Samsung is just one TV brand that has network capabilties

If you own a TV, games console or network connected blu-ray player, and you happen to have a PC or laptop floating around your home, chances are you have all the ingredients to watch videos stored stored on your PC’s and/or network storage. There is no need for any additional hardware – you do need not purchase an additional appliance or gadget to achieve this – this assuming you have a well designed home network in the first place.

For quite some time now your TV, games console  and some blu-ray players have had the ability to be networked – a network socket is on the back of most of these devices. We find, that surprisingly few people actually bother plugging these devices into their home network. The chances are your TV can deliver a whole host of features that you could very well be missing out on by not networking it.

Most of the premium brand TV’s have sported networking capabilties for several years now, if you have bought a decent TV in the last few years, chances are it has the ability to be networked – when connected to the internet a whole load of interesting possibilities and features come to the fore. Sony’s PS3 and the XBOX (old and new) have featured network ports, which provide whole host of features beyond online multi-player gaming.

Each brand or manufacturer have their own approach to the interface (menus or bits you see to control it) and also what features or services the device sports. Panasonic’s Media Server found in any networkable TV or Blu-Ray player, is dead boring to look at but very responsive and efficient. They then sport a different feature set formerly known as VieraTV, recently rebadged to SmartViera. SmartViera which provides you access to a screen full of widgets, these widgets provide you access to a host of online services such as YouTub, on-demand movie hire, EuropsortsSkype and even fully interactive services like Skype (Skype you ask?). The best looking, and by far best organised interface comes from Samsung. Samusng tout this feature as being Smart TV.

This article does not really focus do much on the ‘smart’ stuff and more on the Media Server and Media Client capabilities these devices support. This feature enables you to access your personal media (that is music, photos and video files) stored on your home network – this can be on your desktop computer, laptop or network storage.

The ‘magic’ that lets you do this is a service now touted as DLNA, but those of us who have been around longer know it is UPnP. UPnP is very easy to enable – I say enable, because Vista or Windows 7 supports UPnP media services natively. You need only go to ‘Network and Sharing’, go into the advanced properties and enable Media Streaming. Then add in the various file locations into its libraries; once your media is indexed it can be browsed and viewed on your smart TV.

For those who do not like Windows Media or use a Mac or Linux), Twonky is a great DLNA application. It is a licensed product – but most TV manufacturers will give you a free license with the TV purchase (see the documentation that came with your TV)  – Linn, Loewe and Panasonic are brands we are aware of that include Townky licensing.

For me these features and the advantages they bring is a significant milestone in the evolution of TV. It is something that still lacks a lot of polish and could/likely will be made a whole lot better in time. The advantages of which will only ever become apparent to you if you network them in the first place. TV viewing has evolved considerably over the past 5 years, have you moved with these changes as well?

After skipping the 2010 event, the Tea London team went to the Home Technology Event which ends today at the London Excel Centre.

What happened to just plain CEDIA?

In the past the show was always referred to as CEDIA, named after the The Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association. Apparently CEDIA get upset if the event is not referred to as the Home Technology Event. I suspect because there is a CEDIA Expo hosted during September in the United States, I suppose they may want to draw a distinction between the two events?

No matter, this article is quick summary of some of the nifty things seen at the show, which made the visit worthwhile.

The all-directions HDMI cable from Cablesson

Cablesson are one of our many suppliers, and we really find them to be quite endearing.

Cablesson design a number of good quality (predominantly) HDMI cabling and connector products, get them made in China, and they then distribute through their 3 bases dotted around the world. They pretty much supply every means of connecting up HDMI devices together around the home.

The also have HDMI extender, switches and matrices in their product portfolio, including two rather excellent HDBaseT HDMI extenders, one of which has finally gone on a diet (see our report on HDBaseT, coming soon).

Despite the fact that Cablesson had plenty of gadgets on show, the product that impressed us most was their take on a swivelling HDMI connector.

This new connector essentially allows you to connect an HDMI cable pretty much in any

Swivel head HDMi connector

direction you want into the back of a component. They basically have taken an existing idea, and added a design tweak to it. There are HDMI cables that have a swivelling head, allowing you to ‘bend’ the connector over a 180 degree arc, this cable does the same but there is an added pivot movement of the connector as well, allow you to plug in and orientate a cable in pretty much any direction you want. This will ensure that you can have a cable plugged into the back of, say a TV which is to be placed close to a wall, and allow the cable to drop safely behind a TV, no matter what direction or orientation of the HDMI port(s) on the back of a TV. This means that the cable itself will not need to be forced into a right-angle, and further reduces the chances of damaging the cable or the TV, as the TV is pushed against a wall  during mounting, which believe you me is a common occurrence in TV installations.

Shock and AWE

AWE Europe, another of Tea London’s choice suppliers put on a grand show this year.

They had most of their product portfolio on show, but they dedicated a lot of their Expo floorspace to Panasonic’s CHT (Custom Home Theatre) range of premium Plasma monitors. The CHT range of Plasma monitors, are in essence, the best plasma displays on the market. They are considered specialist and for the custom install market only. These displays you will not find in your local Dixons or John Lewis. They can cost up to 8 times the price of their standard domestic counterpart, if we look at an ‘inch for inch’ comparison alone, however comparing these to the lower end consumer TV’s would not do these monitors justice.

Panasonic’s CHT range of monitors are aimed at two niche markets – professionals who need accurate colour and as ‘honest’ as possible video supply, where all of the strengths and weaknesses in video content can be observed clearly – so the likes of the BBC for example would use these. The other niche market is for those fortunate individuals who want the best image possible out of Plasma display, and have a bank balance large enough to buy one of these wonderful displays.

AWE had pretty much the entire VX200 range on show, including the 85″ and 103″ plasma display, plus an exclusive preview of the a 65″ display from the VX300 range which will be launched in September this year.All I can say about the VX300 is it simply the best image quality I have ever seen, the 3D was astonishing – images leapt out of the display with no perceptible flicker. If money was no object and 65″ is about the right size for you, this is the Plasma Display to get your hands on. I even started working out if I could finance one of these beauties in the near future…

AWE put the CHT range range to good use:

• With the 85″ VX200 they ran a 3D driving game, and ran a Top Gear style fast lap competition, inviting all punters to have a go where the best lap time would get a trophy and a bottle of bubbly. It was great fun sitting in front of a huge 3D screen and (trying) to burn some rubber. I unfortunately did not clock up a good time, I kept on using the clutch pedal as a brake.
• The 65″ unit showed a slide show, just showing how balanced the colours are and how good 3D is on these displays
• Their showpiece was the “Million Dollar” home cinema. I do not know if it really did have a million dollars worth of equipment, but it must of cost at least half that. In this they had the huge 152″ UX1 Panasonic plasma monitor, which I think it the largest plasma monitor on the market. Capable of reproducing 4K2K image resolutions, which is 4 times that of Full HD image resolutions – I think a very necessary feature given how huge the image is. This huge monitor with a street price that goes into hundreds of thousands of pounds was coupled with Kef’s Muon loudspeakers, Arcam amplifiers and some sublime Chord Company speaker and interconnect cables, and you had a very impressive showing of how a ‘money no object’ home cinema could perform. In a word, the results were astonishing

Marata’s Exclusive Sony Projectors

Marata had Sony’s latest ‘entry level’ home cinema HD projector on show. It’s price point is around £3,000 but it delivers the level of performance I have seen in products that cost almost 3 times that price. It is incredibly well priced, with an incredible after-sales support plan. I simply could not find any faults with this.

Marata have exclusive distribution on this and several upper range Sony projectors, which I take great comfort in, as Marata will also provide the after-sales care, rather than Sony – which means that level of support will be considerably better than most.

Marata told me that this projector will expand later on in the year, where higher models that will have street prices in excess of £10,000 will become available. If a £3,000 projector is this good, how good will these high-end ones be? I can’t wait to find out.

HDMI Distribution – let me count the ways

There were a whole host of HDMI distribution products on show, ranging from standard extenders, to IPTv implementations.

Most of the IPTV products are on the extreme end of the price range and would only be feasible in large hospitality and commercial installations, or would not go amiss on the odd luxury yacht, but for the most part would be a technology that would be out of reach for the most of us… that is until you look at Just Add Power’s IPTV system, and then all of a sudden it becomes a very affordable technology, and what we think will be a significant growth area in video distribution in the modern home. We were impressed with the speed at which the product worked, image clarity and its integration with Control4′s residential controllers. Tea London are Control4 installers, so it just makes sense that Just Add Power needs to be in our product portfolio.

We also saw a number of excellent HDBaseT matrices and receiver units on display by Midwich’s True Colours division. They have a great price point and a very sensible approach to the cabling of HDBaseT products.

We will be releasing a series of article explaining more about the various HDMI and digital video distribution technologies available for the home today. All we can say is that the developments in this area are probably the single most significant developments in custom install AV on show, and will likely become ubiquitous in the next 5 years.

A bit of coax

For those of you who aren’t familiar with coax cable, this is normally the black, white or brown cables that are run from your TV aerial and/or satellite dish into your home, and can be find behind most TV sets and all set-top boxes. It essentially delivers broadcast TV signals to your TV, receiver or set-top box.

Here at TEA London we are often called upon to look at other installer’s cabling systems, post installation, to either upgrade, enhance or troubleshoot AV and IT systems. More often than not our client’s original supplier fell out of favour some time back, which although unfortunate for the client, we are at least given the opportunity to survey their past supplier’s structured cabling, and offer our impartial advice to address their new requirements or ailments. In a lot of the cases the original cabling system is adequate in addressing the then needs of the client, with little thought to how the client’s needs may change in the future, anything from a few months time to several years later.

We have found an alarming number of cases where custom audio visual installations have been installed without any coaxial cable at all to TV points, or too little cable has been run throughout a site, or worse, the rooms likely to accommodate a TV (if not immediately, but perhaps in the future) has no coaxial cable at all. This short blog will hopefully emphasise the importance of using coax cable in any modern and forward thinking AV installation.

Bad cable perceptions

Very recently a new client of ours informed me that he was advised 7 years ago, by his then Architect and specialist AV installer, that no coax cable was required to any of the 5 TV positions in his home. He was advised on using exclusively CAT5 cabling for the delivery of video throughout his home. The rationale of the AV installer was, ‘It is all digital now, you don’t need coax, because network cabling is digital’, the ‘specialists’ used buzzwords like digital, modern, future to convince the client that CAT5 cabling can exclusively address all of his AV requirements in his home.

The worst statement they made during their pitch is that coaxial cable would be obsolete in a matter of years. The client being a sensible, forward thinking man, followed their advice; why install something that will end up only being obsolete? Unfortunately this was incredibly bad advice, and has severely limited his AV options in his home.

If anyone tells you that coax cable is obsolete, or will be obsolete, or is not required, or is ‘an old cabling system’, ignore them, they clearly do not know what they are talking about – it will be a case of a little knowledge doing a lot of damage; whilst it is possible to get away with not running coaxial cable throughout a home, the alternatives of using CAT5/6/7 cable exclusively is:

• It is considerably more expensive to apply Video distribution systems from a central hub utilising CAT5/6/7 cabling exclusively
• it will actually reduce the features, functions and options each of your TV sets will have, by not allowing each set to tune into the airwaves independently
• prevents you from taking advantage of a great number of electronic appliances that need TV signals delivered through coax
• eliminates the opportunity for you to distribute infra-red and video signals through a coaxial cable network

The virtues of coax cable

So what are the benefits of coax cable? Well for one, it is inexpensive. When you look at the overall costs of installing a custom AV system in a modern home, coax cabling would be one of the least expensive materials used, costing less then 50 pence per metre. We always advise that at least two coaxial cables are run to each (potential) TV position, and we further advise that it should be CT100 equivalent or better coaxial cable.

CT100 cable is capable of handle many different signal types, and all TV signal types, i.e. satellite, terrestrial TV and cable TV. The two cables at each point will give you many options at at each set, such as the support of satellite and terrestrial TV, support for PVR devices or the ability to send a return signal back to your distribution point.

CT100 cable is rated to handling bandwidths in excess of 2GHz, where Category 5 cable can barely delivery 200MHz worth of headroom; even Category 7 cable rarely exceeds 1Ghz, which is half the headroom of a coax cable. Because of this high headroom, dense signals, or even multiple signals can be distributed through a single piece of cable.

By installing coax cable through your home, you will have the ability to not only take advantage of the video and audio distributed by your centralised AV distribution system, but you will be able to independently view and change channels using your TV’s own satellite, or terrestrial TV tuner. If you make use of media devices, like media centre PC’s or certain games consoles, these devices too can support a TV tuner – which almost always a pieces of coax cable to be plugged into the back of it in order for it to reliably receive a TV signal.

HD TV services are currently only available on satellite services, in the near future FreeView will begin HD TV broadcasts, and both broadcast systems require the delivery of their signals to a tuner utilising coax cable. This is the future, not the past; and shows that coax cable is here to stay for the foreseeable future, with no real end to its usefulness or purpose in a modern home in sight.

If you ever been advised or told that coax is obsolete or will become obsolete, then my advice would be for you to look for a different consultant immediately; they clearly do not understand the virtues of different cable types, and whilst they may seem to be forward thinking, one can argue if they really understand the virtues of other cable types as well, such as Category 5/6/7 cable, speaker cable, video cable or audio cable. It is always good to be forward thinking in terms of installing a modern cabling system, but never discount the value of so called ‘traditional’ or ‘old fashioned’ cabling. When obsolescence is used often in a sales pitch, let the buyer beware.

Timothy Francis

TEA London