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VIEW FROM THE INDUSTRY
Listed under: Comments
Published: Friday, April 24, 2009
There seems to be panic in the world of business; I have never seen so many headless chickens!
And we are beginning to see casualties of the credit crunch in the CI industry – it was with dismay that I read the CEDIA UK chairman has stepped down after the closure of his business. I have written this column for a good few months now and I always try to promote the positive side to this industry.
I do agree it is getting harder to get the sale and that customers want the Earth, but nobody said it'd be easy: you've just got to keep your eye on the ball. A recession is just another stage which your business has to go through; if you look after the customer and make sure you are on top of your debts, you will ride the storm.
One thing I do find hard to understand is that the customer will also blame you for all faults even when you have had nothing to do with them! Take Sky boxes: they always seem to lock up. Who is the first person to get the call from the irate customer? Yes, you guessed right – the poor CI dealer. Sky makes the money from the box, the subscription and the pay-as-view movies, but you get the stick from the customer and, nine times out of 10, pick up the service call after Sky send round their installer, who turns up scratching his head and says that without written consent from GOD he cannot use his ladders...
customer care
We are working on one job at the moment – a self build – and we sold the client a 6-zone multi room system with a 6-port component switcher. The contract had two screens in the living areas, one in the lounge and one in the kitchen. We did the first fix wiring over a year ago, and then the credit crunch put a halt to the contract as the client was finding the bank were not playing ball with releasing the next phase of money. I remember selling the system to the client; he came to our demo rooms and liked the music server option. At that time, movie servers were just hitting the industry and I showed him the latest one in our demo rooms; he liked it but never added it to his job.
Anyway, I had a phone call out of the blue to say he was finally ready to have the second fix completed as the bank had finally released the final payment. The time that had passed had made his memory fade, however, because as my installer was packing up his tools, he said,“How do I get the stored movies to play on the screen?” We had never agreed or even priced to put a DVD server in, but even after showing him the detailed estimate with no mention of the product, he insisted that because he had seen it in the demonstration 18-months earlier, he thought it was included in the price!
There is no other game that this would happen in. If you walked into at BMW garage and ordered a 318, but there were another four cars in the showroom at the time, you would not expect to take delivery of five cars! I bit the bullet and installed a Netgear client with a Buffalo hard drive costing me £600. We believed that we bent over backwards to keep the customer happy, but sometimes being generous (or SOFT) can back fire on you... One week later we got another call from the client to say he had bought a cheap LCD screen from Comet and connected it to the TV socket in his bedroom which the electrician had installed, and he wondered why he could not view or control his movies from this room. You can imagine how difficult it was to explain to him that, without CAT5 or component cabling, the screen will not access the movie server...
The one good thing that came out of that contract was that we got to play with the Netgear media server and external hard disk. It is a really cheap way of streaming audio and video to your plasma screens: once you have hooked the Netgear to the network and set DHCP on, the kit scans your network for media stored on computers, external hard disks and even multi room storage devices. All the output material is up-scaled to 1080p and, I have to say, even though the Netgear only costs around £160, the picture is as good as some of the dedicated servers which cost £3000 and more. The interface might not look as pretty, but it does the job of playing movies back very well. You have HDMI and component connections for the video, and Tosh link and digital coaxial for non-HDMI compatible amplifiers.
The Netgear even comes bundled with software that allows you to download the cover art for the movies stored on the network. Over the last week, during which we've been testing this piece of kit in our demo rooms, it has been very stable and has not fallen down during any of the movies we've played. It looks like we are one step closer to seeing how we are going to view TV, movies and play music around the home – streaming media is becoming the norm and is getting far more stable. One day we might be able to say goodbye to Sky.
true blu
What is new and what are DSE looking forward to? The Marantz BD8002 Blu-ray player looks like it might be a lovely piece of kit. It has been billed as the 'ultimate-quality Blu-ray player', but I do feel disappointed that it is still just profile 1.1 and won’t be able to play BD-Live content. This isn’t the end of the world if the player provides a stunning picture and sublime sound, though, as the industry still lacks great Blu-ray players that can spin the disk to my high expectations. Another great product which seems to be in all the news pages is the Philips 21:9 plasma screen. I have always hated the black bars when I watch a 2:35 movie on my plasma at home and look forward to trying out the new 21:9 screen – don’t forget Philips have brought us some of the best innovations in the digital world over the last decade. The resolution of this screen is rated at 2560x1080p, and my only concern would be material which is being transmitted in 4:3 might look completely distorted. Still it looks great hanging on the wall in the shots I have seen.
With the rush over and with the most important shows of the year behind us, it’s down to some installations. We are just finishing off the install I mentioned in this column two months ago. You may remember me ranting on about the builder from Hell, and judging from the number of emails I received, many of my fellow Custom Installers have had similar experiences. I have to say, the job turned out to be absolutely stunning and the customer still loves us – the only one off the team is the builder! Never mind, Mr Builder; one day you might understand how complex our job is in the CI game. I will sign off with happy thoughts and nice pictures of a job well done, and a customer who must be pleased as he has just lined us up to start his friend’s house. But guess what, THE BUILDER IS NOT THE SAME ONE!
Dave Slater is MD of DSE GROUP incorporating DSE DIGITAL.
His article was submitted on 20/03/09
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: +44 (0)191 491 4141 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) http://www.dsegroup.co.uk
I do agree it is getting harder to get the sale and that customers want the Earth, but nobody said it'd be easy: you've just got to keep your eye on the ball. A recession is just another stage which your business has to go through; if you look after the customer and make sure you are on top of your debts, you will ride the storm.
One thing I do find hard to understand is that the customer will also blame you for all faults even when you have had nothing to do with them! Take Sky boxes: they always seem to lock up. Who is the first person to get the call from the irate customer? Yes, you guessed right – the poor CI dealer. Sky makes the money from the box, the subscription and the pay-as-view movies, but you get the stick from the customer and, nine times out of 10, pick up the service call after Sky send round their installer, who turns up scratching his head and says that without written consent from GOD he cannot use his ladders...
customer care
We are working on one job at the moment – a self build – and we sold the client a 6-zone multi room system with a 6-port component switcher. The contract had two screens in the living areas, one in the lounge and one in the kitchen. We did the first fix wiring over a year ago, and then the credit crunch put a halt to the contract as the client was finding the bank were not playing ball with releasing the next phase of money. I remember selling the system to the client; he came to our demo rooms and liked the music server option. At that time, movie servers were just hitting the industry and I showed him the latest one in our demo rooms; he liked it but never added it to his job.
Anyway, I had a phone call out of the blue to say he was finally ready to have the second fix completed as the bank had finally released the final payment. The time that had passed had made his memory fade, however, because as my installer was packing up his tools, he said,“How do I get the stored movies to play on the screen?” We had never agreed or even priced to put a DVD server in, but even after showing him the detailed estimate with no mention of the product, he insisted that because he had seen it in the demonstration 18-months earlier, he thought it was included in the price!
There is no other game that this would happen in. If you walked into at BMW garage and ordered a 318, but there were another four cars in the showroom at the time, you would not expect to take delivery of five cars! I bit the bullet and installed a Netgear client with a Buffalo hard drive costing me £600. We believed that we bent over backwards to keep the customer happy, but sometimes being generous (or SOFT) can back fire on you... One week later we got another call from the client to say he had bought a cheap LCD screen from Comet and connected it to the TV socket in his bedroom which the electrician had installed, and he wondered why he could not view or control his movies from this room. You can imagine how difficult it was to explain to him that, without CAT5 or component cabling, the screen will not access the movie server...
The one good thing that came out of that contract was that we got to play with the Netgear media server and external hard disk. It is a really cheap way of streaming audio and video to your plasma screens: once you have hooked the Netgear to the network and set DHCP on, the kit scans your network for media stored on computers, external hard disks and even multi room storage devices. All the output material is up-scaled to 1080p and, I have to say, even though the Netgear only costs around £160, the picture is as good as some of the dedicated servers which cost £3000 and more. The interface might not look as pretty, but it does the job of playing movies back very well. You have HDMI and component connections for the video, and Tosh link and digital coaxial for non-HDMI compatible amplifiers.
The Netgear even comes bundled with software that allows you to download the cover art for the movies stored on the network. Over the last week, during which we've been testing this piece of kit in our demo rooms, it has been very stable and has not fallen down during any of the movies we've played. It looks like we are one step closer to seeing how we are going to view TV, movies and play music around the home – streaming media is becoming the norm and is getting far more stable. One day we might be able to say goodbye to Sky.
true blu
What is new and what are DSE looking forward to? The Marantz BD8002 Blu-ray player looks like it might be a lovely piece of kit. It has been billed as the 'ultimate-quality Blu-ray player', but I do feel disappointed that it is still just profile 1.1 and won’t be able to play BD-Live content. This isn’t the end of the world if the player provides a stunning picture and sublime sound, though, as the industry still lacks great Blu-ray players that can spin the disk to my high expectations. Another great product which seems to be in all the news pages is the Philips 21:9 plasma screen. I have always hated the black bars when I watch a 2:35 movie on my plasma at home and look forward to trying out the new 21:9 screen – don’t forget Philips have brought us some of the best innovations in the digital world over the last decade. The resolution of this screen is rated at 2560x1080p, and my only concern would be material which is being transmitted in 4:3 might look completely distorted. Still it looks great hanging on the wall in the shots I have seen.
With the rush over and with the most important shows of the year behind us, it’s down to some installations. We are just finishing off the install I mentioned in this column two months ago. You may remember me ranting on about the builder from Hell, and judging from the number of emails I received, many of my fellow Custom Installers have had similar experiences. I have to say, the job turned out to be absolutely stunning and the customer still loves us – the only one off the team is the builder! Never mind, Mr Builder; one day you might understand how complex our job is in the CI game. I will sign off with happy thoughts and nice pictures of a job well done, and a customer who must be pleased as he has just lined us up to start his friend’s house. But guess what, THE BUILDER IS NOT THE SAME ONE!
Dave Slater is MD of DSE GROUP incorporating DSE DIGITAL.
His article was submitted on 20/03/09
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: +44 (0)191 491 4141 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) http://www.dsegroup.co.uk
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