Here are some of the trends we are seeing as we move into 2012:

Home Automation and Home Entertainment for the People – Probably the biggest and most important trend we are seeing is the affordability of home technologies for the average family. In the past, home control and home automation technologies, including lighting control and security control, and home entertainment technologies, such as home theaters, streaming media servers, and smart TVs, have only been accessible to those on the wealthier end of the spectrum. This is no longer the case. Home control and home entertainment technologies will continue to become commoditized and accessible to the majority of people.

Greening Your Home – More home owners and businesses are looking to both save money on utilities, including electricity, and are more conscious about decreasing their carbon footprint. This trend will only increase as more home control technologies that provide cost savings become available and more affordable.

More Control Than Ever – Home control and automation systems are becoming more and more sophisticated than ever. Home and business owners can control virtually every aspect of their properties, including lighting, security, and environment, from a tablet or smartphone. Providers, such as Control4 and Crestron, are also increasing the number of apps that make all of this possible. This is only going to continue to be the case as the technologies and applications continue to be developed for the home technology market.

Cooler Technology and Fun Gadgets – There is just a lot of cool toys out there in the market. Smart TVs, including 3D TVs, that meet all your family’s home entertainment needs are one of the coolest developments in recent years. They are only going to improve, becoming more user-friendly and interactive, as the market develops. Also streaming and stored media systems that can hold all of your movies, music, TV programs, and more are a huge hit with consumers.

We are looking forward to 2012 and what it holds for home technologies. We’re hoping for increased interoperability and integration between vendors so that we can help you make your home a more efficient and entertaining place to be.

As always, please contact us with all of your home automation and control and home entertainment system questions. Learn how a custom system from Certified Connection can change your life.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

Additional Reading

Lower Energy Costs and Increase the Value of Your Home by Making it More Energy Efficient

Easy Being Green: Get Out of Your Hybrid Car and Into Your Green Home

Control Your Home from Your iPad

Also check out the review of this new media server in Sound + Vision magazine, which would be great for any home or business, the MMS-2 Mirage Media Server.

To incorporate a streaming media server into your home entertainment system, all you need is an Internet connection and an Internet-ready TV or an Internet-ready Blu-ray player. We’ve discussed some of the more popular ones in a past blog post, including Apple TV, iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Rhapsody, etc.

Enjoy music, movies, and TV the way you want it in your home or business with one of Certified Connection’s custom solutions. There are plenty of media servers out there that can simply store media, stream media, or do both. Contact us today to learn more about your options and decide on the one that’s right for you.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control, home automation systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

The NCTA and CableLabs are forming an Energy Lab facility, which will concentrate on improving energy efficiency and promote the development, testing, and deployment of technologies that will enable users to reduce and manage energy consumption in the home. They will work on manufacturing set-top devices that have sleep capabilities that will reduce power consumption when subscribers are not watching television.

And according to the NCTA, 90% of all new set-top boxes purchased and deployed by top cable operators will meet Energy Star 3.0 energy efficiency standards for set-top boxes.

A recent article in Electronic House explains more of the details of the plans for the Energy Lab.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control, home automation systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

Additional Reading:

Afraid of Vampires? You Should Be. Energy Draining Appliances Could be Costing You a Fortune

Easy Being Green: Get Out of Your Hybrid Car and Into Your Green Home

Enter Indian company Violet3D, with a technological innovation that’s looking to change surround sound forever. Violet has developed a wireless surround sound system that allows for speakers to be placed anywhere in the room and still deliver the surround sound experience, irrespective of where you’re sitting. In Violet’s own words, “By using omni-polar speakers, [the Violet sound system] creates unique wave-fronts – one wave-front from one direction for one channel – using ALL the available speakers.”

The range of the speakers is approximately 150 feet, and the system uses digital signal processing along with a uniquely designed amplifier to provide a high-fidelity sound and loudness from small speakers. Violet3D replaces wires of conventional home theater systems with a phase accurate and power adaptive wireless technology that beats the best cables.

So is the Violet3D system a game-changer? At close to $1,300, it’s definitely on the high end, but if more companies adapt and improve upon the basic idea, surround sound could be looking at a whole new ball game.

Have you got a Violet3D system? Let Certified Connection set it up for you!

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By Certified Connection

This is exciting news because as the people in this group get older, they’ll already be familiar with smartphone technology and it can be very helpful to them. Not only are smartphones important in an emergency situation, they can play an important role in home automation, which can help a senior with decreased mobility remain independent or help another just show off for his golf buddies.  

We’ve discussed in the past how many home automation systems can be controlled by an iPad, a touch screen installed in the wall, or a smartphone. Security systems, lighting, temperature, and entertainment in the home can all be controlled by the push of a button. For seniors, an Internet connection and familiarity with a smartphone would allow them to do all that from a comfortable chair, as well as set up medication reminders or other alerts. Concerned family members can set up motion detectors that will provide fall alerts or video cameras that will allow them to check on their loved one throughout the day. 

Baby boomers adopting smartphone technology now is a great thing because as this group ages, home automation combined with smartphone technology will give them a greater chance of staying as independent as they’d like for as long as they’d like.

Certified Connectionis the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape. 

By Certified Connection

It sounds logical that if you need a particular model to add to your already existing entertainment system you go online to find the lowest price you can. But I’ve seen online retailers ship a different model because they don’t have the one you need in stock. Then you’re stuck trying to clear up the issue on the phone – assuming the online retailer has a good return policy. Or maybe you get help designing a complex home entertainment system and go online to purchase the components. After you have all of the random boxes piled in your living room, you have to get the system working, and complex designs require seamless communication between the components. Assuming those random boxes contain the right component models, you still might need expert help putting it together.

I like to think of myself as a solution provider rather than just a problem solver. By working with an expert from designing your system to hitting the power button on your remote, these problems can be eliminated. Working with an expert ensures that you start with a good design that meets all of your needs, and you’ll never have to worry about getting stuck with the wrong part or having a bug in your system that you just can’t work out. Bargain shopping online is tempting, but sometimes the cost savings just aren’t worth the headaches.        

Certified Connectionis the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape. 

By Eytan Vestin of Certified Connection

Customized home automation and/or home theater systems often require that we pull from the top-of-line components available in the market in order to provide the best system for each client. This means making products from manufacturers x, y, and z work together event though they may have different operating systems or software.

For example, when we work with a customer to install a home automation solution with lighting control and environmental controls, that customer wants to and should be able to access all of these controls from one device, whether it’s a universal remote, an iPad, or a smartphone device.

Manufacturers often claim that certain components will work together seamlessly or provide software or modules that are intended to allow them to work together. But in reality, and unfortunately, this may not be the case – which makes our job even more difficult.

Of course, the companies that provide specific components have proprietary systems, which is what keeps them on the cutting edge and keeps them at the front of the market. But it seems that there could be and should be some common ground from which they can work together to provide more easily integratable components and systems to benefit integrators and ultimately their customers. If a source vendor claims to have patches or modules that integrate components with another company’s components, they should be tested and tested again to make sure they truly work.

As integrators, we want to be able to provide the best products and services to our customers, giving them the best seamless, high-end systems. It would benefit everyone if source vendors could figure out a way that we could all just get along.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

Additional Reading

Getting the Most Out of Your Audio/Video System

Lower Energy Costs and Increase the Value of Your Home by Making it More Energy Efficient

Home Entertainment Technology in Europe vs. the United States

 Eytan is proud to be part of this organization and is excited to further its cause as a member of the board.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

A recent article on ECNmag.com, “Building Value with Energy-Saving Upgrades in Homes and Businesses,” discusses how “improving the energy performance of your home can make it more comfortable and attractive, increase its value, and help you save money on your energy bills.”

These days adding energy-saving components in your home, such as:

• Appliances
• Windows and doors
• Insulation
• Heating and cooling equipment
• Automated thermostats

can increase the value of your home and help attract more potential buyers.

According to the article, the Department of Energy recently announced a partnership with The Appraisal Foundation that will provide information about energy-efficiency and building performance information for commercial buildings. Through this partnership, appraisers will have access to the information they need to evaluate energy performance for building appraisals. It will help improve the availability of tools and data for appraisers so that they can accurately incorporate the value of energy-efficiency upgrades into a building’s appraisal.

Other additions that can help you save money on energy bills and potentially increase the value of your home are:

• Installing home lighting control or other home control systems to manage when home electronics are switched on and off.
• Installing energy monitors to monitor total energy consumption throughout the day, week, month, or year.

Check out the Energy Savers website for additional information on ways to save energy in your home, vehicle, or workplace.

This post is written in collaboration with our friends at Present Value LLC, a worldwide international appraisal and advisory company that provides a range of professional services such as Certified Machinery and Equipment Appraisals, Inventory Appraisals, Asset Verification Services, Business Valuations, and Real Estate Appraisals.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

Additional Reading:

Easy Being Green: Get Out of Your Hybrid Car and Into Your Green Home

Home Automation: Cool and Cost Effective

The Energy Detective (TED)

But is it all protected?

Especially in light of the numerous power outages and problems that people are dealing with post Hurricane Irene, this is an important topic. Two of the most potentially catastrophic things that can happen to – and potentially destroy – your electronic entertainment components are an overload and a surge. An overload occurs when there are too many power-drawing components plugged into the same outlet and there isn’t enough juice. A surge is a spike in the electricity being sent to the components, and it can totally fry everything. Surges are often caused by lightning strikes or downed power lines. Please check out our previous post for more information on potential power disturbances.

Luckily, a power surge protector can help protect all your electronic equipment from these types of problems. A power surge protector is a block of electrical sockets that attaches to the end of a flexible cable and allows multiple electrical devices to be plugged in. It has a built-in circuit breaker to protect your devices from surges and overloads. Most also have a self-contained power switch; this is handy if you need to power off all your components at once and don’t want to spend your whole day trying to unplug things; this also can help with energy draining vampire appliances.

But it’s important to keep in mind that not all power strips are the same. A $7.99 power strip is not going to provide the protection you need. You really need a power surge protector and they’re not all created equal. Some are designed for specific components, like computer equipment or home appliances.

Certified Connection offers solutions for home and business owners to limit or eliminate power quality disturbances.

• Audio-Video Solutions from APC
• Audio-Video Solutions from Panamax
• Home-office and small business solutions from APC

Make sure you’re protecting your investment. Contact us at Certified Connection and we’ll help you choose the right power surge protector for all your needs.

Certified Connection is the premier provider of custom-designed home control systems and home theaters to residential and commercial customers. For more than 10 years, Certified Connection has served homeowners and businesses in and around Boston, throughout the South Shore, and the entire Cape.

By: Certified Connection

Additional Reading

Protect Your Investment

Afraid of Vampires? You Should Be. Energy Draining Appliances Could be Costing You a Fortune