Just a short note about an interview I gave in Hiddenwires about evolution of audiovisual market, click here for link to article !
Enjoy reading
2008-10-03
2008-09-08
CEDIA ’08: Crestron News
For sure, as usual in the past with Crestron, we get a nice range of new products presented, here is a brief story on each of them:
- For sure we won’t speak again about wonderful TPS-6X with its receiver CEN-HPRFGW which I had already well presented before summer (check here that article).
- As few of you have suddenly discovered, AAS products have suddenly disappeared from catalog. It looks CEN-ISERVER would be a replacement :/ But it looks to me a very strange choice from Crestron to use an iPod that is definitively mono-zone product in an audio server. It means as much iPods and CEN-ISERVER than audio zones you need ! I’m not convinced for now with that product as solutions such as SlimServer work lot better with unlimited zones and allow stream of protected music. Nevertheless, iPod dock changes to manage now video from iPod, CEN-IDOCV, with iTunes synchronisation through Ethernet, et now dock is PoE compliant.
- Avalaibility of Flash SDK to develop your own interface with popular language: Flash from Adobe (read my previous article about it).
- For sure as everyone Crestron presents its own iPhone native interface, which looks nice but none demo avalaible. Product will be probably avalaible at end of year, not before !
- A big surprise is announcement of a new Adagio Box: ADMS which combines best of Adagio products with media streaming and storage such as Kaleidescape servers. It includes either a DVD player with 500Go on disk storage in ADMS, or Blue-Ray player with 1To storage in ADMS-BR). It handles also rent and buy online system of Amazon Unbox and Media Store but avalaible only in US. It’s able to manage till 5 DVD/Blue-Ray 200 discs changers (ADC-200BR), which allows also to copy content to internal hard-drive of Adagio that can be extended with optional external 4To storage CEN-NAS-4TB. Storage is in RAID to avoid any loss of data. Adagio server includes one main zone and two auxiliary audio zones.
- To allow display of any composite video signal, such as alarm cameras, entry door cameras, Crestron offers little box CEN-NVS100 that’ll stream your video signal to display on any panels compatible with MJPEG viewer.
- For other news, as I had already presented them earlier, please check my previous article where you’ll find all details.
And that’s it for shows that year, see you next year for other great news and products !
2008-07-18
Why you should not buy some Bang & Olufsen products with automation system !!!
As you probably know we program some automation products from AMX and Crestron, the two main manufacturers of automation products for audiovisual markets and conferencing rooms. And whatever which ones is used to control B&O equipments, it’s the same shit ! I got some feedback about guys controlling these equipments from other remotes such as RTI or Pronto got also some issues.
B&O products really combine two very interesting advantages:
- Capture of their IR remote is pretty difficult as they use very high frequency and some multiple functions on buttons of remote depending of source buttons making capture a tedious work, not to say a pain in the ass !
- Reaction of products is different depending on generation of equipments. They nearly all use same remote but when you use your capture on different products it doesn’t react in same way
You have to use extremely short pulse but it still do multiple commands ! Best one we break our head since two days, is with Beovision 7 & 8 where when you send a pulse to change channel, it changes one channel in analog mode but two in digital video mode !!!!! Why ? and for volume impossible to do less than three steps each time we send volume up or down commande
Considering all previous experiences we got with B&O products, I strongly advise all dealers and integrators to avoid absolutely that company for integration with automation products as it’s really a pain in the ass to control in IR, only way to control their products as they don’t put RS port on their product !
So please B&O be respective of your customers and users and use standard IR codes or put RS port on your equipments with a good protocol 
