Articles and whitepapers

Trade Talk: App-tastic ISE 2012 (8/2/2012)

By Peter Aylett, Home Technology Associates

With the recent cancellation of The Home Technology Event by CEDIA, Integrated Systems Europe 2012 took on the mantle of being the premier platform for product, networking and après-show shenanigans for the residential technology industry. In terms of sheer numbers, the show certainly did not disappoint - having broken both the 40,000 attendees and 800 exhibitor milestones for the first time.

The show was, however, representative of the lack of real R&D cash for many companies that manifested itself as being a year of evolution rather than revolution. Of course there were new products, but these seemed to be developments of existing ones rather than a blow-your-mind/create-a-new-product-category type product.

App-enabling

The only exception to the above was a product that I doubt will find mass market appeal, but was clever nonetheless. This was an interface that 'app-enables' a standard analogue door-entry phone to allow homeowners to see and have full duplex conversation with someone at their door via an Apple iOS device. Though niche, the product showed what I perceived as a huge trend at the show - the app enabling of the majority of subsystems that are used in the industry.

The Visiomatic visiTor door-entry system app-enables a standard door entry phone, and allows you to see from your iPhone or iPad who is ringing at the door, talk to the person and even open the door.

As an ongoing trend, my feeling is that app-enabling will dominate shows for the foreseeable future both as a means of control, but also as a platform for both media delivery and communications. In a few years time, if a product line does not have a well-designed app to interface to it, I'm convinced that increasingly tech-savvy consumers will not accept it as a solution.

This change will ultimately end up in a need for the industry not to design rigid, inflexible highly custom solutions, but to design and install platforms that empower the customer to make their own choices about what services are delivered into the home.

EaaS

EaaS (Everything as a Service) is a big buzzword in corporate I.T. at the moment, with more and more hardware and processing power being transferred from the office onto cloud-based servers. As residential installers, we cannot ignore this trend and must embrace a more app-enabled, rather than rack-of-switching-and-control-product-enabled, future.

On the subject of EaaS, I was truly surprised to see how many AV devices still have no (as far as the people on the stands at ISE would give away) Apple Airplay roadmap. Whilst certainly disintermediating much of what we do, unless we deliver exactly this kind of functionality, our customers will only laugh at us.

Hi-Fi fun

I'm a Hi-Fi geek at heart, and it is always great to see an esoteric and slightly bonkers speaker nestled in amongst a sea of displays, brackets, projectors and HDMI widgets. The most impressive speakers, certainly in terms of looks and sheer presence, were being displayed this year by Cabasse. Whilst not discreet, it is this type of design and technical statement that still allows our industry to create a different type of 'wow factor'. In fact, I'm often surprised that as an industry we refrain from introducing clients to the wild and whacky, and still default mostly to sonically far inferior hidden solutions.

The Cabasse L'Océan is designed to be idiosyncratically elegant.

Digital glue

I'm always on the look out for glue at shows. You know - those widgets, converters and transmitters that are the unsung heroes of the installation world. Whilst I didn't find anything revolutionary, there were definitely more fibre-based products this year. This is a move that I wholly encourage as it minimises both the bandwidth and interference issues so prevalent when sending high-bandwidth signals over twisted pair.

With Intel developing a version of Thunderbolt that by 2015 will be able to carry 50Gb/s (think 4K 3D) at a distance of 100m using a fibre-based physical layer, there is sure to be more interest and development in this area.

Fibre connection to a Wyrestorm HDBaseT matrix.

Training

This year CEDIA offered its biggest range of courses ever at an ISE event. With titles ranging from 'The Art Of Project Documentation' to 'Technology and Consumer Trends', the sessions were universally well-attended and well-received. As there is no longer the Home Technology Event platform to offer industry seminars and training, I have no doubt that we will see an even bigger programme for next year.

Conclusion

So, with another ISE over and my frost-bitten fingers slowly recovering, we'll have to see if the coming year yields enough of a financial recovery to enable manufacturers to splash some more R&D cash. If that happens, let's hope next year really is more revolution than evolution. Whatever happens though, 'Vive la app revolution!' The industry will never be the same again!

Peter Aylett is a Director of Home Technology Associates, provider of consultancy, training and client advocacy for integrated technology solutions within the home.

www.hometechnologyassociates.com