Digital disconnect

The commoditisation of the PC industry has left it far less equipped than the AV industry to deal with a specialist concept such as the digital home. The Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA) is an organisation of experienced companies involved in the design and installation of home electronics systems.

CEDIA is approaching the digital home from the AV side of the fence and therefore better understands that staff must know how to do more than shift cash and carry off-the-shelf devices, says CEDIA board member David Small. Small is also manager of Audioworks, an importer and distributor specialising in custom entertainment products.

"I am a great believer in education and thus Audioworks employs a full-time product trainer and runs product and generic training around Australia regularly," Small says.

"Many of these sessions include an international trainer from one or two of our product companies. This dovetails in with CEDIA’s training and certification program," he says.

"Part of CEDIA’s charter is to educate its members in new technology and to introduce people with different skill sets to one another so in partnership they can design and install a quality, reliable system.

"Just about anyone can cut a hole in a ceiling to fit a flush mount speaker but is it in the right position for the room’s acoustics? What amplification, speakers and room acoustics treatments are required for best results and to meet the wants and budget of the customer? From the PC side, skill sets in programming as well as selecting the best combination of hardware and software to meet the clients’ needs are also very important."

Knowledge and awareness are increasing in the mass market consumer electronics channels, Small says, and it is not too late for them to make a move into the digital home space.

"A company requires a large skill set or good partnerships to integrate all these disciplines. Any channel prepared to put the time, expertise and knowledge base in action could get into the action. There is a large range of opportunities, from content delivery to control and entertainment."

While AV players have industry bodies such as CEDIA to call upon, IT players are much more on their own when it comes to tackling the digital home. The pressure on the IT channel to understand AV has grown with Microsoft’s release of the Windows XP Media Centre Edition (MCE) — a version of the Windows operating system designed to turn a computer into a fully-featured home entertainment device complete with remote control.

Chipmaker Intel is also pushing into the AV space with the release of technologies such as Viiv (rhymes with jive) — designed to allow a computer to act more like a consumer electronics device.

Computers running MCE and Viiv technology, using powerful dual-core processors, can play and record high definition audio and video as well as turn on and off in seconds, like a CE device, rather than in minutes.

Specialist IT retailers such as Melbourne’s Standard Computers are finding they have to do a lot of their own support and systems integration — relying heavily on staff knowledge to play in the digital home market. According to Standard Computers sales consultant Anthony Payne, selling and then supporting a high-end, customised multimedia computer is far more difficult than shifting an off-the-shelf beige box.

"There’s not a lot of support coming through from the channel regarding new AV technology. Most of what we’ve done here at Standard Computers, especially in regards to [Microsoft] Media Centre, has been off our own bat with a number of enthusiasts in the store who have done the research and the hard yards," Payne says.

"We’d consider ourselves to be pretty knowledgeable on Media Centre and we produce a lot of Media Centre boxes quite successfully, but in order to get to this stage we had to do it ourselves first."

Such an investment allows Standard Computers to offer high levels of customer support, which drives customer loyalty. Neither the channel nor the consumer can treat such products the same as a disposable consumer electronics device, Payne says.

"Something like Media Centre is not a set-and-forget device — you have to be bit of a PC enthusiast, I think, to want to embark on it. Media Centre requires PC-style maintenance to stay up and running — unlike your video recorder which, hopefully, will just sit there for 10 years until you throw it out and buy a new one."