Technology Blog

Welcome Sony to the Allied Family

Jim Anderson — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:48:17 +0000

We’re proud to announce that Allied is now an Authorized Reseller of Sony products. Sony has long been known as the premier manufacturer of TV sets, going back to the Trinitron days. They still do a phenomenal job with HDTV and their LCD offerings are truly best of breed. Beyond that, of course, they’re the inventor of Blu-ray and we’re thrilled to represent them. We’ll have a dedicated Sony section of the website up soon.

CEPro 100 Day Three

Jim Anderson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:44:28 +0000

Day 3 was fascinating if for nothing more than the appearance of Microsoft. For what it’s worth, Microsoft has always ignored the CEDIA channel before, even when they were heavily pushing Windows Media Center. However, the guys that were here didn’t care about Media Center. They didn’t even care about Windows7 or Windows Home Server. They were from Gaming: Xbox. They were here to do a couple of things. The first was to show us Project Natal, which was absolutely amazing. All the things that you thought were cool about Wii were leap-frogged and taken to the next level. For those who haven’t heard of it yet, Natal is an add-on device that will work with any Xbox 360. It takes the controller out of the equation and relies strictly on reading your body and its gestures, motion and voice. It’s hard to describe. The best way to do it justice is to direct you HERE . The second thing they were here for was to listen. Unfortunately, I can’t go into further details because I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before entering the meeting. All I can say is that I hope their ideas pan out.

Julie Jacobson of CEPro hosted and interesting discussion on digital media. The bottom line is that we’re 2/3 of the way moving from physical media (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) to mass storage (hard drives and flash memory). The next phase will be to move from physical storage to the “cloud.” If you’re not familiar with this idea, the concept is that all media (data, music, videos, TV, etc.) is kept out in the “clouds” that form the internet and you just pull down what you want when you want it. Hulu, Rhapsody and streaming Netflix are all good examples of where this is headed. Bottom line: you better be ready and you better be wired.

CEPro 100 Day Two

Jim Anderson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:39:33 +0000

Day 2 was filled with interesting talks with other dealers and sessions with various vendors. I was particularly enamored with an energy monitoring product that Gordon Van Zuiden of Cyber Manor recommended. I hope you’ll see Allied rolling it out soon. More to come on that. We also reviewed a number of other areas that integrators were pursuing to fill in the gaps while A/V is lagging. The ideas ranged from the predictable, such as digital signage, to the outrageous (a dealer in MN who is installing 120’ wind turbines for electrical generation. The idea that I liked best was from a dealer in North Carolina who is using automation and security equipment to craft a solution to keep senior citizens in their home longer. With the high price of nursing or assisted care facilities, this is a win-win. The “patient” can remain longer in comfortable surroundings while saving money at the same time.

We also spent time with Sony, who SWORE that they are not committed to the custom (CEDIA) channel, and this time they mean it. We’ll see – I guess time will tell.

CEPro 100 Day One

Jim Anderson — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:35:57 +0000

Day 1 was mainly travel, but the evening highlighted by a speech from Noel Lee, founder of Monster. Noel is always fun and inspiring. I hope I still have his energy when I’m his age. Monster would later give us each a pair of Turbine in-ear headphones. This is the first pair of in-ears that I’ve ever tried that are both comfortable and have great sound, including deep bass. They also do an exceptional job of sealing out sounds from the exterior world. I think they regularly go for about $150 – not cheap, but well worth it if you use them a lot.

CEPro 100 Summit

Jim Anderson — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:26:38 +0000

Every year, CEPro (the main industry magazine for a-v and low voltage companies) puts out a list of the 100 top dealers in the country, rated by total revenue. Late this spring they asked for nominations for this year, based on 2008 revenues. We had never applied before, but we had a strong ‘08 while other dealers had already started to wilt with the recession. So, I thought we just might have a chance to sneak into the bottom of the list. So this summer the list was published and……..we didn’t make it. Dang.

Well, despite this crushing blow, I got a little uplifting news a couple of weeks ago. CEPro rewards those on the list with an all-expenses paid trip to LA, where attendees get to swap ideas and get wined and dined by vendors who pick up the tab in order to get face time with the biggest and best dealers in the industry. Apparently the magazine promises the vendors 100 dealers. Some of the top 100 couldn’t make it, so they move down the list to those who almost made the cut, but just missed it. So – Allied got the call and I’m really thrilled about it. It’s going to be a great opportunity to hang with the movers and shakers and I think there’s a ton I can learn. I leave for LA on Monday morning. More to report then-

CEDIA 2009

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:22:44 +0000

CEDIA 2009 – for those of you who don’t know, CEDIA is our industry trade association and they hold their annual trade show every September. It used to be in Indianapolis, then it moved to Denver, now it’s in Atlanta. First of all, there was a lot of industry griping (industry – not from me) about moving to Atlanta. The perception is that the city is gross and rundown and that the hotels are too scattered to truly be within walking distance of the convention center. I don’t think downtown is that scary. I can’t speak to the hotels because we stayed in Dunwoody and rode MARTA. I know I’m showing regional bias, but I was thrilled to be able to drive to the show instead of flying.

Attendance at the show itself was down. Last year’s attendance was 25,000. CEDIA claimed that 20,000 attended, but there was a persistent rumor that only 14,000 pre-registered and the real number was in the mid-teens. Didn’t seem THAT far off to me.

One last negative thing – during the show, Nortek announced that they would be filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Nortek is the parent company for Speakercraft, Niles and Elan among others. I think these companies will probably be ok, but nevertheless I’m glad Allied is not hitched to any of them.

On to the show – what was new? Nothing earth-shattering, really. 3D was on display in a number of places. Color me jaded on this one. It still only works with special glasses. You can’t convince me that America wants to watch TV with special glasses more than once or twice a year, max. I honestly think 3D is a waste of time and money in the home and is best left as a special event in the theaters. LED local dimming is showing up in more and more TVs and that’s a good thing. Also, more and more TVs were UBER flat, but some (LG) still had connectors that went straight out of the back of the set. What’s the point of a ½” screen if it’s gotta hang 1” off the wall?

A lot of new stuff is on the way from Control4. The best part is that they’re going to start to embrace the iPhone model of having an app store. Should be very cool. More on that later…

Introducing the Allied Home Tech Blog

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:51:41 +0000

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