For houses of many carats

by Julián Arcila

September 2010 marked a new edition of CEDIA, the most important convention on the planet when it comes to personalized electronic installations for the home. At the Convention Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the latest advances in entertainment for those who want to make their home a true center of recreation were exhibited for four days.

To describe this convention, it can be said that it is a space where technological news converges, in full execution, added to an ambitious educational agenda. The manufacturers did their thing by setting up training microspaces for visitors. A rather important point was the generation of experiences, which, in technology, is proven to be the best strategy to convince buyers to acquire a new solution.

There were several elements to highlight, such as the presence of a public affairs space where the organization (CEDIA) reported on a series of bills presented in several state legislatures and that were in some way related to the residential electronics industry. Many integrators and visitors reached out to learn about the impacts one or the other project could have on their business.

AVI Latin America toured the halls of the show and spoke with several of the exhibitors to learn about their technological offer and understand those issues that heat the industry these days. To give a preview, energy efficiency and 3D were erected as the two tips from which manufacturers will hang to grow their businesses. You can not leave out the Ipad, which thanks to its recent launch showed itself as the great star of the integration thanks to the fact that every manufacturer that could showed how its systems integrated with the new technological wonder.

Strong screens in Latin America
Da-Lite is a company dedicated to the development of projection. At CEDIA the writer interviewed Wendy Long, the vice president of Marketing, who gave some comments about what is happening with her market.

To start Wendy explained that the manufacturing company is having a great penetration in Latin America, a region that will generate between five and eight percent of the company's global business, both in the commercial and residential sectors. "We work in many markets in this region. Obviously Mexico and Brazil are the largest economies and our main markets, but we have good representation almost everywhere. It is important to take into account that we sell directly to the market," said the executive.

On the new trends Wendy commented on the development of solutions for the high definition projection sector. "We could talk about the multi-format image masking system. This solution is designed for the home theater market, a segment that is demanding screens that can present different image options while maintaining a defined height. This system allows sizes up to 16 feet wide."

This becomes important if one takes into account that the main demands in the commercial sector are on the side of conference and training rooms, and that the education segment is definitely still installed as one of the most consumed.

Thus, each manufacturer is making its bets to launch the most innovative solution on the market, but from now on it seems that the niche is in sports broadcasts and video games. Among these initiatives is that of LG, a company that launched the PX950 plasma screen, which according to Carlos Leshhorn, vice president of sales of the firm for Latin America, is the only 3D screen certified by THX, in addition to also working with 2D signal -conventional systems-.

"THX basically certifies the image quality. It is the first 3D HDTV display that is certified by this company, founded by George Lucas. Of course, first this reference had to pass the test and be certified in 2D; To achieve this, the team went through more than 400 laboratory tests where the color accuracy in the images of right eye and left eye, angles of vision and performance in video processing were reviewed. The whole process took more than a year," Carlos said.

Integration for everyone
As mentioned above, the integration of systems was another of the novelties left by CEDIA. As they say out there, technology is developed to simplify the lives of human beings and in that sense residential automation perfectly fulfills that task. However, there is automation for everyone and, of course, for all budgets.

In this segment Crestron and AMX stand out, but the demand of users has left the door open to several companies to start offering solutions for this segment. One of them, Control 4, was visited by AVI LATINOAMERICA to know the opinion of its managers in the face of these business possibilities offered by the market today.

James Avetta, sales manager, said, to begin, that the market is developing more every day, speaking specifically of Latin America. "We attacked not the high-end segment, but a market that we know can acquire these products and the truth is that the prices are so affordable that many people, who may not be able to afford the main brands in the market, with C4 can experience home automation," he said.

Avetta, who assured that his customers/distributors speak of a consumer more familiar with the technology, spoke of ZigBee technology, the wireless standard that, together with X10, has become the flag of residential automation. As he explained, in the facilities with C4 they are based on this protocol, as it stands out for its stability. He brought up the case of concrete work. "Imagine that you live in Latin America, your house is old and it is the walls of pure concrete. Wiring there would be almost impossible, but with the technology we use we can readjust a house so that lighting controls and other features that would not have been possible before can be installed, "said the executive.

In this niche there are several needs to be solved, among which the need to simplify the control of housing devices, reduce energy consumption and increase the safety of the occupants of the house by linking electronic security systems.

At the end, the representative of C4 referred to the Latin market, where he highlighted Brazil and Mexico as his main markets, a situation that he attributed to the fact that these two countries together bring together a large part of the Latin American population. However, he made a final comment on which we must be very aware: "In general there are several markets that are standing out, but we must pay attention to Nicaragua, a market that increasingly shows more facilities in this field."