Here’s a summary of my most recent assessment:

1. Reliability is paramount.  Nobody remembers how cool the system is everyday but they remember when it hiccups or needs a reboot.  This is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve as manufacturers cram more features into their systems.  Nobody lists “Actually works reliably.” as a feature.  They do tell you their level of quality.  Just look at the warranty.  1 year or less on a $3000 part?

2. Intuitive remotes and controls are still most important.  If they can’t use it, or are afraid to, they will not enjoy it.  Continue to optimize the custom interfaces, reducing button presses and following the user instead of making them follow the remote.

3. Adults love good sound and video quality.  Kids just want portability and don’t care about image or sound quality.  Also see streaming sources below.

4. Dedicated theaters are making a comeback.  Keep them simple, comfortable, and for the whole family.  Add all the interior amenities like nearby concession area and star ceilings.

5. Favorite music sources (in-order): DirecTV (XM Radio), FM/HD-Radio, iTunes/AppleTV, Internet Radio, Sirius/XM, Cable Music Channels, CDs.

6. Lighting control products still have extreme interest but continue to be a difficult sell.  If they’ve never had lighting controls, they want them AFTER they move in–to0 late for better reliability prewired systems and more cost overall, but all is not lost.  Seems a year of suffering without lighting controls is the average before they start asking for them as a retrofit.  Advanced integrated automation is key to getting the most out of lighting controls.

7. Streaming will win this year.  I rarely sell disc players with so many streaming sources.  Tivo is still the best combo box for clients with cable.  For those remote houses with no cheap, unlimited broadband, DirecTV (for sports nuts) and Dish (for on-demand nuts) are the best options.  The only thing that will kill (delay the inevitable) steaming is if the major providers try to make their delivery systems proprietary or require a specific box to play content.

8. Phone home?  Analog land lines are gone but IP phone systems are fighting back.  Good thing to because I hate cell phones and their crappy call quality.  IP phones have amazingly clear call quality when talking to another HQ IP phone.

9. If you follow any of my teachings (rants) you know that I’m the most anti-fad, anti-gimmick, anti-B.S. person around.  That said, 3D TV is cool.  I’m sure people will take it overboard and completely ruin the content but it’s worth planning for and having the capacity in your wires.

10. Prewire finally got simple.  HD and control over Cat5 is just around the corner.  I’ve finally reduced my TV drop wire count to 2 Cat5 and one RG6.  Three Cat5 in strategic locations for antennas, repeaters, etc.  Fiber is still only needed for very long distances as the speed over copper is still there.

11. Retrofitters Rejoice!  For all those people who I’ve uttered the words “your wiring sucks so you’re screwed–go yell at the dolt who didn’t engineer your wiring”, your salvation has arrived!  There are many new retrofit products that actually work ok that will allow you to have most of the cool features DistinctAV systems are known for.  (ok, I never actually said those words but oh how I’ve wanted to)

12. iPhone fanboys will spend millions in support groups after their worshiped idol is dethroned by Android OS devices (may occur in 2012–part of that whole Mayan calendar thing).

13. Energy management will struggle with a thousand “standards” created by the shotgun energy policy spending over the past three years.  Most “solutions” are just energy monitoring, not management.  Energy management takes smarts and experience so don’t expect to see it become main stream any time soon (unless I get scooped up by a major player–I have a few good patent candidates up my sleeve).

5800 sqft in excellent neighborhood with great floorplan.  Does not have convenient lighting control system, house music, or integrated security system.  No consolidated entertainment system but you can still have ugly electronics components all over the house and maybe even some wires installed outside along the walls by the cable/phone/sat guys.  No convenient custom remotes to easily control everything.  No structured wiring engineered by a systems integration pro so there is no easy way to add the missing features if you wanted to.  LEED certified builder built this incredibly tight home with excellent insulation but there’s no zoned A/C and the units are oversized so it’s never comfortable in all the rooms.  Installer used “rule of thumb” instead of engineering the geothermal loops so you can expect to consume up to twice the energy the system is capable of saving.  Manufacturer provided fireplace thermostat doesn’t talk to the A/C so the temperature swings but fortunately you can put it into manual mode.  Expansive areas of glass provide amazing views but there’s no automatic shading so most of the time it’s just plain uncomfortable if the sun is out.  You’ll be excited to come home to efficient Energy Star appliances and TVs, especially because they are left on most of the time, avoiding that low-power sleep mode that qualified them for the Energy Star label in the first place.  No advanced energy management system so you’ll just have to “make the rounds” to turn off all the lights, adjust the per floor thermostats, and turn off the TVs when no one is in the rooms.  No intercom but you can use “holla-net” if you need to find someone in this large, beautiful house.  Basement has only flooded twice since construction but only during storms when the power and communications are out.    Stylish, free-energy-cost solar panel array and extended power inverter were excluded so a gas-powered generator could be installed–weekly test run cycles further contribute to NoZone days.  The lucky homeowners buying this beauty have the opportunity to reset their clocks when the grid drops out and can watch their utility costs rise over time.  Unencumbered by an easily visible energy management system, you can just write one big utility check every month and be blissfully ignorant of where the energy was going.  No complex split-manifold water system with reverse-osmosis water system but there’s an exercise room so you can try to compensate for the bad stuff you’re putting into your body.  Original homeowners/builder decided to put all the stuff people want into “their next home” so this one is available at a significantly reduced price.

Sure is pretty though…great house to visit.

Product manufacturers often miss the connection between marketing and product development.

Many OEMs have Product Development and Sales/Advertising teams. When the CEO wants more sales volume, they often add Business Development teams filled with the top sales people they can find.

I know sales people who can sell ice to Eskimos, but it takes tremendous effort and resources. This is what I call “Push” selling. They must push their product on you because it is often not an ideal fit for your needs.

Marketing directors listen to the needs of a market. They understand what people and businesses want. The best ones imagine themselves in their client’s shoes and are exceptionally honest when they need to say “this product may have limited applications” (putting it gently).

By truly understanding the needs in the market and adding a little creativity, a great marketing director can identify exactly what a product should do, what features it should have, and how to correctly deploy the product. He or she also needs to be able to covey those requirements to the product development teams in terms they understand (“geek speak”).

While nothing sells itself, having a complex product designed to holistically solve real life problems and not just advertising “pretend world” scenarios, will be easy to sell. Reducing sales overhead costs means extra money in the coffers that can be used to streamline business further or enjoy in profits.

It’s true what they say about the importance of good listening skills.

Add the hundreds of real-life scenarios and situations where and how you will use these systems, and let’s not forget everything that you don’t know or have not experienced yet.

Confused? Frustrated? Vapor-lock set in yet? It should. It’s perfectly normal for any rational person.

I’ve made a career of analyzing thousands of system features and making complex decisions like these, and no–it’s not any easier or less frustrating for me!

I listened to a great radio show from RadioLab.org about “Choice” and how our brains work. It may not make the problem go away but can at least soothe your spirit the next time you’re faced with the daunting prospect of making complex choices.

There are two tendencies I’ve noticed that give me a quick assessment of how “good” a solution is:

1. Products or services that require long, binding contracts, tend to be bad deals.

2. Companies that hide information, do not make it readily available, or have dedicated sales teams, tend to be over-priced. This does not necessarily mean they have “bad” products.

When buying complex systems that are not easily compared, I tend to rely heavily on personal referrals. These are not the statements listed on a website, but real conversations with real clients.

The best references are those that tell me what was good and what was bad. At least this way I can weigh the total experience based on reality and not advertising smoke screens.

Because social networking has exceeded traditional advertising power, referrals are the best sales strategy for non-commodity products.

My DistinctAV business is based on educating clients and accurately matching solutions to their needs. Yes we sell hardware but the real “product” is the final solution and all the design, engineering, and customization that went into putting it all together.

The best advice I can give for buying complex systems is to create a complete and detailed User Requirement Specification (URS) and Functional Requirement Specification (FRS). These documents clearly describe Why and What you want and exactly How it will work.

You can then weigh those requirements against each other in order of importance and choose the system or vendor that will deliver those results (knowing they can based on their referrals).

Oh, and the only long-term contract we have is Our Guaranty.

So picture this: 4 grease monkeys in slightly dirty uniforms hanging around doing apparently nothing, looking like they needed one more client for the day so they could earn enough for cigarettes. I didn’t have a good feeling.

Until I pulled up to the bay.

As I approached, two guys swung up the door, one guided me into the bay like he was docking a 747, another greeted me at the door and politely asked what services I would like today.

The magic continued. I quickly realized they were like Nordstrom Personal Shoppers and Navy Seals combined into one courteous and efficient package. Each role carefully choreographed and executed with absolute timing and precision. The “Pit Boss/Drill Sargent”, as I affectionately called him, initiated each system check and service while the other specialized workers confidently replied as they completed and confirmed each step.

"I know the perfect shade of dipstick to go with those pumps"

For a quality procedure guy like me, this was Heaven.

They offered the usual upgrade services and made compelling reasons for each service item. I understand and appreciate that but I left a few tasks for my Sons to do with me so they could earn their Cub Scout badges.

10 minutes flat. Josh, the store manager, said “We do it in 8 if there’s a line”. I was still amazed and barely had time to put sugar in my complimentary coffee (which was also excellent).

I’ve taught Computer classes at the Indianapolis Ivy Tech school and met several Gear Heads like these guys. It was great to see them demonstrating their expertise.

Josh said the franchise is very specific about procedures for safety, professionalism, quality, and speed. We talked a bit about the DistinctAV franchise model and how the cost of entry is significantly less than Jiffy, Dunkin’ Doughnuts, and Subway. All I require is a specific set of tools, minimum spare service parts stock, and a 2 week training class. All of which every good CI guy should have anyway.

If you’re in the North side of Indy at 96th and 69, visit the team at Jiffy Lube there. Your car will appreciate the oil change, the coffee is good, and the service is impeccable.

Next thing from their mouth is usually “…and they don’t seem to care about what we are asking for.”

Welcome to NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here).

While I do provide product consulting services, I’ve found that most manufacturers don’t even want to hear what you have to say–even if the advice is free and presented as a solution, complete with value proposition and market need!

Money won’t even give them pause. I offered to pay RTI Corp to develop a 2-way driver interface for their remotes to our systems. The sales manager did not even consider it.

That type of behavior usually means a company is being downsized, sold, or run by people who do not want to ever hear from a customer.

I called Crestron, they had options.

Ultimately, this behavior demonstrates exactly the valuable service Systems Integrators provide. We prevent our clients from buying equipment that will not meet their needs, and save them the anguish of suffering with a solution that does not “hit the spot”.

The Google Model focuses on doing the few things that are most important–and doing them very well. They looked at how people work and realized it’s the collaboration that’s important. Google Docs allows people to share and collaborate on a document’s content in real time meaning the results of the collaboration can be achieved faster with better results. It even stores revisions of your work so you can easily look back at what changed by all the collaborators. Again, important features based on NEED not BLING.

What they didn’t do is add lots of features that aren’t important. You can’t do typesetting-level formatting for example.

But really…do we NEED to make our working documents look presentation-ready? Shouldn’t we be focusing on getting the content right and communicating clearly with our team and our clients?

So how does this apply to home electronics?

Electronics manufacturers try to pack features into their devices to make them solve solve every application instance. They do this to try to broaden their market opportunity but I believe it has the opposite effect. I feel it results in higher cost, lower reliability, operator confusion, and ultimately “Design Bureaucracy”.

Design Bureaucracy is the wasted overhead of all the extra features added into a product that people pay for but rarely use.

I’m going to give an example from the industry and I don’t want the audience to think that I’m finding fault with the manufacturers involved. Some have been exceedingly open-minded about the feedback I provide and are working to modify their products to meet those needs. That’s the spirit!

Let’s take home intercom systems as my first example.

Intercoms are not needed in the smallest of homes because you can easily hear what’s going on and every room is only a few steps away.

Larger homes, say 3000 sqft and up, definitely have a need for intercoms. They provide an excellent hands free way to page throughout the house or target your message to a specific room (“Kids..stop playing video games and do your homework”–that one should be a recording built in as a hardbutton).

They are a communications device and are strategically placed to accomplish that feature. Front door, back yard patio, garage, playroom over garage, basement, theater, are all great locations.

If they’re at the doors then let’s add a camera so we can see who rang the bell and take appropriate action. Having the camera instantly available, wheverver you are, is key to the success of that feature. Waiting for a TV to warm up and show the camera is not practical so your per-use cost is very high if you choose that feature. Having a small video display at the intercom stations (or at least some key locations) makes sense as long at the image pops up automatically based on the event occurring (doorbell press, motion or audio detected in a room, user requests to see an area, etc).

Manufacturers think “So what else can we do with these devices?” Note: this is not a NEED, just an opportunity to add features to make buyers feel like they’re getting more.

“Let’s use the speakers for house audio! We can even sell a music server to store your music collection and provide playlist management on the screens!”

Great sales appeal until you put this system in your big, beautiful home. Remember, intercoms are only practical in large homes. Large homes are typically higher-dollar homes with clients that expect better quality, reliability, and simplicity from their systems.

Larger homes also typically have a whole house audio system that sounds far better than the little intercom speakers. The house audio would typically be integrated with music sources that have playlist management, custom remotes that organize and simplify the operation of everything, and automation controllers to make the system adaptive and “smart”.

What the intercom/door cameras CAN do is send their video signals to an existing house security DVR. I say existing because, again, I don’t see the intercom manufacturer making a better DVR than a DVR company.

Making the video/intercom stations able to display video from other external sources would be another beneficial feature and allows the integrator to squeeze every last drop of benefit out of each device that’s installed.

One more example: Surround Sound receivers.

In many homes I’ve installed systems into, we have all the TVs, theater, and a few surround sound bars tied together into a matrix with all the sources. This gives the homeowners tremendous flexibility, sharing of expensive sources, and simplicity of operation by making all the rooms nearly identical to operate regardless of what equipment is in the room or hidden away in the equipment rack.

The theater in these homes often needs the best audio processor and amps possible within the budget but only needs one source input, the matrix, and maybe a local game system or two (sometimes those are even shared with other TVs using the matrix!)

Without resorting to separates, to get a great surround processor and amps you need to buy a receiver with 14 source inputs, iPod dock, Sirius radio, 3-zone audio out, internet audio streaming, and more extra features than could fit in an article of this caliber. All that overlap of features is wasted budget money that could have gone to providing real value to the client in the way of easier to use, additional sources, or just better quality and reliability.

So if you’re a manufacturer who really wants to cater to your custom integrator clients, here’s my advice: make one or two products in your vast line that are geared to solving the needs of integrators.

Focus on a few key features, open your interfaces so they can be integrated by integrators, build better quality and reliability.

Now everybody with an embedded controller and a website is trying to charge $10/mo to give you constant updates at your iPhone.

I created ControlMyBuilding.com back in 1998 to monitor and report on energy consumption and occupancy status for commercial buildings.

The reporting is useful to help gently modify occupant behavior so they’ll reduce waste but there’s no benefit in telling a human to constantly turn off the lights, set back the thermostat, and close the windows.

You’ll spend more time and energy trying to save energy. And does that really improve your quality of life?

Tweet-A-Watt is my favorite example and these guys won a major Green award! It sends a tweet whenever consumption exceeds a trigger point. I bet the judges don’t subscribe to any Tweet-A-Watt’s past the first day.

The only way to curb consumption is to set up decision rules your house or building can do automatically. Automation can provide the load-shedding activities based on opt-in levels you define.

This is the essence of what a Smart Grid system accomplishes. The Home Area Network (HAN) analyses current loads, receives load-shedding requests and current pricing from the utility grid, considers as many other factors as possible, then takes action–like shutting off a device or adjusting a setpoint.

All this happens dozens of times per second.

I dare you to respond to your Tweet that fast. Even if you could, why would you? The key phrase here is “delegation”. Give the energy management system the complete set of experience you have, ensure it has enough inputs to make the same decisions, and delegate this role to your new creation.

On the bright side, monitoring your consumption is a great first step and should give you the metrics necessary to measure your success over time.

Product designers strongly consider Sales Features as part of the Functional Requirements.   The sale takes a tin fraction of the product’s lifecycle, whereas the product is typically expected to perform its other tasks for many years.

I’m not saying sales should not be considered but it should not be the leading decision factor.

Too many manufacturer sales teams try to “Push” a product to their dealers.  It’s better, and more profitable, to have a “Pull” from the dealers and end users who actually want a product.

I’m amazed at how many manufacturers do not want to hear the opinion of the dealers that are selling their products.  Some of it is NIH (Not Invented Here) pride.

My message to Product Development Managers:  If you think your idea is the only solution, try to collaborate with the dealers to find a solution that satisfies BOTH sets of requirements, not just your perspective.

Here’s my list.  If you’re on it and have a project in mind.  Have your people call my people.

If you’re wondering what kind of home electronics systems I’m talking about, visit DistinctAV.com.