Home energy management solutions are still in their infancy. Widespread smart-grid technologies won’t hit mainstream markets for at least another year. The way Control4’s Glen Mella sees it, now’s the perfect time for CE and appliance retailers to start exploring opportunities and building competencies.

“We think it’s very timely,” said Mella, president and COO of Control4. “It might not be huge dollars today, but it will be.”
The progression from home theaters to home energy management for dealers and consumers is a logical one, given that home theaters and multi-room audio systems have reached maturity, while mainstream control and automation is on the rise.

“Consumers are starting to say, ‘What else can I do? Can I control lighting, temperature, etc .?’ They’re now asking what type of current their TVs draw and whether home lighting control will help them save energy,” he said. “Those types of questions are not going away. The value proposition for dealers to offer consumers home energy solutions is increasing.”

As retailers search for fresh solutions to differentiate their offerings and develop new markets, vendors and buying groups are advising their dealers to become the one-stop home technology providers for their customers.

“We encourage dealers to become educated so they can be that one-stop shop,” Mella said. “They can start simple, with automated lighting, motion sensors, things they can show that are different than home entertainment. They can show consumers how to begin their journey to the eco home. That’s the beginning; it’s all pre-smart grid.”

Smart-grid solutions are the next step. They refer to a new generation of smart meters that communicate information about energy consumption between the home and the utility. About 35 million smart meters are currently under contract, with parts of California (San Diego, the Bay Area) and Texas already deploying them in large numbers, according to Control4.

“The average consumer still doesn’t know a lot about what the technology means,” Mella said. That predicament usually signifies dealer opportunities: Where there’s mystery, there’s margin.

Control4 took an early lead in establishing itself as a prime player in the development or prototype smart-grid solutions. To help educate consumers and retailers, Control4, along with GE, GridWise Alliance, IBM, Magnolia/Best Buy and Silver Spring Networks, recently formed the Smart Grid Coalition. The group’s priorities include developing research on consumer awareness; acceptance and use of the smart grid; outreach and education to help consumers better understand the issues and potential of the smart grid; and the development of best practices to empower consumers in the roll out of smart-grid technologies.

The coalition points out that federal stimulus for the smart grid will reach more than $4 billion and that nearly half of all North American consumers will have next-generation smart meters.

On the product front, Control4 is developing products that enable appliances and CE products to talk to the meter through the company’s Home Controller unit and other devices. This summer, Control4 will provide utilities with test products for a series of pilot programs.  “It won’t be mainstream for a year or so, but the Home Controller is a great way for dealers to give consumers a starting point in automation and control,” said Susan Cashen, Control4’s vice president of marketing.

The biggest challenge the coalition, other vendors and dealers face is trying to make home energy management sexy for the consumer. That’s where companies like Control4 and Intel, with its Home Dashboard, come in.

“The truth is that energy data is not that exciting. The utilities have tried this before, but the products were ugly and boring and consumers threw them into the draw and forgot about them,” Mella said. “We believe that energy management needs to be part of the consumer’s everyday life.”

To do that, Control4 will tie energy management solutions into its new 4Store, which offers apps and product customization tools, and integrate energy management into control panels and devices like the iPad, which consumers use for a variety of everyday tasks.

“Energy management is critical. The smart grid isn’t just an interesting hobby. We need solutions that are interactive, pleasing and cost-effective,” Mella said. “This is all part of the connected home that leverages technology to make them safer, more convenient and more efficient.”

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When looking for the home theater décor there are so many things to consider, but it all boils down to preferences and available space. If you have plenty of room you can do just about anything, but even if your space is limited there are several things that can be done to add depth.

What usually can make the most of any media room’s home theater décor is the seating. Home theater seating comes in all shapes and sizes and depending on the size of the room they can make a room feel bigger or smaller.

For small media rooms many people like standard theater seats, the ones that fold up when someone is not sitting in them. These types of theater seats are comfortable without taking up as much room as some of the larger options available.

If bigger is better when choosing seating then there are also several different types of theater seats that have built in speakers and compartments available to store all of the things you do not want to leave out, like remotes.

But it is not just seating that a person should consider when looking for home theater décor. There are also various cinematic staples like popcorn machines, drapes and controllable lighting. Another staple is movie posters and lobby cards. All of these things can come together to make any room look and feel like you have gone to the movies, rather than watched one at home.

Best of all you do not have to always spend a fortune choosing home theater décor. Many of these things are easy to get and a lot less expensive than most people would believe. Sometimes all it takes is a few movie posters and the right lighting to pull all the home theater décor together.

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Sure you can plop down on your sofa in your living room and watch a movie on your new flat panel screen and be content, but for a truly unique, cinematic experience consider dedicating a room to family entertainment and home theater. How do you achieve a home movie theater feel in your home? The addition of home theater accessories can have a dramatic impact on the look and feel of your home theater.

The following home theater accessory ideas can easily help transform a room from a lifeless family room into an exciting room that your kids will want to show off to their friends.

1. Home theater seating – Dedicated home theater seating has rapidly increased in popularity over the past few years as home owners want to experience the ultimate in home theater comfort. Home theater seating typically comes in two varieties, home theater loungers and movie theater seating. Home theater loungers are designed with a premium on comfort with overstuffed leather reclining chairs with many options. Movie theater seating on the other hand is designed to replicate seating found at the local cinema. Both options will include standard items such as cup holders. Child size versions of home theater seating is also available.
2. Custom framed movie posters – One of the easiest ways to decorate your room with a movie theater theme is to add movie posters to the walls of your room. You can choose from thousands of different movies to accentuate the theme of your room. One popular choice is classic movie posters for an old fashioned, nostalgic feel, but choose what works best for you. Do you have a science fiction theme, a western theme, or a kids theme? You could easily decorate for any of these themes with custom framed posters. Another popular choice is to have a now showing poster with the movie that you will be showing.
3. Home theater lighting – There are a number of lighting options that are ideal for today’s home movie theaters. Imagine the look on your guests face when at the touch of a button on your remote control, the overhead lights slowly dim until the only lights left are the custom made, theater wall sconce lights and rope lighting dimmed to create the perfect ambience for the movie. At the conclusion of the movie the overhead lighting again gradually is turned on at the touch of a button.
4. Custom movie introductions – Another popular choice for those really trying to create a movie theater like experience is to have a custom movie introduction made for your home theater. Typical intros have the name of your theater, a variety of nostalgic soda and food commercials, movie trivia and previews. All of this would be programmed into your system so that it would be playing while your guests are milling around finding their seats.
5. Popcorn machine – Your theater experience would not be complete without the sound and aroma of fresh buttered popcorn popping in a nostalgic popcorn popper. Kids of all ages enjoy freshly popped popcorn. Popcorn machines come in all shapes, sizes and price ranges. Sure you could just pop a bag in the microwave, but a popcorn popper is one of the home theater accessories that will make your home theater unique and enjoyable.

As you can see there are many home theater accessories that will make your room fun and unique. A truly unique and impressive home theater will immerse your guests in a comfortable movie theater like atmosphere.

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A lot of people have decided the time has come to start waiting for movies to come out on DVD, rather than spending a lot of money for movie at a theater. The problem is, the atmosphere isn’t nearly the same. But not to worry, because it’s not that difficult to create a home theater atmosphere.

Any home theater atmosphere experience is going to start with the television set. Most new sets are now flat screen and some of them are pretty big. Thus, it’s rather a no-brainer to go with the biggest screen you can afford if you really want that theater feel. But don’t leave the store just yet, because while that flat screen TV likely has a perfectly fine speaker in it, it won’t be anything like you’d find at the local multiplex. This is partly due to the sound quality of the speakers at a theater, and partly due to the surround sound capabilities that come with Dolby, a technology that is embedded in most recent DVD’s. Therefore it’s just a matter of buying the proper equipment to take advantage of that technology.

The answer is, a surround sound home theater system, which is comprised of a box to plug everything in to, several small speakers for putting in various places that surround your home theater and a big speaker to handle the booming base that comes from high quality DVD’s.

Of course you’ll also need a high quality DVD player, which now means a Blu Ray player so you can watch in high def.

After that, it’s pretty much a matter of putting it all together.

To really get that home theater feeling, you might want to invest in comfortable viewing chairs, rather they try to use traditional living room furniture, because movie watching chairs (think Barcalounger) are more geared to providing the kind of comfort people have come to expect when movie watching.

After that, try to place the speakers from your surround sound system so that they truly surround everyone in the room that is watching. Also, higher is much better than lower, so don’t put them on the floor. Most of the smaller speakers can actually be hung right on the wall. Also, some systems offer wireless speakers which make putting your speakers around the room a lot easier. The big bass speaker always goes in front, centered if possible, directly below the television.

Then, hook everything together until it works, adjust the sound for your particular room and that should be it unless you want to invest in a popcorn maker. Put in a disc, dim the lights, kick back and enjoy.

It may sound an awful lot like one of Conan O’Brien’s “Year 3000” skits. Instead, it’s part of Displaybank’s recently published report, “3D TV Industry Trend and Market Forecast.”

Basically, the report says that in a few years most plasmas will have that 3D function. Whether users want it as a standard feature is probably for another report.

Panasonic and Samsung currently lead this plasma 3D revolution, releasing multiple 3D TV models in 2010. LG is also planning a few releases as well. This year’s 3D plasmas include sizes ranging from 50 to 65 inches. The company says that 3D could be the boost that puts plasma back on top of LCD and LED sales.

“PDP industry suffers from lesser production capacity as well as marketing capability compared to LCD and from not having new investments that market expansion will become difficulty due to the limit in production even with the recognition coming from consumers,” says Jusy Hong, senior analyst in Display research group at Displaybank. “3D PDP TV will remain at the limit of replacing 2D PDP TV under the limited PDP TV market.”

From startups to heavyweights, companies are betting that energy management will be the next big thing–a market worth $171 billion by 2014.

Talk to people about using less energy–and saving money–and nearly everyone thinks it’s a great idea. So it stands to reason that home-energy management systems will be a hot item for 2010. It’s an appealing prospect: Wireless networks, working with smart meters and smart appliances, shift energy use away from peak times, when it can cost 10 times the off-peak price. Instead of turning on the air-conditioning at 5 p.m. with the rest of the neighborhood, for example, the system could automatically precool the house when there’s less demand for energy, making it cheaper. Sounds great, right?

The potential of the energy-management market is huge. By 2014, the global smart-grid market is expected to be worth $171 billion, according to Zpryme Research & Consulting; if the U.S. fully utilized a smart grid, we could cut our carbon emissions 12% by 2030, the equal of eliminating 66 power plants, according to the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Already, upward of 30 companies, including GE, Google, Microsoft, and a host of eager startups, are rushing to get a foothold in the increasingly crowded space.

There are just a few snags: Smart appliances won’t be widely available until 2014, according to Kevin Nolan, VP for technology at GE Appliances & Lighting. And smart meters? Thanks to the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 40 million American homes will have them by 2015, but that’s not even half of U.S. households. For now, the real work of managing electricity consumption still falls to the consumer. However attractive the idea of cutting back, doing it on a sustained basis, says Nolan, “is like New Year’s, when you decide to go on a diet. Your natural lifestyle creeps back in when the novelty goes away.”

The trick is how to engage with customers today, when energy managers can supply information but can’t really manage anything. Some companies plan to attract people with sleek and sexy devices that offer energy management as a bonus. OpenPeak’s Home Energy Manager, which is expected to cost about $100, has an Apple-like interface with apps for energy advice and management (if you have smart devices), news, and weather, and an app store with free downloads of Facebook as well as apps for sale. “If we can put the actual energy in the background and integrate it into an existing lifestyle, we’ve got a chance of this working,” says David Dollihite, VP of product and technology development at Direct Energy, which, along with Whirlpool, Lennox International, and Best Buy, is doing a pilot project with OpenPeak.

Some players are tacking energy management onto broader services. Home-automation company Control4, for example, is known for linking up home-entertainment and security systems. But its technology also allows smart plugs (around $120 apiece) and thermostats (around $250) to communicate to its platform through a wireless Internet connection or ZigBee network (the industry standard for low-power wireless connectivity). That way, consumers can program networked appliances to run when power is more affordable. “Early adopters–maybe 15% of people–will purchase smart plugs, and that’s an interim step,” says Clint Wheelock, managing director of clean-technology company Pike Research, “but it’s going to take time to get this infrastructure in place.”

Price is an issue, points out Zarko Sumic, an analyst with Gartner Research: “The break-even point for buying a device is far away.” Several software companies are sidestepping that problem by working through utilities that will subsidize the platforms so their customers get them free or at a discount. EcoFactor, one software-as-a-service firm, focuses on heating and cooling, which account for half of all home-energy use. The program monitors user input, collects weather data, and connects with relatively inexpensive Internet-connected thermostats to manage the home’s temperature. EcoFactor has partnered with Texas-based Oncor, which subsidizes the service for customers who sign up.

Microsoft’s free Web-based platform, called Hohm, uses analytics licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and data from utilities–Seattle City Light, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Xcel Energy have signed on–to provide targeted information and advice to users who don’t have smart equipment. “People like to throw technology at the problem, but realistically, will consumers invest thousands in connected devices to save a few hundred on an energy bill? No,” says Troy Batterberry, product unit manager for the Hohm project, which is now in beta testing. (Google’s PowerMeter is also free to consumers, though it requires that users have a smart meter or monitor.)

Programs like Hohm will likely attract middle-of-the-road consumers who want to conserve energy but don’t want to spend money to do it. But to attract the consumer who has never uttered the words “smart grid,” companies may have to depend on the good old American desire to keep up with the Joneses, which studies have repeatedly found to be a huge motivator.

That is Opower’s approach. The company prepares monthly reports comparing a household’s energy use with that of similar surrounding households. Its utility partners send the reports free to customers. It’s low-tech, but it gets results: 80% of targeted recipients reduced energy use; the total energy saving, averaged across all customers, was 3%. “This is truly a paradigm shift of industry,” says Ogi Kavazovic, director of strategy for Opower, who notes the participation rate in utility-run programs is typically less than 5%.

If you want to have the great experience of going to the movies without leaving your house, your best option is installing a home theater system. This typically provides you with premium sound hooked up to a television that has a clear screen so that you can get the most out of movie night. Many people want to do more than just purchase nice speakers for surround sound; they want the speakers installed in the house.

You might assume that the wires would snake everywhere, making the room look messy, but actually there are a few ways to have this type of system installed so that no one ever sees the wires. Consider the best ways to have a clean look in your screening room.

One of the top options when installing a home theater system is running the wires through the attic and walls.

They have to cross the room so that no matter where guests are sitting, they can hear the movie’s sound effects quite well, but that does not require the area to be overrun with exposed wiring. Get a professional to put the wires through hidden areas, which usually includes the walls and attic, so that you and your friends can enjoy movie night without tripping over cords.

Some houses are built such that it would be difficult to place the cords within the walls and through the attic, especially if the walls get particularly small and narrow in some areas.

As an alternative, you can have your home theater professional run the cords under carpeting. It will simply be lifted up while they are placed underneath, and if the speakers are up high on the wall, the cords will be inserted into the baseboards and run inside the area so that they are still not visible. This also provides a very clean look, and depending on how thick your carpet is, no one will notice the wires underneath. Certainly no one will trip over them.

If you want to keep your home looking clean and uncluttered, and also want to keep your friends safe from tripping when they come over to watch movies, consider having your speaker wiring hidden in these ways.

Most homeowners do not have the knowledge to do this task on their own, so hire a home theater expert to make sure everything is hooked up correctly and looking nice. The clean, professional look will be worth it.

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Sony has launched its Bravia line of 3D-capable HDTVs, along with bringing 3D capability to Blu-ray players and home theater audio systems.

Consumer electronics makers have been getting ready to dive headlong into the world of 3D for a while, and Sony has just made it’s first major splash: the company’s 3D-capable Bravia high-definition LCD flatscreen televisions are now available for pre-sale at Sony stores, and the company has announced it’s bringing 3D-capable Blu-ray players and home theater audio systems to stores in July. Plus, folks who bought recent Sony Blu-ray player and home theater systems with the advertised ability to handle 3D in the future will be happy to know the future has arrived: Sony has released a free firmware update to enable 3D capability in those products.

“3D is revolutionizing the entertainment industry and only Sony is involved in every stage of the ecosystem,” said Sony’s television business VP Chris Fawcett, in a statement. “Leveraging deep 3D expertise from the company’s theatrical and professional groups, Sony products are optimized to offer the best possible 3D home entertainment experience.”

The 3D-capable Bravia HDTV lineup consists of three models: the Bravia XBR-LX900, the Bravia XBR-HX909, and the KDL-HZ800 series. Screen sizes range from 40 to 60 inches, with prices at the low end starting at about $2,100 for the 40-inch KDL-40HX800 to about $5,000 for the 60-inch XBR-60LX900.

The XB-LX900 features Sony’s “Monolithic” design, edge LEC backlighting, and integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi for streaming content from the Internet; the unit features an integrated sync transmitter and two pairs of Sony’s active shutter glasses for fooling the eye into thinking it’s perceiving a 3D image. The XBr-HX909 and KDL-HX800 series are “3D-ready:” to tap into 3D content, users will need to purchase a $50 sync transmitter add-on and Sony’s proprietary 3D active shutter glasses…which run about $150 per pair. The HX909’s sport 42-inch and 46-inch sizes; the KDL-HX800s run from 55 inches down to 40 inches.
For getting 3D content into those TVs, Sony is rolling out 3D-capable Blu-ray players: the BDP-S770 model will sport built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Sony’s BDV-HZ970Z home theater system will support 5.1-audio and includes a USB 802.11n wireless Lan adapter for tapping into Sony’s Bravia Internet Video service: it’ll also pack two HDMI inputs with 3D passthrough and an HDMI repeater. Sony’s existing BDP-S470 and BDP-S570 Blu-ray players can be upgraded to 3D via a firmware update, along with the BDV-E570 and BDV-E770W Blu-ray home theater systems.

To smooth all this out, Sony plans to launch a major marketing campaign to promote its 3D technology, and also run dedicated training vents at retailers so sales reps are up to speed on the technology. Look to see NFL quarterback Peyton Manning and Sony Music artist Justin Timberlake working to “eliminate 3D confusion.”

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Sony and Logitech will be the first manufacturers to produce Google TV devices, it was announced yesterday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. And the Dish Network will be the first video provider to feature Google TV.

Sony/Google products will include TVs, Blu-ray players, and a set-top box, while Logitech will sell a set-top box. The Dish Network will offer a Google TV DVR. Broadband connections will be required. Best Buy will sell the products.

The Google TV devices will use powerful Android technology, the Chrome browser, and Intel processors to combine TV programming with web content. Search for a show and you’ll get options to view on cable, satellite, or an online channel such as Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix. Google TV will be Flash capable and thus compatible with a wide variety of web content. You can use an Android mobile phone to communicate with Google TV via wi-fi using touch or voice. Internet TV, as Sony is calling its Google TV products, will launch in the fall.

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