 wrap-up special. Hey there, welcome to our Cedia wrap-up special. I'm Jason Griffin with the Home Tech Podcast. For those of you who may be tuning in through a different stream than normal, I'll give a quick introduction to our show. I co-host with my partner, Seth Johnson, who is also on the show with us here. Seth and I are both former integrators and host a weekly show at hometech.fm, where we talk about all things smart home and really the convergence of DIY and professional technology and how all of that is coming together to form what we have here today. And so we get together every week to talk about that. And we have a great time doing it.

So we'd encourage you to check that out. And with that, I'll toss it over to Seth and he can give a quick introduction. We'll do around the horn here and then we'll jump in and we'll share our thoughts on what was another great show in San Diego this year. Yeah, well, I'm Seth Johnson, again, one of the co-hosts of Home Tech Podcast. And I think, Jason, you pretty much said everything. So I'm just going to go ahead and toss it over to Richard Gunther of the Home On Podcast and the Digital Media Zone, right? Yeah, Digital Media Zone.

And let me go ahead and add a sponsor of the Home Tech Happy Hour, which we thank the Digital Media Zone one more time. Thank you very much, Richard. We do appreciate that. Indeed. I don't think I need to introduce myself now. You did all the work. So yeah, I'm Richard and I'm looking at this pretty much from a DIY perspective. And I was really interested to talk to vendors about how they're crossing that chasm and had some really good guests on my show, Home On, when we recorded our live episode with interviews about that kind of crossover. And I will pass to Matt. And I don't know enough about him to introduce him the way you did me. So it's all on you, Matt.

And the way I did Seth. Oh, gosh. Who is this guy? My name is Matt and I'm here. now. I'm Matt D. Scott. You may know me from Omega Audio Video, which is my integration firm. You may know me from AV Nation, where I cover all kinds of things in the CD and the AVIXA channel. You may know me as a CD board of directors, although my opinions are my own, not those of the board. Yada, yada, yada, legal, legal, legal. Yeah, don't sue me. I'd hate to stick my lawyers on you. Yeah. Happy to be here.

Looking forward to it. I'm not sticking them on any of you three. I totally get it. I didn't know we were doing disclaimers. I should probably disclaim that I do, in fact, own Control 4 and Sono stock. There you go. Oh, wait. We got to do stock disclosures? Oh, jeez. I'm done. How long is this show? Yeah.

This is getting deep. You're going to kill me today. I should disclaim that these opinions are my own, too. Wait. Yeah. Okay. Are you sure about that? No.

That's how I start a show. Yeah. Well, I'm down into this long trail. I need to go get another one, but I'm already one down. So beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. I'm working on ice water tonight.

Richard, I see you have a fine beverage there. What are we working on? That would be a bass ale. I figured that was too solid. Respect your English listeners. That's right. In fact, that's what I was drinking at the Home Tech Happy Hour,

which again, you helped sponsor. We really appreciate that. We had a great time connecting with some of our supporters there. And we had a really fun time doing that. And CD is always a blast, right? You're sort of burning the candle at both ends out there,

working hard, getting up early and covering the show and then going show and and then going out and catching up with old friends at night and that's always a good time so we'll talk a little bit about that i'm sure some of the lighter side of cdl will come up uh scooters i'm sure there will be some conversation about scooters there's no conversation about uh cdl 2018 would be complete without that but i guess you know i i, I'm thinking maybe we started at the beginning here and coming into Cedia, you know, Matt, for you, you cover a lot of different parts of the

industry being a podcast host and a Cedia board member and an owner of an integration company. So I'm sure you were busy out at Cedia. What was sort of your big thing coming into the show? Like, or big things, uh, plural, you know, that you were looking forward to seeing when you, when you headed out to San Diego. Ooh. Um, and, and thank you. I do cover a lot of the industry, so it's always fun to go to the different shows and see what everybody's, uh, displaying there. Probably the two biggest things I was looking forward to was, uh, additions to video over IP that that's continuing to be such a huge trend. And I really wanted to see what was new and upcoming with that and what was exciting with that. And there were a couple of things that we'll probably get into later, unless you want me to

spill everything right now. The other thing was I was honestly really looking forward to 8K. It has been rumored. Don't start with me yet, Seth. I see you smiling, causing trouble. I'm coming for you. I can defend this position very well. I was really looking forward for 8K. I saw it at Infocom in a teaser, and I knew that there were going to be some things shown there.

I was happily surprised and also comically entertained as well. Um, but those were really my two main points. And then my, my biggest one that I have at every show I go to is connecting with fellow integrators, fellow media people, uh, just industry people. I love spending time with my friends in the biz. There's very few people who understand what we do as much as we do our best to show that. So when you get a bunch of us in the same room, we've become long time friends, a lot of us. And unfortunately, the only time we see each other is at these kind of events or digitally like this. So being able to break bread and, you know, say hi, high five or something is always fun. Yeah, absolutely. Seth, I think you're dying to get in there on some of that. No, I actually had the same. Well, OK, well, why not? Sixteen K. I got you.

OK, I was actually one of my big takeaways from the show, too, was the abundance of the video over IP or HD over IP systems that exist out there. I mean, from a couple of years ago, there may have been one, if not two, on the show floor. And it seemed this year, I lost count. I mean, every major manufacturer that I could think of had one either in their booth or someone else had one that they were using next door. So, I mean, even smaller companies like Zector, who are big in the Cedia channel. I'm not too sure about the Infocom channel, but I know that they're pretty big in the Cedia channel. They were showing off a video over IP system too. So I was surprised.

I knew that there was going to be some there, but I was actually just surprised to see how many actually showed up this year. And I'm wondering, I mean, I've been questioning personally the longevity of a system like that in the day of streaming and cheap $150, $200 boxes you strap behind your TV, or $30 boxes you strap behind your TV and get 4K out of. So I'm wondering what the reason, I mean, I know what the reasoning is, but I'm wondering what, clearly manufacturers see that there's something here that they can take advantage

of. And I can see that there's a number of years left in these types of systems. Like, it's not going to end tomorrow just because Apple TV came out, you know. But I was I was genuinely surprised to see as many systems on the show floor as I did. Yeah, there were a ton of them, and I agree with you. I know that's something we've talked about on our show a number of times is what what is that future of video over IP outside of the really big residential jobs with streaming becoming more and more popular and TVs potentially moving to a point in the future where you hang it on the wall and you plug it into the network and everything is streaming.

So it is an interesting question that you pose. And I'm with you. Everyone had it. I know SnapAV was showing off their solution, which is Seth's favorite name for a product ever. Moip, right? Fantastic. Moip. Which, you know, I admittedly didn't get a chance to go check it out, but on paper has some pretty neat features in terms of both its ease of setup and integration with, with oversee snap AVs, remote management and support platform. So there's, there's some interesting things going on in the video over I IP space.

I know for me coming into the show displays were a big one. I think we'll come back and talk about some of those. That's a category on its own, right? For sure. And we'll, we'll talk about 8k, 8k, um, and, and all of that as well. But Richard coming into the show, you know, what was, what was the big thing for you? What were you looking forward to heading into, uh, heading into Cedia? So I'm always looking at what DIY vendor products are out there on the floor, either the vendors themselves or the companies that are taking or embracing the products that are available to them.

So what I found was more and more vendors that are starting to take on that model where they're embracing the third party products, whether it be someone like Control 4, which is largely built on a lot of third-party products that are also available over the counter. Many of them Z-Wave or by manufacturers that also support Z-Wave stuff. dominantly DIY companies like Ring and like Google and Nest and who else do we have? Brilliant and Noon, companies that have products that were originally launched to the public, some even through crowdfunding in the case of Brilliant and Noon. And those products are now really targeting the builder segment, largely because they think that that's what they need to do to survive. So I thought that was kind of interesting, right? Brilliant came in as something that was really directed at consumers.

And now they're really exclusively working with this CD market, which I thought was interesting. One of these actually raised their prices recently. Was it Brilliant or Noon? It was Noon. Well, I think they both did, but Noon dramatically raised their prices. Their retail price was like $3.50 at Best Buy. They don't sell in retail anymore. You can buy direct, but now you're paying the prices that they would be charging if you're working with a distributor, and that's $529 for a three-switch starting kit. So, yeah, that's a pretty big increase. Had to build that margin in somewhere, I guess.

I guess so. Wow. So, yeah, it was a good show from that perspective for just kind of seeing what those different vendors are doing. You know, I still feel like some of the vendors that are there are providing a little bit of lip service in terms of embracing the installer market. To some degree, I think that Ring and Nest fall into that category quite a bit. On the other hand, I think, you know, I would argue that Sonos made some good moves to make their products more appealing to installers. I don't know if it'll work or not.

I know there's been some, well, you know, one might go so far as to say that folks like Seth are on these, Sonos is going down in flames train. And I just don't believe that. Oh, I'm with you. I will be, I will be Sonos' biggest critic and biggest proponent at the same time. Like I love the product. I have so much invested. I don't want to see him go out of business, but man, they have a tough battle ahead of them. I mean, even with the Q3 results that just came out or the money that just came out, like they were there and they're facing some serious uphill roads ahead of them.

So I, I don't, I really do wish them the best of luck and really hoping to see them pick up and start doing better. Yeah, I'm not willing to take too much. Yeah, I don't think they're not going anywhere. And I'm not willing to take too much, to read too much into their first public reporting quarter where, you know, it's a bad quarter for them to begin with.

And then they, you know, they've had some rocky years. And if anything, I think they're at their turnaround. Yeah, it was a bad quarter, and specifically it was a play-based overestimation, which any of us could have told them, yeah, that's a minor market to be putting so much product into. But no, I don't foresee them having any major issues going forward. It'll just come down to continuing to develop products and continuing to expand that. But they have the largest music library, and it's not even close how big their library is.

I'll let the first quarter results go by, but I'm not going to forgive the past six years of them failing to innovate and update their product line and ignore the CDF marketplace and dealers for greener pastures, so to speak. So like there's a lot of forgiveness that needs to go on and I'll forgive them, but I mean, it's, I'm not going to let them off the hook just for that. So fair enough. Did you go to their booth?

I did go to the offsite. I did not go to the offsite. We had a party to get to. So I did not get to go to the offsite. Yeah, they had a booth this year. Yeah, at least they had a booth. They showed up. Exactly.

That was one of the big stories last year. They literally front and center, you know, nothing but a piece of cardboard that said come off site. You know, I come down a little bit in the middle on this one. Like, I do think Sonos is not going anywhere. I do think that they've not done a whole lot of substance for the installer channel in years past, but they also didn't have to. And they've been very, very successful. They were the pioneer in this space. They were the first one to do it.

And, you know, love them or hate them. I know when I was an integrator not long ago, we were selling the crap out of Sonos. It was one of the few products that we sold going back to the days before Nest and, and Echo and all of that. That was for you, Richard Echo. Yeah. Thank you. I didn't say the A word. Um, you know, going back to the days before that Sonos was like one of the only products that people would ask for by name. Right. Um, so they've, they've got a huge install base out there. They've got, as Matt, you alluded to a big, a big library and, and, um, yeah, I, I see him staying around for the long haul, but I also think they've, uh, they've lost ground and other companies have caught up. And I think they had, they had a bit of a, uh, not a

bit, they had a big lead there and who knows, maybe got a little complacent. And I think that the increased competition in terms of people being aOK with going out and picking up a $35 Echo and not caring about the sound quality, that's eaten into a lot of their market share and some of that white space opportunity that they potentially had only a few short years ago. So it will be an interesting trajectory to see how they evolve over the coming years, no doubt. Cool. I'll jump back in here. I didn't know if anyone wanted any more on Sonos. How much do you want? Yeah. I've got hours. Let's move on. Yeah. Hours of Sonos content. Yeah. We don't want this to be the Sonos, the Sonos special. So in any event, yeah, I think that probably for me heading into the show, personally, my big thing that I, that I was looking forward to really checking out is most closely aligned with what Richard said in terms of the evolving market and seeing these companies like Noon and others who have come out as purely consumer-focused products and are now having to move up market to try and find better adoption, presumably. And then you've got companies like

the big players, Savant, Control4, continuing to evolve their product lines and give offerings at lower price points to make the technology more approachable. And what you see is that just this massively expanding catalog of opportunities for people to get into the connected home that just didn't exist five, six years ago. And that's literally a blink of an eye, what we've seen happen in the smart home in terms of just making it more approachable for wide swaths of the market has been really interesting. And to see what that dynamic is doing to the Cedia show floor, which is traditionally in the past been very, very focused on pro and luxury. And I know going back in the four years that Seth and I have been doing home tech, we've talked about it every year at Cedia and that dynamic of there

are those pros out there who say, you know, Cedia should be a luxury show. And, uh, and then you've got the people out there who are just excited to go and see what all is out there. And so it is an interesting dynamic. And I know reasonable minds come down on different sides of that argument. But for me, it is by far, at least for the last four or five years, has been one of the biggest trends and one of the most interesting trends that I've observed at Cedia. So let me ask you two gentlemen this, because my show is honestly busier than it should be. So I don't get to see every booth that I originally planned to. I didn't go to noon. I saw Ring from a distance. I saw Google from a distance. I didn't get into any of those booths.

Did you find that their presence on the show floor inspired you to look further into their product? Your conversations with them made you think, hey, this is something that we're interested in and we're interested in for the channel? Or is it more of a noon, for example, coming in and just saying, Hey, we need more awareness of our product so that hopefully we'll sell more. Yeah, I can jump in there. I'll be curious to hear what Seth has to say as well, because he saw much more of the, of the floor than I did being there as a vendor this year. I was, I was pretty much chained, uh, chained to OneVision booth. I had a great time doing that, but didn't get to see nearly as much of the floor as I would like. I think as you're asking that question, the one company that jumped to my mind was NIO and was very curious to see what NIO was

doing with their NIO Pro. Because again, they are another company that came from crowdfunding, purely consumer play, former integrator, Raph, who started that company, and was really interested to see what they were going to come up with in terms of a professional offering. And I think to answer your question directly, Matt, yes, it actually did make me more intrigued to see what they had done because they had, I think, created enough differentiation between their consumer product and their pro product. There's not a ton of margin on that. I think it's a $600 remote. So even at a decent margin, there's not going to be a whole lot of meat on that bone for what a lot of professional integrators are used to. And that's going to become more and more of the new norm. But they had what looked like a fairly robust management portal to both manage their deployments, I think, update firmware, do some basic troubleshooting, that sort of thing. A different remote with drivers built into it that integrate very seamlessly with Control 4 and soon some other

platforms in the channel. And so I think that they've got a little bit of a leg up in terms of their background as former integrators. I don't know. I think Richard's point earlier was spot on. There have been a number of companies who have come to Cedia in the past with pro offerings that really aren't anything different than their standard offerings, other than maybe just giving the pros a small piece of the margin. So I didn't see that from NIO, but I presumably there were other companies there who didn't have, you know, a substantial sort of offering for the pros. Yeah, when you say substantial, you mean money, right? Because... Well, that and just, you know, knowing what integrators need. You know, I think the remote management tools that Neo had are a good example of the sort of thing that integrators need. So, yes, absolutely. Money and margin are very, very important. These are people who are trying to run businesses that have always run on product margin, largely, not exclusively, but largely.

And so, you know, but stepping one level beyond that, right? Like, what are the things that can actually make the professional's life a little easier? And I saw some hints of that, at least from Neil. So, yeah, I saw a couple of manufacturers had those tools that were available. And tools certainly help. Like, if there's anything that we need, it's remote management that prevents us from needing that extra five, 10 points of margin to roll a truck out to fix a warranty issue. Right? Like that's, that's probably one of the better things. I will say that I, I visited a couple of these booths. Um,

I didn't get by like the noon booth or, uh, uh, I don't even think I went by the Google one, but I, I did get my ring and i i do know i did see and and have some conversations with them i do know that there will probably be some um some things coming out in the future that they'll they'll uh they'll i think the integrated market would be happy happy to get so i i think that they have kind of the conversations i had they they definitely take feedback from the market and they definitely listened to the feedback that's coming in, like from integrators on the show floor. Like, let me install your spotlight on the eaves of my home.

You know, I don't think that one actually came up, but that's a good one. Oh, man. But yeah, that's they definitely I think the integration with their product was was one of the biggest things that the people on the floor were coming back and telling them about. And I think they'll probably push or internally get that push to be a higher priority in the future. And I think integrators will be happy about that. Yeah, well, unless you guys have anything else on that sort of DIY pro convergence, I think maybe we move on here and talk a little bit about some of the other technologies. Matt, you mentioned 8K, and I want to talk about video. I know coming into the show, for me,

that's always one of the big things I get excited about seeing. It's not CES in terms of big unveilings for TV technology, but all the big players are always at Cedia and they're always showing their, their latest and greatest. I know that I got a chance to stop by the, the Sony booth and see their new flagship, uh, TVs and Richard sounds like you did as well. And, um, beautiful, you know, gorgeous, gorgeous, the A9F and the Z9F. One of those is LED, the other is OLED. I continually forget which one is which, but their new Master Series TVs were absolutely

stunning, as you would expect from Sony. They're traditionally, you know, a very reputable and high-end display manufacturer. Barely sort of stopped by the LG booth, but they're known for their OLEDs, of course, and pushing that technology forward. And so there was a lot going on. And then micro LED technology as well, which has, I think, traditionally been more of a commercial technology, Seth, as you and I talked about on the floor when we did our recording, but really neat stuff going on in the world of displays. And I'll just leave it there and let anyone sort of jump in. Yeah, Richard.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I was stopped in my tracks a number of times by Sony's display wall. And I think that's probably more conceptual now than real product. But it was an enormous 8K display that was absolutely beautiful. You could walk right up to it, unlike the wall from Samsung that has a, I don't know, like a 12-foot buffer zone around it for some reason. Because it'll melt your face. Having stood right up against it, it'll melt your face. It's hot.

Ah, okay. Well, that's good to know. But that Sony wall was just absolutely beautiful. The color on that, the quality on that. And the thing that's really interesting about this is that all of these manufacturers that are coming out with 8K displays are having to justify 8K because the content isn't really there, right? Sure, there are some pro cameras and there's a red camera and there's some YouTube content, but for the most part, content availability is just nil right now. And so you're either producing stuff yourself, if this is for some sort of professional studio install or something, or they're upscaling. And so most of these companies have come up with these

insanely complex upscaling algorithms. The folks at Samsung, we're talking about how they actually have a smarter things algorithm or no, sorry. I'm saying smarter things. Oh, geez. They have a stranger things algorithm. Like they have all these different algorithms based on the show that's on, that's going to optimize the video based on the type of content that it has, which is, which is really intriguing. And it goes even beyond that because, and this was the one that I teased earlier that I saw at Infocom, they're using machine learning to take content, upscale it, and then take imagery of it and determine whether they upscaled that properly on a pixel by pixel basis to then come back and tweak it if they feel that they can make it better. And because there's no human involvement in this, it is strictly machine learning and AI. The theory is, is that when they release their new 8Ks, which are insanely cheap, by the way, that the video that we watch today, whether it's Stranger Things in 4K up converted to 8K

or something else, if we watch that today, it'll look great. In two weeks or a month, it could potentially look even better. Yeah, that's astounding. And that's the part that, oh, I'll buy one. Since I know the price of the Samsung 86, yeah, I'll buy one. Yeah. I can't tell you what it is though. I can't tell you. I don't have to kill you i just i'd have to sue you and then samsung would sue me and then i'd name you as a codependent yeah how about we just stick to talking about displays in general yeah yeah what was your what was your sort of big i mean that's a I actually didn't realize that that sort of machine learning technology existed in displays. And that's yeah, that's amazing. What was your Matt, your favorite sort of TVs or what were just your general overall impressions of of displays at Cedia this year? always looking better, which is fantastic for us. It helps us sell more. Um, uh, I've been partial to the Samsung wall for quite a while, mainly because I actually know what that one costs.

Whereas the crystal led, I still can't buy that. I'm not buying it. Don't, don't look at me like that, Seth. I'm not buying it, but at least I know what it costs. I, at least I know there's a value and you can buy it. Um, so, so the walls always astounded me. The, the new Samsung line has been great. The master series from Sony that you, you gentlemen mentioned is a fantastic product and it's Netflix specific, uh, color settings so that you can, you can essentially tweak that monitor and set that monitor to the same settings that they use to master that content. Uh, as somebody who's played with video, as long as I have, I love that. That's just amazing. Uh, the LG OLEDs, the, the,

the depth that they have those down to is ridiculous. I still hate the fact that they can't figure out how to do it with an in-wall cable. They don't ship with a rated cable, which I don't know who's buying these TVs and putting the cable down the wall. Right. I literally have no clue who's doing that. And the other interesting thing that isn't really video, but that continues to surprise me is they continue to sell or market to our channel specifically, the long soundbars as kind of your connect box or your base station. LG's notorious for this. We don't have in Southwestern Ontario where I'm from, we don't have a lot of modern spaces where someone's putting a TV on the wall and then putting a flat shelf big enough for me to put this huge, ridiculous soundbar that can't be wall-mounted.

I don't know who's buying that. It's definitely not our clients. Yeah, I don't get it either, particularly when LG came out with theirs, and it was required with their, I think it was their Eve that came out with that. You have to have that. It just makes no sense at all. With, with a cable that can't go in the wall. Right.

Right. Right. It just, they don't show that on the marketing material. No, no, no, no,

not at all. No, never. Projectors are always fun. There were some great projectors out there. Um, there were also a lot of quasi AK projectors and that always kind of makes me laugh a little bit.

Uh, just the way, the same way it does with, uh, 4k projectors that aren't really 4k. Oh, okay. Okay.

Yep. Okay. Projectors are fantastic. What do you call the next generation? Fate. Fate. Fate projectors. Fate. Ah. Fate projectors.

We'll steal that from Facebook and hopefully not get sued. Video is one of those things. As much as we want to downplay it within the industry, as much as we want to talk about how it's the automation, it's the control, it's all this other stuff, the TV is still as a role. The display is still the sexiest part

of that system for most clientele. It's the only thing that comes close are the dedicated two channel rooms. You very rarely have an experience where you can walk someone in and just point whether it's on or off working or not and go, look what I have. It gets everybody excited. TV still do that. Big speakers do that depending on the audience. Um, systems can do that, but, but that's really the, the big one. Yeah. So yeah, I agree. That's why I get excited over it. Now, what do you think of the short throw laser projectors? I was kind of impressed by the new Hisense low end version that's throw ALR, the ambient light rejecting model. Fantastic. Coupled with that, it looks great. It's still a bit of a hard sell for me because most people who are willing to spend money on a projector expect that they're going to have to

have a space for it in the ceiling. They've kind of for it um we again due to our region we don't get asked for that very often i think it's a great solution i think it's something we can try to sell um but it still requires the console or something yeah you have to have something to put this on exactly and it needs to be at a specific height and everything. What I like about the Hisense solution, though, is that the screen is part of what you get with that price. It's a full package. Yeah, it's great. It just, I look at it and say, we might be able to sell this to somebody who isn't working with a designer. And their significant other is not going to bother them

at all about this. Um, and I'm going to argue that I know exactly what you're talking about. You know what I'm talking about? And nine times out of 10, those, that clientele is not my client, at least they're going to, they're going to find that on the high sense website or best buys website and they're going to buy it there. That doesn't mean I'm not excited about it. I'm not intrigued with it. It's just one of those more niche-y products that we're never going to stock. Let's put it that way. What if you could take that, because technically you could, I've worked with similar projectors in the office space. What if you could take that and you could put it on the ceiling and use a short throw ceiling projector that could theoretically be kind of embedded in the ceiling? You mean like a recess commercial mount that scissors down?

Exactly. Well, no, but doesn't have to scissor down. Oh, and just do like a viewing wall? Or like a viewing wall? Or like a viewing something? It's basically in a box in the ceiling, flush with the ceiling, but can project down onto the wall and give you that sort of capability. That would be fantastic. I think I'd like to see it go in that direction because we have those in offices today. I'd love to see them. What's that?

I'll watch the projector. How wide? Yeah, how wide is it how deep is it it it well deep you could probably get it between studs wide you could not fit in a 12 a 12 inch on center floor joist the things integrators think about yeah i'm going through like all right heat displacement uh let's get power to that thing the The electrician's never going to put a plug up there. No, no, no. But if you think of the FSR ceiling boxes that they use in educational spaces, that would totally work. You could totally do that with an opening, do some passive heat management. You could get there. But again, you're not doing that with a $4,000 projector.

If you're going to go down that route, I'm going to argue that that's going to then become a $10,000, $15,000 solution, at which point I'd rather not have to fight the pincushioning and the distortion of a short throw. Sorry to poke holes in that entire debate. Well, no, you're right. The type of client who's going to pay the sort of money to get that thing built into the ceiling. Yeah, to safely build that into the ceiling. Doing that appropriately is not a cheap thing to do. As a former project manager, anytime I hear about anything being recessed into a wall or a ceiling, I just get a little bit of PTSD. I'm not going to lie. It's hard. It's really complicated to make that were good, and I'm not going to mention the brand names, but there were a number of them that were bad, and I could see tearing on the video wall. I could see.

Oh, own it, man. Own it. Come on. Digital projection. I mean, great projectors, but their video wall, I could not. I didn't think you'd actually do it. I couldn't sit down and actually do it i couldn't sorry guys uh but i know matt you you've probably seen these things at uh at at like infocom i don't

remember the new name of it i or i can't say it so well the the the trade show is still infocom association is now avixa and you know it i'm i'm really glad you brought that up because there was somebody on the center aisle and i will not name this name because I'm not that guy. And they were showing, you know, it's a panel based LED wall. So they're showing the guy with the magnet, he's grabbing it, pulling out the panel, snapping them back into place. And as somebody who plays in both markets, I see it. I look at it. I know what it is. I know how much it is. So I know why it looks the way it does.

It's not saying it's good or bad. It just it is what it is. Watching so many of the residential guys who have never been to Infocom, never seen commercial panels, never seen Absinthe or any of the other big name guys. Watching them walk by and just being, oh, my gosh, did you see that? They just pulled the panel right out of the – losing their minds over what is for us or guys that do both residential and commercial firms that do that. This is standard fare. This is not uncommon at all. And that one was not a great example of it. Whereas you could go to planar on the other side and they have a really

good video wall. Um, that again is an obtainable product opposed to essentially the wall and, and, uh, Sony's crystal, um, seeing those attempts and then trying to sell those as like a theater replacement are the ones that kill me. I would put a wall or a crystal in a house or a job any day, again, if someone can afford it. I'm not putting a mid-range – I don't care if you tell me it's a 0.9 dot pitch. I'm not believing you. I can't put that in as a replacement for a high-end DPI projector or a Barco projector. Gosh, throw some of those really nice video walls up against a Prometheus 3, and the projector is going to win all day long. It's a better picture.

But that's just the joys of seeing some of those commercial products show up at a residential show. Yeah, the Sony wall was bigger at Infocom two years ago. It's huge. Oh, yeah. So it's impressive. I kept hearing people say, oh, have you seen how big the Sony C-LED thing is? And I'm like, yeah, it's about half the size maybe I've seen.

So, yeah, but it's an expandable solution. It has a question mark on the price because of it. And there you go. But I looked at those and I don't know what I would use those in a house for, the panelized systems. I don't think they'd make a good theater. How would that work for the sound in the theater? Where do you put the speakers? You can't put them behind a solid TV.

So you put them above and below. Samsung is working with their cohorts now at BSS and JBL and all the Harman friends there to create virtual sound fields. And they're doing this because the wall technically started life as a commercial product, which is Cine. I'm going to forget the name of it. Cine, I'm going to forget the name of it, Cine something. And they're starting to replace projectors in large format theaters, commercial theaters, with this new video wall product. And they've created all the DSP witchcraft, if you will, to create that sound image as if it's coming from behind the screen. And I have not seen it in person or experienced it, but I know Tim,

who works with me at Aviation, has. He was flown out for their debut of this. And he said it's on point, if not better. And the crazy thing is because the video wall has a brightness factor that you just cannot obtain in projection without doing quads and just ridiculous stacks, wall has a brightness factor that you just cannot obtain in projection without, you know, doing quads and just ridiculous stacks. Um, they can create picture and contrast that we can't get out of projection. So I know with the wall specifically, um, they have a, a monster mansion that they're working on in, uh, Beverly Hills right now. Now keep in mind, this is like

a $66 million mansion that's being built. They're putting 10 of the wall products in. It's insane. Yeah, so I won't break down the individual pricing, but you're talking over $4 million in video wall for 10 different locations maybe you can do them yeah i didn't say it and that's again that's before design labor and install and programming and service product yeah yeah and all of the back end you know the stuff that has to

drive it so and keep in mind it's not necessarily that like these products are not designed as a a b comparison product these are designed to a degree as a hey look what we can do and then people buy them based on hey look what i have it's no one actually needs a ferrari unless you're racing something um but people buy ferraris because ferraris are really cool and they're a status symbol and they let you do the whole look at my Ferrari. That's right. I love it. I, I, this is actually fascinating. I learned a lot here about video wall technology that I didn't know. So appreciate that. And, um, and it's, uh, you know, it is, I've having been a project manager actually out in that market, Matt, that you mentioned, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, that is, I can totally picture the type of house that this technology goes in.

And so, you know, it sounds like if I'm hearing you correctly, it is very much a viable sort of a solution, very much a viable solution for theater, but just not at those mid-range, you, the mid range companies who are coming in and trying to say, um, so you've got to really be, be able to, to spend the money and, and, you know, have the deep, the deep pockets in order, in order to, uh, to make that viable. I know a lot of people to pull the heat out of your house. Oh yeah. I know a lot of people at Samsung, they're not selling me a wall. Right. Even if I had a client that is willing to spend it, that's going to be a lot of conversation to make that happen. Right. Right. for that and move on to, you know, I know we're, we're running up against our time a little bit, but a couple of areas I want to make sure that we touch on before we wrap up our, uh, lighting control. I know we've got a couple of big lighting control guys, uh, here on the show between Richard and Matt and Seth. I know you've got a ton of experience with that as well. And, and control and automation, obviously we gotta, we gotta finish there and talk about what's going on

a little bit in that space. But, um, what, what do you guys think? I mean, what were you seeing in lighting control? I know for me, barely had a chance to stop by the Lutron booth. Didn't really get to see the Ketra demo, which I heard really good things about. Oh, you missed out. That was the best thing on the floor. Yeah. So I missed a big one there. I mean, what else did you guys see? Again, I'll just open it up here and let you guys jump in. Let's talk about lighting control for a few. Retentra, I think, is the winner as far as what I saw in lighting control. They really have this down. They've thought through how you manage light intensity, specific wavelengths, how you tie that to the different times of day for this, not just circadian rhythm stuff that maybe some people think is hogwash, but just generally what kind of light you like and are comfortable with when you're in your home doing different types of things. I think it's brilliant. I love what they're doing. And I know it's tied to their homeworks system, but certainly that can be tied into other control systems if you

have them and you're running them in your home. So I loved what they were showing. I thought that demo knocked my socks off. Like here's a company doing it right. Oh yeah. We've been hearing about warm dimming and circadian rhythms now for the better part of a year and a half to two years. But what Ketra was doing before the acquisition was arguably groundbreaking in the sense that they were doing full RGBW DMX style dimming in a residential product, which you can argue the hue does it, but the hue doesn't do it very well. Ketcher was doing it in a truly architectural manner. And Richard, you really hit all of my good points, which kind of annoys me, but I'll gloss over them for a second. You stole my thunder, which as you annoys me, but I'll gloss over them for a second. You stole my thunder, which as you probably hear is actually happening. I have two toddler-ish age children running around upstairs making all kinds of noise. The biggest thing when you start looking at this is

most of the LEDs, no matter where you're buying them or who you're buying them from, if they do warm dimming, they do it on a curve. It's not always consistent light to light, which means you end up with a very poor light output and not only lumen output, but CRI, color render index. On the Ketra bulbs, this is like a 98, 99% CRI, which is absolutely insane. Couple that with Lutron's homeworks, you have the ability to run full-on circadian rhythms throughout your lighting system. So what that means is when you wake up, it is a very warm, soft light. And it just goes through that transition that follows the natural path of the sun from a light temperature output where it gets really crazy is you can actually adjust this

based on your schedule. So if you have to get up, if you're one of the guys on one of the ESPN's morning shows and you get up at two in the morning for your show, you can base your lighting system on that schedule so that you have a better, uh, essentially life existence with proper lighting in your home. As you're living through that time period, the, the absolutely ridiculous part of it, which again, Richard, you stole my thunder on this. They showed in their demo, and we have a video on our website that should be up today-ish, where we show video of it. And what they did is they showed how they could adjust the saturation and the color of a bouquet in a painting. And just by changing the wavelength, not the color. And that's, that's the really big key from the stage lighting work that I've done in the past.

And so we'll do a lot of consulting on, we can do that with color on stage. We can make a motion. We can, uh, create atmosphere changing the actual color on stage. What we can't do is screw with wavelengths. What catchers figured out how to do is how to change wavelengths without changing color so that they can actually change the color wavelength of their bulbs to highlight something without actually changing the color output of the bulb. So in the room, it looks consistent. There's no change, but they can highlight things on a level that as a lighting designer, we've never been able to do before. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's absolutely amazing. I can't wait to get my hands on more of it to, to play with. And I can't wait to see them,

you know, right now it's just homeworks, but they will bring this down the line and as they bring this down the line this this is the biggest revolution in lighting control in a long time yeah well said and i know lutron doesn't acquire companies right like they just don't so they clearly saw something special in ketra and uh two yeah. Since 62 when they started. What was the other one? It was the Shade Company. I know the name, but I'd have to look it up. It was the Shade Company. So you're saying this is only the second company they've ever purchased since they were founded.

To my knowledge, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So they've got a reputation for not, you know, they're not a company out there doing mergers and acquisitions. It's going to do their thing. So they clearly saw something special in Ketra. And you guys are making me feel like I don't know what the past tense of FOMO is.

But whatever it is, I have it. FOMOed. FOMOed. Seth, anything to add on lighting control? I mean, I saw Catcher last year so it's kind of like, oh okay I've had it, it's right over there I've been playing around with it for the past year

It's pretty cool I gotta say Insert comment about Lutron Let's see I'm glad to see it make its way into mainstream, I suppose It's a great product I'm glad to see it make its way into mainstream, I suppose. So I'm glad it's a great product.

So I'm glad to see that Lutron picked them up and is doing something with them. I'm, again, for maybe the second or third year, still really impressed with what I saw with the low-voltage lighting that was out there. Lumistream is a company. They have an ever-increasing booth every year. This thing was huge this year compared to what it's a little like 10 by 10 it has been in the past years. They're getting bigger. They're offering more fixtures, really cool product.

It has some really like low, low, low, low dimming. I think like half a percent or something crazy, some crazy amount the guy was telling me. Yeah, 0. zero or sorry point two point two yeah yeah it's low insane yeah uh and this is all done with low voltage wiring 18.2 that we pull for speakers right so like this is uh this is a a golden opportunity i think uh for integrators to kind of jump in and get on uh and it's one of those, this is one of those, like, I saw a catcher last year. I'm like, okay, that's a technology that is going to get picked up. And I think this is one of those technologies in a couple of years, we'll be looking back saying,

why weren't we doing this before? I really think that this is, for integrators, this is a huge opportunity to get into. And the other lighting thing, I'm trying to remember now. Oh, oh, the KNX, what is it, ABB? Is that the right name of the company, ABB? Yeah, ABB. Yeah, so KNX and ABB were pretty prominent there on the show floor. Control 4 was, of course, showing off KNX integration, and then ABB had a massive booth kind of on the far side

of the uh of the room there and I I think those two are just interesting because they are they're massive players in the rest of the world and not so much here in the in the states but having a presence here uh and starting to kind of break their way into the market I think we're going to see them more and more often in the future yeah cool. Cool, guys. Well, I don't want to move us on too quickly. Anyone else have anything on lighting control? We jump into kind of wrap up here with home automation and what we saw there. Richard? Well, this kind of bridges both. Nobody mentioned Brilliant. Nobody was excited about Brilliant. Come on. Brilliant. I didn't even see it. Tell us about it. Like I said, I saw almost nothing. I'm living vicariously here. I'm sorry to speak ill of this to anybody who cares about it,

but you know, this is like my go-to company when I need to joke about reinventing the light switch. I like you. We can be friends. You know, they came out with this relatively expensive, for all intents and purposes, I'm going to call it an Android screen on a light switch. But it's not Android. They'll tell you. They'll go to great lengths to tell you that it's not Android, probably to justify their price. I don't know. But, you know, they're trying to do for $300 or more what Wink couldn't do for $79. So I'm not really quite sure what they think they're going to pull off here.

And I'm just insanely frustrated by this. It won CE Pro's best home controller. I don't understand. Also, by the way, it's big, plastic and ugly. It's the promise. I think it has to be. It has to be the promise of what it could potentially do. Yeah, I'm not a fan. I mean, this wouldn't pass the the the spouse acceptance factor in my house. Right. Can you imagine trying to pitch this though and again i'm not trying to downplay it um but can you imagine trying to pitch that to a good like a high level interior designer no somebody who has work in ad i'm gonna walk in and say hey here here'salladium keypad, which maybe they'll take.

Maybe. Like top of the line Lutron. I don't know what the top of the line Crestron touch panel is or keypad is. We have so much drama trying to get really nice looking sleek keypads into homes with designers and architects. And Brilliant wants us to try and pitch that with the ski jump at the bottom. I'm going to get hate mail from them. I know it. But I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with that. It's not intuitive. It's not sexy. It just, maybe it only appeals to geeks. I don't know. I don't know. I'm convinced the company is a bunch of like single geeky guys. That's the only explanation for it. Why wouldn't they just put a touch panel on the wall then?

Yeah, I don't know. Like, I don't know like i don't know i i i have i have since they started their crowdfunding they have been pitching to me and i just have been so uninterested and to see them get so much attention at this show just boggled my mind i i don't understand it wow way to end lighting control on a high note, guys. Ketra, it's awesome. Go buy that. It really was. Yeah. All right.

Well, yeah, I know we're probably wanting to wrap up here in not too much longer. Let's talk about control and automation. I know that that's clearly the big players. Crestron, not there, of course, for a second year, I think in a row, at least now. But Control 4 and Savant, you know, the two real big ones there. And Elon, I'm hearing more and more about. Got a chance to just sort of swing through all three of those booths. Seth and I did, Seth took me on sort of a CD, a crash course in the, you know, the one little 40 minute window that I had to go sort of run around the floor. And I know that I was struck, I think probably the biggest thing, just Control 4 and Savant, both, you just

see them both very similar from a business perspective. You know, the playbook looks very similar in terms of bringing in different product categories like speakers. And you see Savant has Jay Geiger Shade partnership that they're doing now. And so you see those control companies definitely branching out from just being known as control companies and very much moving into a whole bunch of different verticals. And that's been an interesting trend to observe. And I think Control 4 is sort of leading the way there in terms of acquisitions and really building out their portfolio. So from a business perspective, that was what I observed. But I'm curious to know what you guys saw. Seth, I know you spent a whole bunch of time looking at some of this stuff, or at least I think you did. What were some of your

big takeaways from Control this year? Yeah, the only control booth i didn't get to was rti and i do i do regret that it was literally the last day i'm sitting looking across i mean a giant remote that's all i missed right so i missed that one uh i was looking across the uh the aisle from the detools booth and i said i could go over there but i'm tired and turned right around and left. So yeah, there you go, RTI. Let's see, I did get to URC for a quick kind of meeting that we had with them and they've got some new touch panels coming out that look really nice. They kind of bridge the gap between, they could do like light commercial and they could do residential. And I liked what I saw there. There's also a program that I never even knew they had called TC Flex, which if you're an URC dealer, you're probably familiar with.

But it basically gives you the entire canvas to work with and make an entire custom interface with just like you would with a Crestron system. I thought that was kind of amazing. Evidently, there's not many two guys out there that use it or know about it, because most people just use the total control stuff, and have the system kind of do the gooey for them, which is what sane people would do. But if you wanted to really get down and get customized, you can do the TC Flex programming. Yeah, Control 4 still, I think it's a building year for them. The most interesting thing that came out of the whole Control 4 thing was actually the drivers that they released for KNX, which have some interesting properties to them,

should I say. If you're a Control 4 dealer, load them up on your system and check out what the properties page looks like. You can kind of see where the company's going. I really, they've got like HTML widgets and programming based in Composer now, which is kind of cool. And, you know, not much else. I wasn't, I mean, I wasn't really there to, I've seen their stuff coming. They have the, I think one of the things that got missed on the show floor is the little dumb switches. I don't know what to call them. They're just like, they're not smart switches. You can buy the Control 4 dimmer for, you know, 200 bucks or whatever it is.

But these are like little non-dimming switches that are just made to match the look and finish of a Control 4 switch. And this was always a huge deal when I was selling Control 4. I'd go in and like, well, the Lutron guy can install a Lutron dimmer that's smart and a Lutron dimmer that's dumb right next to each other. And we could never do that. So now the Control 4 has that option. And I thought that was good for them. And Savant was showing off a bunch of stuff. Jason, we kind of blew through that booth. But man, they had lighting control, uh, Savant was showing off a bunch of stuff, Jason, we, we kind of blew through that booth, but man, they had like lighting control, like RGB controls that they were showing off.

They had a video over IP system that they were showing off. They had a ton of stuff in that booth. I was, I was pretty impressed, uh, to all the stuff that Savant had kind of pulled out of their hat this year in a low key, low key manner. Cause I really hadn't been paying attention much to them. Matt, what do you think? I know you had a chance to swing by some of the booths. I saw you had a chance to chat with Charlie Kendall, huge acquisition for Control 4.

And apparently I'm setting you up for a trap here. I'm not really sure what it is. But give me your observations me, uh, your observations on, on control there without getting yourself in too much trouble. Okay. Um, control for, uh, I, I did, and thank you for mentioning it. I did get a chance to, to not sit down, but stand up and talk to Charlie Kendall for, um, 10, 15 minutes. And I will say this, I would argue that that was their biggest debut at the show. Bringing over someone of his caliber and his pedigree and stealing him, if you will,

but bringing Charlie on board and stealing him away from big tech because there are very few places that he couldn't go if he wanted to just with his pedigree, um, for someone in our channel to get him and put them in the position that he now is, is going to potentially bring some really, really cool things down the road. I'm really looking forward to seeing what that does, uh, for the channel. And I don't know if you follow him on LinkedIn, but about two weeks ago, just before the show,

he put out like a serious casting call to his former colleagues at Microsoft and Amazon saying, hey, we are doing awesome stuff. If you want to be on a cool team, get over here. And again, that's something that we, we just really haven't seen. I can count on one hand, the number of high level, you know, Silicon Valley people that have come to our industry. It just, it's not that big of a, uh, or a common of, uh, a thing. Um, that, their Intercom Anywhere stuff

that was announced a while ago was at the show. That was very cool. Seth, you are definitely right. Finally having a dumb switch is fantastic for them. Although now I don't have as much to sell against with my Lutron products. So thank you, I guess. Savant is the fun one for me. And this is where I said,

you're going to get me in trouble. I can't walk into a savant booth and not think about every other experience I've always had with savant where they show me a lot of really cool stuff and do nothing with it. I believe and what I'm told is that that's changing, but I haven't seen it yet. I was really impressed with their AVB speakers, their POE. Those are fantastic. It should be awesome.

Supposedly they're shipping. Can't wait to hear from someone who actually has one and has used it. Um, they're just that one darling that I always want to do well. And they routinely make me look bad. Um, for, for saying that, I'm sorry, Savant, forgive me. Well, no, they've, they've garnered that reputation, right? Yeah. And it's true. I mean, I worked for Savant dealers for, for years and it was, they were notorious for that sort of thing. And then for shipping updates that, you know, you would update a system and, you know, half of the thing would just fall offline and you'd spend eight hours there just trying to get it back to where it was, or you'd lose programming. And that was early. I was a Savant programmer very, very early when they had first come out. But they had a lot of missteps.

And I think the thing that Savant dealers and people who want Savant to do well are looking at now is the return of Bob Madonna to the company. And can he sort of get the ship right? And he's been back, I think, for at least a couple of years now, but obviously those, those sorts of ships take, take a little bit of time to turn there, but so yeah, I know you were still going there, Matt. No, no, you're fine. They're, they're making all the right moves. Um, I'm just hoping that they stay on this path. Uh, whether the, um, automation platform, you know, sidetracked to Avid plays out. I'm not sure.

I don't know if that really, really matters yet because it doesn't give you any influence on the full line. But they're the one that I would like to see be very successful. Elan was doing cool stuff. I just kind of made a sprint through their booth. URC, unfortunately, I didn't get to at all. I did get to RTI, though, like Seth didn't. And they do have a big new remote, only it's not that big. And full disclosure, I am an RTI dealer, so I'm excited about this remote.

We've been waiting for something like this for a while. It's got a four-inch touchscreen. It's a nice size. They still put the volume in the channel buttons on the wrong side. Uh, but I'm used to that. So it doesn't bother me. Um, the other thing that again, they brought out, which everyone is, is slowly continuing to bring out. Uh, they brought two new, uh, touch panels that again are really sleek and sexy looking, uh, have no problem being on a boardroom or on a living room table.

Um, they, the one thing that they did that kind of surprised me is they, they partnered with, they had a relationship with mirror view, um, that they debuted at ISC, I believe last year. Um, I think that's the right name, um, for some commercial AV products and some video over IP products. Again, just like everybody else, they, they brought something in to do it and that's fine. Um, I personally haven't worked with them, but I have some friends that have, and they're very happy. Uh, this year they acquired, I believe that is the correct term for what, what their business partnership is. Um, since eight, I'm pretty sure it's called. And same thing as a video over IP matrix. The difference is, is that it's giving you full like traditional network switch

diagnostic capabilities on their matrix. So to Seth's point, I don't know how long matrix will continue to be around in the higher levels of residential installation. I think they will, but we have not seen something like this before where you can hop into a matrix and get pin out information back, get cable fault, get all this kind of information back from it. That again, you normally get in a video switch or sorry, in a, in a network switch, they've, they've got, they've got all the diagnostics and all this stuff. And it all works with RTI IQ or RTIQ, whatever their remote access system is. That's a really cool and fairly new thing. So those were kind of my quick hits. I, I tried to stop by the Crestron booth,

but they weren't there again, again. Um, hopefully it'll be interesting to see what they do. You know, I know John, John Clancy is, is a big, uh, very, very bullish on the residential prospects for, for Crestron, but I know that they also, I think from a business standpoint, see that they could put that money into local shows and, and have it go a really long ways. And having those big booths at Cedia is a very, very expensive endeavor. I've had some conversations with some of the folks that run some of the bigger booths there and it is absolutely staggering. So Richard, let's jump over to you. Control, what were your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I am always looking at this not from an installer perspective, right?

I'm looking at it from what do they appear to be offering end users and what does that experience seem to be like? So I'm always interested in the demos and a little bit less concerned about the technology behind it, which means that I'm gullible enough to believe a lot of what they're selling me, but also been doing, been, been doing enough of these shows that I realized that, uh, about half of what I see is probably fake. So, you know, we'll, we'll go from that, uh, running through the list, you know, I like the RTI stuff, but you know, RTI's design with the blue-green kind of bath background and their big square block screens and everything, they looked beautiful when they came out 12 years ago. Now it's just starting to look tired because they haven't changed that interface design at all from then. I like what they do, but I feel like it's starting to look a little bit old. URC I don't even look at because I just think their remotes are hideous. Ironically.

And I don't really like any of their software. So, yeah. Control 4, I love that they're doing the third party thing. I think the stuff that they can offer from a third party perspective is, is fantastic. And I like that they give you so many different options. I too had a chance to sit down and I actually got to sit down cause we were at a dinner together with Charlie Kindle on Wednesday night. And my biggest complaint with Control 4 is that their interface is also horribly dated. It probably looked wonderful if you were ever able to run it on an iPhone 1.

But now it just looks horribly, horribly out of date. And I said this to him, I'm like, you guys need to invest seriously in getting that experience across all screens to be much more streamlined and up to date. Kind of the way that Savant did. I mean, you talk about the Savant pieces not all being there and not all working, but the experience that they create for the end user is beautiful.

It makes sense. The touchpads, the way they work, that new remote. I know it's not that new now. It's been out for like two years, but that remote is a thing of beauty. And the integration that they've done with Siri to work with Apple TV, with a new version of Apple TV that's coming out in actually just a week, I think they've done some really cool stuff there. So I'm always interested in seeing what they're doing.

Elon, their experience looks very unpolished. And they've changed it. Like it's fairly new and it just looks unpolished. I don't know what they were thinking. They, they hired the wrong design firm or something. Yeah. They have all pretty much all new hardware.

I mean, new processors, new, uh, new touchscreens. They, they, I think they had pretty much new everything there at,

uh, Elan. I, I, Elan's got some legs though. Cause that's like Nortec now. And I, if you ever look at the line card from Nortec,

it's like everybody that isn't Legrand is Nortec or herman group it's kind of wild but i might argue that their software looks like software designed by people who make hardware yeah no i i agree with that yeah yep i agree yeah i'm so glad you're on this this call yeah you guys are gonna be fast friends the control i i will echo what you say about the control 4 interface it looked great on the tv back in 2002 and i could actually do that and impress people using composite video not even component video but composite video but now not so much yeah that that they need to change the entire design paradigm i think they've they've they've sat on the little circle of power design for way too long.

The entire control community has moved on from what they're doing with that. I will have to say something. I kind of mentioned it, and Jason, this goes back to one of our Home Tech episodes, that I didn't think that, I thought Charlie Kendall would be tucked away, kind of like they did, Sonos did with Patrick, what is it, Patrick Spence, or whatever his name is? Spence. Yeah, they hid him away off site.

But I thought they would do that with Charlie Kendall. That man worked the show. And I'm listening to all four of us talk. It sounds like all four of us had sit down time with Charlie Kendall, which I think is pretty impressive. He sat in on no less than two meetings that I was in on. And one of them, it was a direct conversation that I had with him, which, I mean, he was busy. He had a handler there who was basically making sure he was in the right place at the right time. But he had a busy schedule the entire show. And I was absolutely impressed with that. And the meetings that we had were great. They were kind of on the

development side for Control 4. And if they're making some of the changes they're making, I think it's kind of a whole refresh look at what Control 4 is and what Control 4 does. I'm very encouraged by that because the conversations we've had with them for the past 10 years as a developer, we're having again, but it feels like somebody's listening this time. Right. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, they seem like a really cool company. I would love to work for them, but you know, I don't want to move to Utah, right? Deal breaker. Yep. Yeah. Uh, well that was a great, a great wrap up. I think a great way to kind of wind this show down, a fantastic episode. I had a great time chatting with you guys. I think we covered a ton of ground here and sounds like everybody had a good time, uh, out in San Diego. I'm, I'm assuming everybody here's heading to Denver next year. Yeah. Yep. I guess. Yeah.

All right. Are you going to take me to a Broncos game? Yeah. Hey, absolutely. Let's get, let's make that happen. All um but uh yeah i mean anything else guys what did we miss i we've kind of gone long here but was there anything that we i think we missed audio we talked about sonos for a couple minutes but i think there was a little bit more at the show than sonos this year no no that's pretty much audio in the ci space now yeah right yeah I went there. So there was a number of theaters and listening rooms across the back section. The Revo went, you know, kind of sticks in my mind because they've done a ton of advertisement and it's kind of stuck in my head now. But I don't know. I'm not a big audio guy outside of like the outdoor

speakers that I was impressed with this year. I didn't really see much. I did think the POE speakers were kind of cool from Savant. Uh, that seems like another thing that's come over from the commercial space, if I'm not correct. Yeah. Like the 70 volt stuff seems to be disappearing and then the, the, yeah, the POE stuff's coming in. Um, so yeah, I, uh, I don't know what, what anybody else see anything audio related that, uh, that they'd like to talk about? Uh, speaking of 70 volt audio control debuted, uh, a new 70 volt amp. Yep. Sorry. You forgot that one. Um, huge, huge in, uh, you know, back backyard audio, outdoor audio having 70 volts is fantastic for that. Um,

coastal source had their massive bollards, which when they had them turned down, sounded great. When they cranked them, I ran away. Sorry to my rep for Coastal Source. You just put more of them in. That's all you need. Yeah, that's the key. That's the play. Especially at that price point. Speaking of bollards, Origin Acoustics had a whole new refresh line of bollards, multiple sizes, multiple shapes, multiple configurations, some really cool stuff. I heard from more and more vendors that they were doing thin in ceilings, whether they were open or closed back, sealed back, that everyone's trying to get the thin fit, you know, two to three inch depth for in ceilings, stuff like that. I was in a couple of the listening rooms. I

unfortunately didn't get the Martin Logan one. And I read an article about it today that they were showing some experimental stuff behind fabric. You couldn't even see it and literally didn't do the traditional demo. They just played a bunch of tracks back and then asked people what they thought and then kicked you out of the room. That's one way to research things, right? Yeah. I heard it was a really interesting experience where you get lost. The one that blew my mind from a demo standpoint was I sat in the Theory Audio by Pro Audio Technologies, I believe. Shocked because it was a soundbar and a single pair on the ceiling and a single pair on the back wall. And I didn't know what was in the room walking in and it was all dark, of course. So I couldn't see it.

And they played a couple Atmos demos that I would have bet money that at the very least it was a 7.24, not a 5.12. It was a fantastic demo. Audio is a big thing that I don't want to say doesn't matter anymore. Um, but everybody's got speakers, everybody's got something for you, whether it's, you know, it doesn't matter who it is. Everybody's got something at various price points. Um, I did not see anything that was groundbreaking unless you want to talk to the Sonos amp. See that little plug? Or the many, many products that turned up this year that were like Sonos Echo Dots in the wall type products. There were a lot of those. They're everywhere.

Origin Acoustics really kind of pioneered that last year. And now everybody's trying to do that. Speaking of Origin Acoustics, my only interest in audio is really Atmos. And they at Origin Acoustics had a great Atmos demo, kind of blew me away. And I got a takeaway out of this. My takeaway was I loved what they were showing for their demo so much they ended up walking out of the booth and buying the disc that they were using to demo which was hans zimmer live in prague which is an atmos recorded concert it sounds nowhere near as good on my atmos system at home damn, that thing is a reference disk for Atmos. It is

wonderful. Writing it down now. Yeah. Pulling out their Amazon app. You can see both of us doing this. We're all typing. Hold on, what was that? It is sadly only available on Blu-ray, not 4K.

Just like everything 4K. Yeah. I think. 4K. 4K. I'm going to go get a coat. I think you guys covered it well. From my limited perspective, the outdoor audio seemed to be everywhere.

Our booth was very close to the Origin booth, so I got to hear plenty of that. He did. He did. Quite a bit. Plenty of that. Did you did he did quite plenty of that and you hear lots we had a lot of music yes yes they did and we were sandwiched between them and the bows booth so it was uh it's continually played uh clips from uh what's the greatest show on earth which i can't imagine got all the showman yeah the one about the circus thing yeah

yeah yeah it literally is now one of those songs that is seared a moment of time into my they showed a bunch of like play one looking devices with cover art on them which i'm not sure about but hey maybe uh i got an email today from my local apid distributor telling me that they're now in stock and i can go spec them um you can decide if i'm gonna do that or, but we'll leave it at that. All right, guys. Well, what do you think? I know there's been a monster wrap up here. We've covered a ton of ground and, uh, like I said earlier, it's, it's been a blast for me.

I don't know. Is there anything else, uh, you guys want to get in here before we, before we wrap it up? I didn't ride a scooter. No, I didn't either. Okay. So I don't know how you guys got away without doing that

I like to live you guys saw the catcher demo I did not want to break anything I'm with you Richard again we will be fast friends no I got harassed multiple times to ride the stupid scooter and I pawned it off on

I don't have an American driver's license because I heard you needed that for the app. I multiple times just flat out said no, because if someone's going to fall, it would be me and I would ruin a suit and I would be very frustrated about that. And you wouldn't have yet had the new Apple watch to detect that you had fallen. Right. Exactly. No, can we hold on? Can we talk? I think we should. I live in Canada.

I live in Canada. I know we have to go and my wife will shoot me after this. I live in Canada. Things are already expensive here. You want to know what that new phone costs, which I will most likely buy here. Topped out. Oh, topped out. That's a $ a two thousand dollar phone oh wow i am a hardcore apple fan yeah but two grand yeah because that would be what thirteen hundred us dollars for the for the large uh most amount of memory i think it's 15 50 it's like 14 14 29 or something us okay okay but

it's two grand wow canadian wow it's you got deeper pockets than i do no two thousand dollar phones coming into this house i i i am really i'm not going to buy the topped out version for sure. That would not pass the budget committee. No. I'm going to write mine off somehow. You'll find a way. No, it'll be a write off. It'll be fine. It is ridiculous though.

Yeah. How many surfaces can I buy for that? I can buy what? Two? At I buy for that? I can buy what, two? At least two, two and a half? You can buy several Surface Go's for that, I'm sure. I don't know what you're going to do with them in a year. You'll save a lot of money on apps. I'll stand them up somewhere.

That's good. That's good. All right, well was this was a blast guys uh once again jason griffin here and seth johnson with with home tech joined by richard gunther of the home on podcast in the digital media zone and matt d scott of several several things including uh the resi week and av nation Nation combo over there. Omega Audio Video, did I say that right? That's correct. And a Cedia board member, although his opinions stated on this show were his own and not that of the board. So yeah, thank you. Support Cedia. Join Cedia. Yes, that's right. Really quick, since we are going to promote this across different channels, Richard, where's a good place if, since we are going to promote this across different channels.

Richard, where's a good place if anyone tuning in through a different channel than normal wants to check out your show? What's a good way for them to do that? They can just go to the digital media zone dot com and home on is on our podcast page. We're also in all the usual places. Home on. It's easy. Very good. And Matt, how about you? If someone wants to connect or check out what you're up to, what's the best way for them to do that? Easiest way to find me is

at Matt D. Scott on Twitter and pretty much every other social platform. OmegaAudioVideo.com, Aviation.tv, Cedia.net, anywhere. Put my name in. I'm pretty sure.

There it is. There it is. And Seth, I'll let you close out here with the home tech plug. Well, you can find us at home tech. Dot FM, where we do a,

some mostly weekly podcast about home technology and the news that surrounds that field. So yeah, we'd love to have you listen. If you don't already. That's right. Yep. Like Seth said,

home tech. Dot FM, a home tech podcast on Twitter and on any of the major podcast directories, just search for the HomeTech podcast. So with that, we'll wrap it up. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. See you. Yeah. So it sounds like it sounds like all four of us had a great time this year. I certainly had a great time talking with everybody again about Cedia. So I can't wait till next year. It was a good show this year and probably will be hopefully Denver. Jason, can you tell me, does Denver have scooters? You know, I, I think I heard the downtown Denver does, but like I, like I sort of half jokingly said earlier in the episode, I have not been downtown in so long, but I did run into an old colleague of mine who, who mentioned that, yeah, the, I don't know if it's the same company and same app or whatever, but yes, these electric scooters are apparently invading metropolitan areas all over the country.

And I think Denver is seeing them as well. So we'll have some fun with that. And like you said, Seth, it sounds like everybody had a great time out there, saw a whole lot, as we always do, and came away with some good takeaways that we were able to share here in terms, what's really happening in the home technology space and what are, what are the categories to watch out for? So I had a great time recording the episode and look forward to, uh, another great show next year. I'm sure it'll be here before we know it. Yep. Absolutely. Real-time follow-up. I, well, I opened the bird app and I'm kind of scrolling

around downtown and it doesn't have any like birds available but uh it does have those red out zones like around the university and stuff where it's like you cannot ride that thing here uh so i think i think by by by that we might be okay but it doesn't look like we'll see time will tell you can ride it on 16th street which i think is the big i can tell you yeah that's the big one and i can tell you that there were no birds in San Diego last year, and they were everywhere this year. So a bird infestation does not take long to come about. All right. Well, everybody remember, nerds on birds. Just scream it loud.

Scream it proud. That's right. And we'll see you in Colorado next year. That's right. Well, wrapping up here, we want to give a big thank you, as we always do, to everybody who supports the Home Tech Podcast, but especially to those of you who are able to financially contribute to our efforts here at the show. If you're not aware of how to do that, go check out our Patreon page at hometech.fm. Once again, that's hometech.fm.

That's where you can learn how to support the Home Tech Podcast for as little as a dollar a month. Any pledge will get you a shout out on air. But I'm sorry, any pledge will get you an invite to our private Slack channel, The Hub, which is a great community of fellow home tech enthusiasts and pros where you can join us for some inside baseball every day. And if you pledge it over $5 or over, we'll give you a big, big shout out on air. And so we've got a whole bunch of people who have done that and we really, really appreciate it.

So thank you very much for your ongoing support. Yep. And if you want to help out the show, but can't help financially, we'd appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a podcast app of your choice.

And hopefully you give us your five stars because that's what we're working for, Jason. We're working for those five stars. It's a labor of love. It's a labor of love. So Seth, it was great. Uh, great seeing you out in San Diego.

I know you and I don't get to connect in person much either. So that was a lot of fun and want to thank also one, one last time, Richard Gunther and Matt D Scott for coming on the show. We really appreciated that. And so Seth, uh, with that, we'll wrap up. Hopefully I'll see you in person, you know, some way, somehow before CDA next year, but if not, uh, uh, until then, and like you said, we'll be ready with the rallying cry here in Denver, 2019.

All right. Sounds good, Jason. All right. Take care, Seth.