Firstly let us have a look at the history of control systems in the Audio Visual industry.

There are two prominent control solutions that have been around since the 1980’s. With more than 20 years of experience as well as continual Research and Development, these companies lead the industry and are the only true consideration in commercial & high-end environments due to the flexibility & reliability they offer. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses as well as the organisation who delivers your solution so picking the right product as well as the organisation to implement it will ultimately provide you with a solution you are extremely happy with or a poor outcome that leaves you somewhat disappointed.

AMX & Crestron lead this marketplace. One of the downfalls using either of these products is the significant expense you will go to but ultimately you will not achieve the flexibility or intelligence achieved with these platforms. If you are not technically minded than comprehending this can be difficult but the best way to explain it is this:

Imagine you were purchasing a painting to hang in your new home and you were talking to an art gallery as well as the artist. You are not purchasing an existing painting because none of them will match with your new decor so you are looking to engage the artist to paint something that will be suited to you.

An important thing to remember is that every automation system in some shape or form is a custom solution and is not something you pull out of the box and turn on.

Now the artist is telling you that you can only have three colours and on a canvas that is one of three sizes and paints are water based only. Plus he can only offer you a few designs to choose from.

Not very flexible is it…

Both AMX and Crestron offer a blank canvas of a size you choose. The problem is that the artist needs to be good to deliver a great result. If the artist is not so good he might use a stencil designed by someone else but the problem is that he can’t change the stencil and can only use the colours provided with it. Sort of like a colouring-in book….

Take into consideration that the Gallery is the company you look to purchase the solution from and the artist is the programmer who will provide the user interface and code that is the core of any controlled environment.

If you can grasp this concept, now you know the difference between a control solution provided on AMX or Crestron verses the large number of control systems that have entered the market in the past 5 years due to demand. The majority of new control systems that have entered the market such as RTI, Control 4 & Philips Pronto provide limited flexibility either due to the hardware design or the proprietary software that is used to program them. Apart from the significant cost difference that these systems do provide customers there is one major benefit for the programmer not requiring anywhere near the skill and experience of a certified and experienced coder.

AMX provides the greatest flexibility when it comes to language based programming and although some people will have you believe that it takes much longer to program an AMX system over its competitors; that is only because of the poor programming methods used.

Our organisation has been providing solutions on the AMX platform for the past decade and our approach has allowed us to achieve deployment for residential projects within a third of the time of our competitors as well as delivering the solution remotely and giving the client a far more feature rich environment that is thoroughly bug tested and reliable.

More often than not, when it comes to people and organisations selecting a suitable integrator, price is a major consideration, but when you consider that each integrator is unique, it no longer becomes apples for apples.  Here are a couple of tips:

If a colouring in book is all you need and can afford, by all means go with it but take into consideration your requirements now and in the future because picking the wrong solution can be more expensive further down the track.

Be careful selecting the artist (programmer). Too many people assume that a programmer is just a programmer and that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. No artist is the same and all have their unique talents. Their background, training and experience are all very important.

Avoid organisations utilising contract programmers. The programming of a system is a core component of a solution and there for should be key personnel for the organisation delivering the solution. Organisations using contract programmers are doing so for a few reasons; to reduce or minimise costs, to cope with too much workload and a lack of expertise within the organisation. All of these reasons are not in favour of you as the customer. If you are making a significant investment with an organisation to deliver a control solution then why shouldn’t they be doing the same?

Make sure that the organisation providing the solution is a certified agent of the control product. Manufacturers want to insure that their products are installed correctly by trained people. They are also out to grow their market share so if an organisation is not a certified agent for the product, it is most likely with good reason!

A fundamental thing to consider is the system design. A control solution is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. This can be the products used or it can be how they are interconnected. It is not uncommon to find a control solution delivered with a poor system design that ultimately limits the functionality and flexibility. The system design should try to achieve ultimate flexibility on a hardware level and leave only programming changes to achieve the desired result.

Redundancy and resource sharing is paramount if you want to get the most out of your investment. When you are going to the expense of such a system, it should not be functioning as a glorified universal remote which unfortunately we see far too often…

As you can see there is a great deal to think about and you need to answer many questions when considering an integrator. You are placing a great deal of trust in this organisation to deliver on the promises made and your expectations.

Structured cabling has existed for many years and is a term more commonly found in the commercial sector. It is a cable network design that is implemented in a building to support technology and communications services. It can incorporate data, telephone, security, BMS, Fire and electrical but it is commonly referring to data & telecommunications services.

The term Smart wiring is most commonly used around residential dwellings and is a marketing term used to pitch home automation sales to new home builders. People regularly see a few blue coloured cables that have been run around the house and call it smart wiring but more often than not, there is nothing smart about it at all.

I personally dislike the term “Smart wiring” because I associate it with the poor installations carried out by so called “Home Automation Experts”. The first thing to remember is that probably 90% of organisations who claim to be home automation experts are in fact far from it. In an industry that bares no regulations how can there be so many certified experts?

Regardless of what term you choose, “Smart Wiring” or “Structured cabling”, the concept is very important because there is only one or two opportunities to install true structured cabling into a house which is when it is being constructed or a major renovation is taking place.

With structured cabling design in a residential dwelling you should be considering the lifecycle that you are trying to achieve. Try to consider how long it will be before the house will either be rebuilt or have major renovations carried out. This will be the next opportunity to change the structured cabling as retrofitting is near impossible.

When our organisation designs a structured cabling plan for a project, we are trying to achieve a lifecycle of at least 20 years. This means that we are trying to support current and new technologies in the future for at least this period. It doesn’t mean that in 20 years the structured cabling will need to be replaced.

One thing to remember is that the majority of cabling that you will install in a structured cabling design is relatively cheap. It should cost between 1 and 1.5% of your building cost, supplied and installed. Labour is probably the biggest expense in the process but the difference in cost between running 2 cables to a destination or running 3 is fairly insignificant so always have spare cabling installed for future capacity.

Try to pick a suitable central point for all cabling to run to. This is generally the biggest mistake that is made by picking an area that is unsuitable. If your installation is substantial then you should be looking for an area that can house a free standing equipment rack with good access to at least 3 sides and adequate ventilation. You should also pick an area that will not affect adjacent areas due to equipment noise.

Contrary to what some people believe, sticking a 40RU rack in a cupboard in the Theatre room is not a good idea. However it is advisable to have the equipment room in close proximity to the Theatre as it will most likely have a large amount of AV services installed and reducing cabling lengths is important for signal quality as well as a reduction in cabling costs.

A well ventilated store room is the perfect choice and something that is virtually dust free if you want to achieve good equipment life. If you are unable to provide a dedicated room for this then your next best option would be a space in the garage as it offers great ventilation but the drawback is typically an increased level of dust.

Avoid small cupboard spaces inside the house as they provide poor ventilation, poor acoustics and poor access. Cupboards are for linen and crockery, not for racks and noisy equipment that generate heat.

The types of cabling that you install will depend on the size of your project and the services to be installed. Try to have an open mind when working on your structured cabling plan. Assuming that you will never want the ability to watch TV in a guest bedroom or have music by the swimming pool is not offering you a great deal of flexibility in the future should you change your mind.

The structured cabling is the backbone of any technology installed in your home and you are given one opportunity to get it right so always talk to someone who has a great deal of experience in this area. Make sure that it is well documented and cables are clearly identified when installed. It is this documentation that will allow you to identify whether you can support future technology later down the track.

How much cabling is enough you might ask? I would tell you that more often than not, people tend to not have enough than have too much. A large scale residential project that our organisation completed a few years ago had more than 20 kilometres of structured cabling installed and this excluded the electrical services. Admittedly this was a 1300Sqm home valued at over 7 million so you wouldn’t consider it to be your average home…

The problem is that due to their popularity, we now have so many to choose from. Escient Fireball, Axonix Media Max, Imerge, AMX Max & Kaleidescape to name the major players but only one stands out from the crowd.

Almost all DVD servers or Digital media servers have an operating system because essentially they are a computer with a large amount of storage space. The majority of manufacturers resort to using Microsoft or Linux as an OS. Out of the two, Linux has been proven to be more stable in this environment but the limitations of using an OS from another provider is that you are at the mercy of the OS.

Kaleidescape is one of the only manufacturers who have its own operating system called KEAOS which stands for ‘Kaleidescape Entertainment Appliance Operating System’. What this equates to is a product that compares to the reliability of a mission critical, enterprise grade server.

They like to call it “The Kaleidescape Experience” and that is exactly what it is, an experience!

We can talk about all the Digital Media Servers, DVD Media Servers or Jukebox players and the different manufacturers like Escient, Axonix, Imerge & AMX but it would be no different to talking about backyard cricket versus the Ashes.

There is no comparison other than the importing of content to allow it to be played back. Much the same as backyard cricket uses a bat and a ball similar to that used in the Ashes or a test match.

Kaleidescape is in a league of its own and yes once upon a time with the price tag to match. Now with the release of the mini system we can deliver systems for less than $ 15,000, considerably less than the $ 30,000 entry level price tag we once faced.

It is the ‘Kaleidescape experience’ that provides management & storage of over 1800 DVD’s and 19,800 CD’s on a single server. It has the ability to cascade servers in minutes creating a virtually infinite collection (Not quite possible because Kaleidescape won’t let you import the same disc twice.) and simultaneous content streaming to 45 players from the same server.

It has a User interface that other manufacturers attempt to copy and it exists on a future proofed and backwards compatible platform unlike some manufacturers who have discontinued their platforms in the past, leaving the customer with an obsolete and non-upgradeable piece of equipment.

In fact, the very first Kaleidescape system produced more than 6 years ago is still in service and runs on the same KEAOS as new systems purchased today.

If there is any negative side to Kaleidescape it would only be that it does not support the ability to copy photos to the server for slide shows or let you dump your dodgy MP3 music collection to it.

But Kaleidescape is not really a digital media server, it’s an ‘Entertainment System’ used for watching your purchased DVD’s or listening to your vast CD collection in its original & intended format.

Untouched, just how the producers and composers wanted you to see and hear it…

As an organisation that has prided itself in delivering high end solutions it can be very frustrating to lose a bid on a project that costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars only to find out it was based on price.

How does someone judge whether an organisation has the ability to deliver a good quality solution or not?

The two pictures below have been taken of an implementation by an organisation in Australia that promotes themselves as the most awarded audiovisual company in Australia.

Poor Installation - 2

Poor Installation - 1

This should be titled as “my first rack” for 6 year olds but this was apparently done by a professional AV technician!

Now here are a couple of pictures from an installation Rabone Systems did more than 5 years ago.

Rabone Systems Rack Work - 1

Rabone Systems Rack Work - 2

Make sure you pick carefully when selecting an Audiovisual integrator and always check the quality of installation during your project. Even better, don’t pay if you don’t think the work is satisfactory.