Digital disconnect

The elusive ‘digital home’ is set to become a mainstream phenomenon this year, but if the channel wants a slice of the action it will need far more than the ability to shift boxes.

The digital home is not an off-the-shelf product. It is not really a product at all, it is a lifestyle — letting consumers access, store, share and create digital content such as music and video using different devices around the home.

The internet and on-demand services are key enablers for the digital home lifestyle, which is why technology giants such as Google and Microsoft have been quick to latch on to the concept.

Then there’s the ‘smart home’ lifestyle, based on home automation functionality such as security, lighting, home theatre and environmental controls. To confuse matters further there is also the ‘digital smart home’ — a marriage of the two that even further blurs the lines between computing and consumer electronic devices. This blurring is known as ‘convergence’, one of the great buzzwords of the digital revolution.

The digital home is set to become the battle ground of the digital revolution, and convergence means the battle will be fought by vendors from a gamut of industries.

Less than a decade ago companies such as Sony, Microsoft, Google and Telstra did not even appear on each other’s radar, but now all are looking to establish a beachhead in the digital lounge room. The adage ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ is difficult to apply when you’re not sure who your friends and enemies are.

Such industry giants will often say the digital home cannot yet be done, but what they mean is it cannot be done on their terms. The limitations are less technical and more concerned with the desire to own the customer, via off-the-shelf products and services, while fighting off the competition.

If the channel understands this new world order it can enjoy the spoils of war, but so far it has struggled to comprehend, let alone deliver, the digital home.

The technology channel is split into two main camps — information technology and consumer electronics.

Ask the IT channel what is the central component of a digital home and they will tell you it is a fast internet connection combined with a wireless home network.

Ask the consumer electronics (CE) channel and they will tell you it is AV gear such as a big-arse television with a digital tuner and surround sound. The answer lies somewhere in between IT and CE devices, says Phil Gibbs, sales manager of Melbourne-based distributor Alloys International.

Gibbs straddles the IT and AV industries, working with innovative vendors, integrators and other players to provide custom digital smart home installations.

"The computer industry does not understand AV — just as the AV industry has got no idea how to deal with computers. This is the paradox and this is where there is going to be a paradigm shift. That’s why the new market is going to be what we call the 'digital smart home market'," Gibbs says.

"What you’re going to find is Intel and Microsoft basically moving into the AV market, but the PC industry doesn’t understand how to sell AV. The PC industry does not sell anything; what they do is find the product everyone buys and then barter it down to the cheapest price.

"The PC industry had big margins in the 1980s and those margins disappeared. The AV industry, probably up to the early 1990s, had big margins and they’re now going through the same issues. With this convergence they’re going to get bloody crucified, because I don’t know any AV shop that’s got a clue about computers."

Audiovisual retailers such as Sydney’s Len Wallis Audio are venturing into the world of convergence, but owner Len Wallis also says it requires vendors and the channel to rethink their view of the world.

"It’s not so much a case that they can’t get the digital home to work, it’s just too much of a hard time for them. It’s easier for these guys to just get their boxes out the door, collect payment and be done with it," Wallis says.

"If somebody comes to us wanting to do something like this, I’d say we would probably spend maybe 20 hours with them before we would even put a screwdriver to it, doing concepts and designs. We’ve got a mock house set up in the showroom which we can take people through."

Training is the key when it comes to seizing the opportunities the digital home offers to the channel, he says.

"If someone wants to get involved with this they have to be willing to take their staff off the floor or their staff out of the vans and intensively train them, which is not hard. Firstly they should be doing Clipsal and C-BUS training. If they want to get involved in some kind of smart home environment they should be talking to people like Crestron or AMX for training," Wallis says.

"You need computer people on your staff as well as your sparkies, or your sparkies have to be trained in the computer industry. That’s the problem, it is a convergence now and it’s no good being an AV guy getting into convergence if you know nothing about computers, and vice versa."