I recently reviewed a 92 page essential checklist published by a large electrical manufacturer and it is pleasing to see that the industry is trying to educate consumers on the technologies available today and how best to implement them into the home. Sure it is biased, but this is to be expected from any manufacturer who is looking to increase their market share and develop good product branding.

What’s disappointing is how misleading this information can be and when it comes to Automating a home a large number of manufacturers as well as installers are overselling and under delivering!

In this case, the manufacturer states “Our AV Solutions can distribute high definition signals from all of your AV devices to every TV in the home rather than just one TV in the main entertainment area.” However analogue RF modulation, the technology used by the manufacturer for the distribution of video and audio is not only limited to an image quality inferior to that of a standard definition video signal, it is a dead end technology due to the introduction of Digital Video Broadcast.

The Australian government expects to complete its shutdown of the analogue Television broadcast by the end of 2013. With this in mind, manufacturers are always looking to reduce the manufacturing costs of High Definition displays to stay competitive in the market and one of the best ways to achieve this is to remove legacy technologies. Much the same way serial ports have disappeared off almost all notebook computers.

Yes there will be some countries less developed than ours that will continue using analogue broadcast for sometime in the foreseeable future and this may convince manufacturers to leave analogue tuners within their products to limit regional based models. However it would be fair to say that HD displays with inbuilt analogue tuners will become limited once the transition to digital is complete.

Regardless of whether analogue tuners will be found in HD displays in the next 5 years, the real question is how does a manufacturer manage to sell a dead end technology into a brand new home and promote “flexibility in the future’?

Or is the argument “what’s High Definition”? One thing that can be disputed is the apparent “Perfect picture quality” claimed when using this manufacturer’s AV solutions.

As a consumer I would be extremely annoyed to find out that in as little as 5 years I could be left with a distribution system no longer supported by current technologies and no easy upgrade path due to limited infrastructure.

A true integrator uses Native signal distribution to deliver “Perfect picture quality”. This is the delivery of video and audio signals in their original and intended format. It does come at an expense but offers far better future proofing and return on investment.

Consumers sometimes associate automation and audiovisual services with the electrical trade, and although there are some electricians at the top of their field, it would be pretty rare to come across one who was also a professional AV technician.

Video and audio are specialised fields and while there are trades that cross-pollinate this will rarely achieve the best result.

Educating consumers on technologies and implementation is the future of this industry but the blind leading the blind is not the advice consumers need…