Once upon a time home theater and distributed audio video systems were only implemented in large affluent "mega homes". Today these systems are breaking new ground and moving onto the floor plans of almost every size home. This is evidenced by the participation of many audio-video dealers, manufacturers, organizations exhibiting in non-traditional AV based functions, and trade shows.

Organizations such as CEDIA (The Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association) have built a complete house, pictured here to the right known as "The HOME of ELECTRONIC Lifestyles". (Photo courtesy of CEDIA.)

They display this home at many shows worldwide, including NAHB, AIA, and CES just to name a few. With all this new technology combined with increases in customer awareness, and perhaps more product offerings. These systems are starting to become more of a mainstay in today's newly constructed home. According to a Frost & Sullivan report for CEDIA, the total multi-room audio video market for 2001 was $336.3 Million. This reflects a revenue growth rate of 53.2% over the previous year.

In 1965, Gordon Moore was preparing a speech and made a memorable observation. When he started to graph data about the growth in memory chip performance, he realized there was a striking trend. Each new chip contained roughly twice as much capacity as its predecessor, and each chip was released within 18-24 months of the previous chip. If this trend continued, he reasoned, computing power would rise exponentially over relatively brief periods of time. The press called this observation "Moore's Law".

"Gordon Moore just plain got it right . . . I should also mention that Moore's Law has also given rise to Machrone's Law, which was true for many years, which is that the machine you want always costs $5,000." - Bill Machrone

Of course this now leads to a new law - "Braithwaite's Law" which simply states that home theaters and audio video distribution systems get twice as complicated and complex every eighteen months.

If you think back a few years, what kind of demands were placed on the typical AV contractor to design and install a home theater? You probably only had three sources to deal with, VCR - Video Cassette Recorder (VHS, and or BETA), Laserdisc, and C-Band Satellite. These early home theaters needed minimal switching and controls due to the inherent simplicity.

This simplicity quickly disappeared as more and more devices started to become available for use within the theater. Different signal formats also created some interesting switching problems. To add insult to injury each new device added its own separate remote controls and proprietary IR codes.

Each device had a different way to program and set up. This created two well-known scenarios that still creep up on the AV industry like a black eye that is slow to go away. The first is actually a wide spread cliché, the flashing "12:00 " on VCR displays. Next is the dreaded coffee table full of remotes.

"Contrary to popular belief, new technologies like wireless and voice recognition will not rescue us from bad products," says Wayne Greenwood Chief Design Officer and co-founder of Cooper Interaction Design.

He goes on to say, "Like all technologies before them, these new technologies will introduce as many problems as they solve unless they are focused with good design. This makes it critical to spend as much time thinking about your users and the design of your product as you do about the technology behind it."

The "12:00" problem may have been fixed some 25 years after the fact, however, according to "The End-User View of Techo-Nirvana: Blink, Blink, Blink", a March 19th, 2001 article published in the Washington Post by Joel Garreau, who wrote - "For almost as long as the average American has been alive, people have been driven nuts by the flashing "12:00" of their videocassette recorder's clock."

"That flashing "12:00" has become a symbol of technology as tyranny, taunt, impotence, ignorance, intimidation, humiliation, stone in the shoe and pain in the butt. It stands for innovation created without humans in mind. Yet humans have grown to live with it. To expect it. To adjust themselves to the selfishness of these machines. Like sheep," wrote Garreau. 

Enter touch screen technology 

A few very smart and innovative people solved the coffee table full of remotes. One of them was George Feldstein, CEO and founder of Crestron Electronics. George found a unique way to fix this very problem, he developed a touch panel remote control that could be programmed to control all of the devices in the system and clean up the coffee table. This is how most AV installers first learned of control system companies such as CRESTRON, and later AMX. It was to solve that coffee table problem. These new devices not only cleared the table, but they also made the control of all kinds of devices in the home easy to use. A touch screen in today's home theater is as necessary as the dashboard of your new car. Both devices present you with all the controls and relevant information for you to easily perform your desired effect.

If you think about it you really don't need the dashboard in your car. You could manually open your hood, connect your battery to the distributor, manually pump, and prime the fuel injectors, connect the oil pump, and so forth. This may all sound a little silly, but if this were true, then the only people that would know how to drive a car would be mechanics and automotive engineers.

Home theaters are no different; here is a real life example:

1. Turn on the projector, (But not if the cooling fans are on), 
2. Flip this switch to bring the screen down…. 
3. Get up and dim down the lights, manually lower the blinds… 
4. Turn on the preamp processor, switch to video input 2, and change the audio input to analog input 2 (Unless the disc is Dolby/DTS, then change the audio input to Coaxial Digital)… 
5. Then select video source 1 on the projector, (unless the disc you selected is in anamorphic, then select source 2, or if it is in wide screen select source 3)… 
6. Now turn on all the amps, now turn on the DVD, place the disc in the machine, and wait for the DVD menu to come up then remember to change the default audio selection to Dolby digital, and the aspect ratio, and so on… 

This example was taken from real notes left for the end user by a CEDIA dealer. Thus again the only people that could really control a home theater would be the installers, AV engineers and maybe the end users 13-year-old kids.

So, touch screens have helped simplify the control of home theaters, but as Braithwaite's Law has predicted, we now have a few new problems. Touch screens with limited memory will not be enough to solve many new issues alone. To control the future think in terms of tera and peta, not kilo and mega. Fast servers with vast amounts of storage will need to augment dedicated embedded systems for audio video storage and distribution. 

Enter Networking and IP technology

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana

Manufactures are producing a whole new generation of AV components, and many of them are re-creating some of the same problems that original home theaters had faced, and dealt with in the past. These AV components combine the latest in networking IP based technology. Digital audio and video mass storage devices are replacing the mostly optical based storage devices like CD and DVD changers. A phrase that I coined for an article about digital audio in the 90's still holds true today, if not more so - "Compact Discs, and Digital Video Discs are just plastic getting in the way of some really great audio and video content."

Streaming technologies are making vast inroads against traditional analog types of transmissions. Look at Sirius, XM, and Ibiquity (Harris) digital radio streams. While the benefits of all these new devices are tremendous, the affects they are having on AV contractors are just starting to be felt. And this is just in the early stages; déjà vu is setting in rather quickly.

To make things worse, a hand held infrared or RF remote may not control many of these new devices. Some of these devices do not even have an old fashioned serial port to communicate with, such as RS232, or RS485. Many of these new devices communicate over a network. Typically with TCP/IP protocols. This is a fantastic way of communication to these new devices, the advantages are plentiful, here a just a few for example;

• Bi-directional control and feedback. 
• Ability to update firmware and fix bugs from remote. 
• Ability to work with relational databases for advanced functionality for AV content and enhanced user interfacing.

So what is the problem then?

Some progressive manufactures will let you use HTML/XML and a standard browser like IE, or Netscape to control it. This is fine and allows integrators the opportunity to create single point user interfaces. However many manufactures are providing what they believe is a simple proprietary application.

What they forget, or more importantly, what we have not learned from the past is that virtually all of these manufactures applications, and browsers control but a few devices and most only control one device.

That is to say that if I want to turn on my IP based projector I would need to open that manufacturers specific application, and or open a browser and then point to that specific IP address. To turn on my theater I would need to open the AV preamps application as well, and or point the browser to the AV preamps IP address, and so forth.

Has the déjà vu feeling crept up on you yet?

I have been working on networking audio video distribution systems for quite some time now, most companies did not know what you could do with a networked audio system, or even why. Amplifier manufactures were puzzled at best when I wanted them to build amplifiers that could communicate across a network. Most companies wondered (and some still do) what benefits they would receive.

The ability to effectively communicate and control an audio distribution system with the advent of streaming and or syncing of digital audio sources will require that you gain information and have total control over all elements of the system in real time. At any giving point you will need the ability to restructure the entire audio system (crossover points, EG settings, amplifier gain, impedance matching of speakers, and packet routing) on the fly. This includes the source components, pre amplification, and amplification stages, as well as the speakers.

Yes, this means the speakers also need to communicate on the network. Most audio video companies, only have control over some sources, Usually one-way infrared or perhaps some simple serial control, and most have control over pre-amplification (volume, bass, treble, balance). Very few have control beyond that.

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from It. "- Mark Weiser

The current approach to multi-source audio distribution throughout a home is very room centric. Audio sources are pre-amplified, and signal adjustments are made. From there the sources are switched and then amplified and distributed to speakers in the room. Sometimes the amplifiers are centrally located right next to the pre-amp and switchers, and sometimes the amplifiers are located near the room speakers. Since each room must have its own amplifier, the cost is proportional to the number of rooms. The more rooms in a house, the greater the cost. The per-room amplifiers cannot be top quality without incurring great expense to the end user.

In addition, different users in the same room prefer different amplification settings. The strong bass preferred by the owner's teenagers might give the homeowner a headache. Only those systems with absolute control over user interfaces, preamps and amplifiers have the ability to adjust in real time the preferences and audio settings required by the end user or room occupant, but this requires significant custom programming and adds to the cost of the total system.

In addition, normally, all of the room amplifiers are not being used. For example, while the home may have 10 rooms, the four people living in that home usually only need A/V distributed to whatever room(s) they are currently occupying, and the remaining room amplifiers are not used while those room(s) are unoccupied. Only during occasional whole-house parties do most homeowners utilize all room amplifier.

At GE SMART, we are working on a fundamentally different approach to audio distribution. This type of design is based on a user centric design. This will be a much more efficient use of technology and very cost effective, yet will yield performance that will rival the most demanding audiophile audio components ever made.

Several patents pending on technologies that extend beyond the source components and preamps but include network amplification and all the way to the end of the audio path, including networked speakers and subwoofers, will be included in this new user centric design.

I have been able to witness first hand quite a number of these new AV systems, and have been present for many manufactures demonstrations of their new technology. I must admit there are some real impressive systems coming down the line for home theater and distributed audio out there. At times I have been impressed with some of the technological advances in the products. I also wonder if they have been paying attention for the past 10 years or so.

When I ask simple questions like, how do you envision the end-user controlling this product? I would sometimes get a stumped look, and then they would explain to me that the user would simply start up their proprietary program, and or have it running in the background of their PC.

Some manufactures will defend the fact that their proprietary software does indeed run on the end users PC, and that other components proprietary software can also co exist on the very same PC. They will say you only need one PC, or one web tablet to run this system.

This is what I term the "virtual coffee table effect".

Yes it is true the end user would only need one PC, but what they did not learn from history is that the end user as well only had one coffee table. Several remotes sitting on a real coffee table was not what I would call user friendly, much as the same way that several icons, or bookmarks to multiple manufactures different applications or web pages, with the multitude of many different looks and feels living on one PC or web tablet is still not what I call user friendly. If they have their way you will need to open up several separate windows, adjust and manipulate many different screens just to control your theater.

In today's world more than ever you need a very simple and easy to use interface that can control all the devices in your system, including the virtual ones. Keep in mind you will always have a mix of legacy devices (VCR's, CD.s, DSS's Ect…) that will need physical control resources such as infrared, contact closures, and serial.

Companies like GE SMART amongst others are on the forefront of creating many new interfaces and software to allow integrators the ability to create simple user interfaces that can control any device, regardless of how the device communicates. Many of these devices will communicate across twisted pair, coaxial, RF, and power line networks. These new user interfaces, will provide integrators the ability to take advantage of the many protocols, standards, and network topologies that are in use today. Most importantly they will allow end users to be able to control all of the home theater and distributed audio components with ONE application, and or one browser page. Stay tuned for some very exciting user centric AV products coming soon.

Michael Braithwaite, Senior Product Manager, Audio Video Products GE SMART With more than fourteen years of experience in the design and integration of Audio Video distribution and high-end residential control systems. Mike is currently working on the very latest in technology for distributing high quality audio and video throughout a home. With the vast amount of technical resources available from SMART partners Microsoft and General Electric, and with his vision on user centric designs, there is little doubt that we will see some incredible audio video devices in the very near future. Mike was the head of Crestron's Residential Systems Group. Under Mike's direction, the Group created a new line of products and worked very closely with Crestron Home™ dealers and industry consultants to design and integrate residential control systems, develop new product solutions, and demonstrate the latest technologies in home automation. Mike has also written numerous articles for trade publications in the field of home automation and Audio Video distribution, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Mike Braithwaite can be reached at GE SMART in Las Cruces, NM, 1-505-521-6000 or email at mbraithwaite@GE-SMART.com