News / Media

August 26, 2010 | by Tom LeBlanc

3D was the thing at Sony‘s New York product showcase where it unveiled what home audio video division category manager Jon Lin calls its “3D step-up series” of TVs.

Sony also showed its DA3600ES 7.1 Channel Network Multiroom A/V Receiver, which Lin says syncs extremely well with popular high-end automation systems like Control4, Crestron and AMX.

The product showcase, which took place at Sony’s Madison Avenue headquarters, was the first time the general press got a look at the new SMP-100 web content aggregation device, which puts Sony in direct price competition with Roku. We had an exclusive hands-on first look of the DLNA media player at Sony’s San Diego headquarters last week.

The 3D TV “step up series” includes 46-, 55- and 60-inch models.

Get the whole house talking in no time!

Introducing the new InfinityEdge 7” touch screen. Breakthrough design with a new optional intercom feature, priced for every room in the house.

Affordable total system control in a sleek 7” design. Edge-to-edge capacitive glass combined with the elegant Control4 user interface reveals the most visually stunning Control4 touch screens to date. With new intercom capability, a choice of AC power or Power Over Ethernet, wired or Wi-Fi connectivity options, and four programmable buttons for customized commands, this flexible solution is perfect for every room in the house.

Features:

• Sleek look and feel with edge-to-edge capacitive glass
• Low-profile magnet-mount for an easy and attractive installation
• Black and white models to match different decors
• Four customizable buttons to set favorite scenes with one touch
• Compatible with virtually any new or existing home with options in power (AC or Power) and network connectivity (Ethernet or Wi-Fi)
• InfinityEdge Touch Screens have full-featured intercom capability built-in. Dinner ready? Communicate with a single room or send a broadcast message to different zones or to all rooms in the home. Baby sleeping? Set the InfinityEdge Touch screens to monitoring mode to listen in. License required for activation. Compatible with other Control4 InfinityEdge Touch Screens.

Now you can use your iPad to control your lighting, temperature, music, video, security, web cameras and more! In a Control4-enabled smart home, Control4 My Home allows you to easily control your electronics and systems over a home Wi-Fi network. Control4 My Home uniquely identifies and authenticates the Control4 system to your iPad to provide secure control.

Introducing the 4Store™ Application Marketplace

4Store™ apps give you fun and useful features, and can enhance the functionality of both Control4 and third-party devices and systems in the home. Set up a 4Store account online, and then purchase and download 4Store applications. Check the daily weather report, review top news stories, change codes on your KwikSet® locks, and play games from any Control4® Touch Screen. 4Store™ is the first application marketplace to extend beyond mobile devices and into the digital home. Take your existing apps (weather, news, RSS feeds, social media, games, etc.) and expand your reach.

Elegant Flash-Based Navigator Interface

It’s easy to customize your home page, wallpaper themes and screen savers. Control4 has included a few choices with OS 2.0. Add favorites, use programmable buttons to set lighting or music scenes, create playlists and more!

Faster Access to Your Favorite Content

Control4 has added a feature that allows you to easily mark your favorite pages for faster access to view and use content that you love. An authorized Control4 Installer can program page flips to direct the display on the Navigator to a specific page with one touch.With 2.0 performance improvements you can access your media faster and schedule your media scanning to occur when it’s most convenient for you.

Available in Seven Languages

Control4® OS 2.0 ships with support for seven languages: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, and Ukranian. Check your system often to see if new languages have been added.

Support for Exciting New Hardware

Control4® OS 2.0 is based on industry standard ZigBee® Pro technology. This means that you can easily integrate new devices into your system.

July 02, 2010 | by Steve Crowe | Home theater rooms aren’t always part of a new construction project. More often than not, you’ll wind up taking your existing basement, bonus room or attic space and working on a conversion. Of course, the result is worth it for that big-screen and super surround-sound system renovation.

Here are some of our favorite before-and-after rooms.

Garage Becomes Theater:

Turning this three-car garage into a 850-square-foot home theater involved leveling out the concrete floor, adding insulation to the walls and replacing the garage door with Anderson sliders. New electrical wiring, outlets and lighting were also added, and soundproof walls were built around an existing central vacuum receptacle to hide the beast and prevent noise from interfering with the movie presentation. You could never tell this theater was once a three-car garage. It features a 119-inch Screen Innovations screen, seven Boston Acoustics speakers and four Boston Acoustics subwoofers. A portable Control4 touchpanel gives the owners the freedom to control their A/V equipment — including a Sony 1080p video projector and Denon 7.4 surround-sound system - from anywhere in the room.

Ping-Pong Basement:

The entertainment in this basement once included playing table tennis and listening to tunes out of big ol’ cabinet loudspeakers. This room required some wall removal and wall construction to be reborn as a theater and entertainment space. Big-screen viewing in the space now consists of an 8.75-foot-wide Stewart Filmscreen CinemaScope 2.35:1 screen, with images fed by a Runco RS900 projector. A panel hides the front channels and subwoofer in the Triad surround system, while rear and side speakers are concealed by acoustical fabric. Toward the rear of the room, the theater’s left side was existing, but a rear wall and right wall were constructed. A door in the rear provides access to the back of the equipment rack. An RTI T4 universal controller commands all the fancy new A/V.

DIY Theater:

Before Ruben Ortiz transformed his 2-car garage into a home theater, the 15-by-20-foot room housed a lot of old junk. Ruben needed a way to keep the sound from escaping into the neighborhood or into his house. The solution was to create a “room within a room,” using double-layered Sheetrock, staggered studs and insulation. Adding those extra layers led to one of the most challenging parts of the entire project: installing in the ceiling. At first, Ruben wanted 8-foot ceilings, so he made the walls eight feet tall and ran the ceiling joists. About 110 sheets of drywall, some Green Glue, and a DIY screen later, Ruben Ortiz has one of the best garage theaters (DIY or otherwise) we’ve ever seen. One of Ruben Ortiz’s most challenging parts of his project was installing the ceiling. Once the size was right, he added a homemade starfield.

Indoor Pool Becomes Theater:

The owners of this Wisconsin home converted their indoor swimming pool into an all-season home theater. Many of the pool’s existing elements, like the sloped bottom, the ladder and the steps, were retained to give the home theater a unique look and feel. Wiring for the audio and video components was pulled through the pool’s existing plumbing systems, and the slope of the pool floor was maintained to create a stadium-style seating arrangement. A 106-inch Draper screen is suspended from the room’s rafters using aircraft cabling. Video is handled by a Marantz projector mounted to the ceiling, and A/V components are stowed inside an equipment rack at the back of the room.

Flooded Basement:

The basement was flooded due to heavy rain and a faulty sump pump. The original goal was to repair the damage in the basement, but they discovered the family’s love of the theater. They gutted the entire room, finishing the transformation in one month. You could never tell that this theater was once a flooded basement. All the equipment is run by a Control4 system, controlling the lighting and the alert for the doorbell; the lights at the front of the theater flash when the doorbell is rung.

Retro Basement:

The owners of this 22-by-18-foot space had no intention of updating their 1970s-style basement rec room. They were going to leave it as is, and focus their remodeling efforts on main living areas of the house. But their remodeling plan turned into adding a basement, win cellar, a bar, and billiards area. And because playing video games calls for a completely different room environment than movie watching, they created a special gaming button. The command activates the Nintendo Wii console, lowers the temperature, leaves most of the lights on and pulls motorized masking material across portions of the screen to change it from a CinemaScope size (2.35:1) to a 16:9 size. The 22-by-18-foot theater features a 122-inch Stewart Filmscreen CinemaScope screen, Planar video projector, Marantz receiver and a Control4 system to control the lights and thermostats and to spread audio and video to speakers and TVs throughout the house. The control system includes a “gaming” button that turns on the Nintendo Wii, lower the temperature and pulls motorized masking material to change the screen from 2.35:1 to 16:9.

Odd-Shaped Room:

A small TV and sparse decor, combined with big viewing appetites and enthusiasm for the latest video technology, made this room an easy target for home theater upgrade. Because it wasn’t a dedicated room closed off to the rest of the house, they had to control the lighting from both the interior spaces and the exterior window. The room opened up into others in the house, so that was another reason it didn’t make for the ideal dedicated theater. That old TV turned into a 110-inch SmX acoustically transparent screen, with LCR speakers placed behind it and a Da-Lite masking system so the screen can be set to match whatever aspect ratio movie is being shown. The installers included a Marantz projector with a Panamorph lens system, and built a projector housing to conceal the large projector and screen apparatus. Berkline seats filled the bill in this case, with a request of seating for eight fulfilled.

Kid-Proof Theater:

Before it was converted into a home theater, this playroom had all the signs that a kids’ hurricane constantly swept through it. What kid wouldn’t want to watch Harry Potter on a 106-inch projection screen? This one’s a Dragonfly model, housed in a bulkhead so it doesn’t get hit by any flying objects when not in use. Lighting zones highlight the framed movie posters that dot the walls of the theater, including the two that are revealed when the screen is retracted. To the left of the screen is a ticket booth, and on the ceiling a fiber-optic starfield for added decor.

by Martin LaMonica

In an effort to sell its home energy systems, Control4 is taking a page out of the iPhone playbook by designing a sleek device with a dedicated app store. The home automation company on Monday is announcing at the DistribuTech utility conference that it has developed a Flash-based software developers kit for its EMS 100 home energy management display and the Advantage software that runs on it. The hope is that utilities or energy retailers in deregulated markets, notably Texas, will create customized applications to help consumers cut electricity bills. The EMS 100 is a small touch-screen display that provides details on electricity use and gives consumers a way to program Zibee-enabled devices, such as a thermostat, lights, or an appliance connected to a wireless plug. It’s one of several home energy managements displays being developed, some of which will be rolled out through utilities. With the Control4 system, people can participate in utility-run demand response programs to lower electricity during peak times. For example, a person could choose to let an electric hot water heater adjust the temperature setting during “peak events,” such as a hot day when the air conditioning load is high and the grid is generating capacity. In return for turning down the hot water heater, the consumer can get a rebate or reduced tariff. On the back end, Control4 has written its software so utilities can manage these demand response programs. When added together, these “peak shaving” programs have the potential to save a significant amount of energy. California has 15 to 20 days a year when its demand exceeds its capacity, so these programs, either with businesses or consumers, can obviate the need to build new power plants. “For utilities to be able to benefit, they need these devices out there in scale,” said Richard Walker, president of Control4 Energy Systems Division. “This would be a quick way to scale.” Studies have shown that providing detailed information on usage can help people cut electricity by 5 to 10 percent. Coupled with automation, such as demand response and programmable thermostats, consumers can get savings of over 15 percent, said Susan Cashen, the vice president of marketing. Outside developers could create applications for the device to, for example, provide tips on lower energy usage or create applications for news or traffic. The software development kit and application store are scheduled to be available this summer. Control4, which makes home automation equipment for media systems, has not signed on any utilities so far to install its gear. But on Monday it said it has signed on Lockheed Martin which plans to use the EMS 100 system as the customer-facing portion of energy-efficiency applications for utilities.

April 02, 2010 | by Jason Knott

Control4 has introduced its Control4 My Home iPad App, which will allow users to control lighting, temperature, music, video, security systems, Web cameras and more.

Control4 says the Control4 My Home iPad App is different from the iPhone version of the application.

“It’s totally unique. We built it from the ground up,” says Control4 COO Glen Mella, who added that Control4 maintains the look of its Navigator GUI in all its interfaces. “There are lots of cool things on the iPad app that are not on the iPhone app.”

Mella cited, for example, the ability to access and control home lighting from the entertainment screen vs. having to jump to another screen.

The Control4 My Home iPad app can be downloaded for free. Users need to have the app authenticated to their system with a Mobile Navigator license, which can be obtained from a Control4 dealer.

Control4 says “later in the year” homeowners will be able to use the iPad app with a Control4 4Sight remote monitoring subscription “to turn lights on and off, lock or unlock doors, or access IP video cameras and security systems from the Internet.”

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY LAS VEGAS — Will West wants to neaten up your coffee table.

Specifically, he’s looking at the handful of remotes resting there. He has a master remote that can turn on the TV and Blu-ray player — and dim the lights, lock the door, close the blinds and adjust the heat. Sound far-fetched, like something out of The Jetsons? Guess what? The year 2062 has arrived.

West says his firm, Control4, had $70 million in revenue in 2009, selling home automation systems and products at some 1,600 dealers around the USA. In December, Las Vegas’ newest hotel, the 4,000-room Aria Resort & Casino Las Vegas, welcomed guests with a Control4 system. It turns on the TV automatically when you enter the room and greets you by name on the television.

“We grew by double digits last year, in the absolute worst of times,” says West, co-founder and CEO. “This suggests that automation of the digital home is happening. It’s real.”

West, 47, is no newcomer to the automation field. He’s been working at it since the early 1990s, when he left Procter & Gamble to open a small retail business in Salt Lake City with a friend, focused on installing fancy lighting and heating controls for well-heeled customers. That store, Audition, morphed into PHAST (Practical Home Automation Systems Technology) to bring automation to homes on a grander scale, but West and partner Eric Smith lost control of the company to their outside investors.

“I learned an important math lesson — that 51 (percent) is a lot different than 49, when it comes to company management,” he says.

He shifted his sights to the hospitality industry, with a pitch to Marriott about what automation could do for hotel rooms. Marriott wasn’t interested, but it did sign up West to bring broadband to hotel rooms. He helped form a company focused on that idea in the mid-’90s. By 2003, eager to return to his first love, he launched Control4 with Smith, his partner from PHAST.

West is no engineering genius. He has rudimentary programming experience. The son of an insurance executive, he grew up planning for a business career.

He graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in finance, got married, then studied at the Wharton School for his MBA.

At age 27, he joined P&G. But after two years, he decided to try the automation venture.

“I really wanted to try my hand at running things. At P&G, my day started at 5:30 … and I never got home before it was dark outside. I figured that if I was going to work this hard, I should do it for something where I at least have a little bit of a stake.”

Wowing hotel guests

At the Aria, once a guest opens a hotel room door, the lights and TV automatically turn on and drapes open. The technology lets visitors fine-tune a wake-up alarm for 6:30 a.m., with the TV to turn on at 6:35 tuned to CNN or another channel, drapes to open at 6:36 and lights on at 6:45.

Everything is set with a touch panel by the bed, resembling a digital photo frame. Guests can order room service, dim the lights, even check an airline schedule — all via a combination of infrared, wireless and Internet technologies managed by a Control4 set-top box.

In designing the Aria, resort President Bill McBeath says, the goal was to wow customers and top what previous Vegas hotels had done — a tall order, considering the nightly water show at the Bellagio and the faux Eiffel Tower at the Paris Las Vegas.

“When our guests see their name on the TV and hear the music start to play when they open the door, that’s a pretty important arrival statement,” he says.

Guests were initially wary about using the automation tools, until the Aria placed cards with simple instructions in the rooms. “Even some of our older, less-technology-savvy customers get it. It’s easier than running a computer at home.”

The new technology on display at the Aria is available now for consumers at home, in stores such as Best Buy’s Magnolia Home Theater centers and Chicago’s Abt. West’s challenge is marketing the possibilities.

“Education is an expensive and timely proposition,” says Bill Ablondi, an analyst at Parks Associates, who covers energy and the building industry. “It’s going to take some time.”

Control4’s system begins with the remote and a set-top box that talks to the remote. From there, you can add features. Magnolia sells and installs Control4 products at 53 stores and will expand the line to all 380 stores by year’s end, says Magnolia Chief Operating Officer Steve Delp.

“So far, it’s been more wealthy consumers than mainstream, but it’s getting more mainstream every day,” he says. Costs for the systems range from $899 to $1 million, Delp says.

New for 2010 are products from Sony, Pioneer, LG and Panasonic that have Control4 technology built into TVs, Blu-ray players and phones.

The automated home

West doesn’t just talk the automation talk. He uses the technology to put his youngest children to sleep.

“Getting them to bed every night used to be an enormous challenge,” he says. Now, he gives them a 15-minute warning and lets them choose whether to listen to music or have an audio book read to them through the bedroom speakers that pick up streaming audio from the downstairs receiver. He clicks a button, the lights dim and the automated entertainment plays until 8 p.m. “I use technology as a crutch,” he says. “But at least it’s a happy crutch.”

Other features of the system let him monitor when his teen son arrives home, for instance, using motion sensors that generate an e-mail to West when he is on a business trip: “You might think what I’m doing is Orwellian, but I don’t.”

The technology has applications for elder care, he says. “We can keep Grandma in her home longer. Is she getting up out of bed? Is she taking her medicine? We can track this and save you a lot of money by keeping her out of an assisted-care facility.”

The system can also save on energy (“It can tell the sprinklers to only go off when it’s hot outside, and not when it’s raining”) or help out in case of a fire. “What kills people isn’t the flames but the smoke,” he says. “We’re not going to just blare noise at you. We’ll shut down the air conditioning, because if it’s on, that will just spread the smoke.”

Control4 isn’t the first to sell a master remote. But most mater remotes on the market “don’t solve the problem,” says West. “They take five complicated remotes and squish them into one that’s even more complicated.”

In launching Control4, West raised $100 million, including $50 million from Silicon Valley financier Foundation Capital. He learned from the PHAST experience and says no one shareholder owns more than 50% this time around.

Smith, who has worked with West for 18 years, describes him as “relentless. Will isn’t satisfied until the product is exactly what it should be.”

Both partners say the company is in it for the long haul. “We’re on the cusp of changing how people live,” says West. “I have two brothers who are doctors. They go to work every day and know they’ve made a tremendous change in people’s lives. I know that with Control4, we’re doing that, too.”

Audio Impact, Inc. and I Ryan Lipkovicius were recently feature on The Battiata Report hosted by Matt Battiata and KCBQ AM 1170 every Saturday between 1:00pm to 2:00pm. Feel free to listen to our discussion on current Smart Homes and future trends.
Please click track 1 below (part 1 of 3) to start the clip.

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