Custom Installation Equipment Reviews

The wholehouse story.

Home automation is just too cool. There’s no doubt about it. Sure, it’s great to turn on your home theater system and go to the correct input or channel with the press of one button. But there are a number of good universal remotes that’ll do that. I want to be able to use that same remote to turn the lights on and off, lock and unlock doors, raise and lower shades, and, well, anything else I can think of. (I’d like it to cook and clean, but I’m afraid domestic robots are still a bit further in the future.) In last month’s issue, I highlighted parts of the latest incarnation of Control4’s expandable home automation system, specifically how the company’s three controllers and new 2.0 software update give you the ability to control your entire home theater, the lights in your house, and even door locks. Control4’s 4Store marketplace will ideally let third-party apps expand the system in ways that Control4 hasn’t thought of—such as managing the energy usage in your home. But there’s plenty more to talk about that we couldn’t fit in that issue. This time, in addition to the seduction of motorized shades, I’ll cover some of the nuts and bolts of putting a Control4 system together, as well as what it takes to program and control it.

I reviewed Control4’s first offering in February of 2006 (oh, those were the days, weren’t they?). The system—based around the company’s $599 Home Theater Controller (HTC)—could easily have been described as a universal remote control with grand aspirations. As the name implies, the HTC was designed to control the components in a home theater (including access to a stored digital music library) with a simple, highly intuitive onscreen graphic user interface. That by itself was pretty sweet. But behind the HTC’s deceptively blank faceplate was hidden a formidable engine capable of powering a sophisticated wholehouse automation and multiroom music system using a combination of Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee communication to control things like lights and thermostats as well as distribute music around the house. All you had to do was pony up the extra bucks for the wireless ZigBee thermostats and light switches (up to 125 of them—but at $100-plus a pop, it was unlikely that you’d ever max out the system). You also needed some Control4 Speaker Points, plus the labor to install and program everything, and you were ready to command and conquer the homeland. I liked—no, I lusted after—that original system and was extremely reluctant to box it up and send it back. It couldn’t necessarily do all the amazingly complex things that a Crestron or AMX system could do at the time, but it was a fraction of the price.

Combine a 3D Blu-ray player with a 12TB hard drive and you have the Mozaex Solo 2. With USA retail pricing less than $6,000 for up to 12TBs of media storage, the Solo 2 is more affordable than many other media server systems, providing a highly scalable solution. Up to four additional Blu-ray Players may be added for $2,495 apiece.

Ever wish you could afford a Kaleidescape system? Well, now it's more affordable than ever before to bring their intuitive and comprehensive products into you living room with the introduction of Cinema One, a stand-alone DVD Movie Server, which is their first offering to a broader audience and features kid-friendly operation.

I'm the owner of a small cabinet shop and decided to built this attractive and highly functional entertainment center in my home. All the woodworking throughout the room is mine (except for the chairs). It's all made from Alder that is finished in honey stain with a sable glaze. While it may look like wall paper, the wall treatment is a faux finish.

Yesterday, Apple announced the next generation Apple TV, a product line that has been unchanged and virtually ignored by the company for several years. With this newest product introduction, our imagination is re-ignited with possibilities. Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, has been eluding to the magic "cloud" as the future of content distribution and management for some time and the new Apple TV delivers on that vision.