The Connected Life

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The Connected Life
Apple Watch Aims to Reinvent Home Automation
John Sciacca  |  May 27, 2015  | 
Telling time appears to an ancillary function of the Apple Watch but you'll be able to control your home.
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The Connected Life
The Internet of Things Is Upon Us
John Sciacca  |  Apr 22, 2015  | 
While video manufacturers were busy demonstrating their takes on the technologies best suited for UHDTV, espousing the relative merits of High Dynamic Range and wider color gamuts, and discussing the all-important question of 4K content delivery methods at the International Consumer Electronics Show back in January, everyone else seemed concerned with making sure practically every device imaginable will be connected to the Internet in some form or fashion.
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The Connected Life
Time to Buy Star Wars…Again?
John Sciacca  |  Apr 08, 2015  | 
You’ve likely heard that Star Wars will be re-released in a digital movie collection on Friday (April 10th), finally allowing people to legally own and enjoy all six of the films (or at least enjoy four of them, tolerate Episode II and just agree to disagree on most of the filmmaking decisions from Episode I ) on a host of devices wherever they are.

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The Connected Life
Gone in 60 Seconds: Protect Your Data!
John Sciacca  |  Mar 23, 2015  | 
A few years ago, I attended a product demonstration at CES by a company famous for touting how durable its hard drives were. In fact, the company—ioSafe—calls its products “disaster proof hardware” and used CES to deliver extreme, over-the-top demonstrations to prove just what kind of damage their drives could withstand and still protect all of the data stored within.
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The Connected Life
Haven: A Smarter AND Safer Door Lock
John Sciacca  |  Feb 13, 2015  | 
Smart door locks have become a new automation frontier lately, and for good reason. With a smart lock you can remotely let someone into your home, monitor who is coming and going with the use of different digital key codes, don’t need a physical key to enter, and can make sure the door relocks automatically or at night before you go to bed. I’ve got three of them in my home and they have definitely been a lifestyle improvement.

However all of these smart door locks have one major weakness in common...

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The Connected Life
Long Live the (AVR) King!
John Sciacca  |  Jan 20, 2015  | 
A customer called my installation company recently looking to upgrade his system. We did the original in stall at his vacation home back in 2001, and he wanted to replace the aging DLP with a new flat panel, upgrade to a Netflix-streaming Blu-ray player, and get a new universal remote. When I looked through his file, I saw his AV receiver was approaching 13 years old, so I recommended he replace that as well to take advantage of a generation’s worth of technology improvements.
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The Connected Life
Living the Automagic Lifestyle
John Sciacca  |  Dec 17, 2014  | 
Automation describes using control systems to operate equipment or other applications with little or no human interaction. At its simplest, home automation could be a garage door opener or a mercury-filled thermostat kicking on your HVAC system; and at its most complex, there’s virtually nothing an automation system can’t do.

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The Connected Life
Can You Hear Me Now?
John Sciacca  |  Nov 12, 2014  | 
A fairly common complaint I hear in my custom showroom is the inability to hear dialog while watching TV or movies. The scenario plays out almost identically every single time. A couple will come in, usually older, and the husband will stand there sheepishly while his wife explains that her husband’s hearing has deteriorated and now it’s to the point where he can’t hear the TV unless he blasts the volume which is then too loud for her to tolerate. The husband will then usually chime in that his hearing is fine, and that he just has a hard time with the dialog. But do we have anything that would help so they could both enjoy TV together?

So, first off, guys! I’m not sure what it is that we’re doing in our younger years, but, dammit! It is causing us all to go slowly deaf as we get older! We need to pull it together!

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The Connected Life
Easy Does It: Home Automation For All
John Sciacca  |  Nov 05, 2014  | 
The biggest annual event on a custom installer’s calendar is the CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association) Expo, which took place September in Denver. This year’s Expo was brimming with new technology, namely the overwhelming rollout of Dolby Atmos, a new surround format that I discussed in my previous column, along with several other exciting introductions like a new laser-powered projector from Epson and several very cool new wireless music system such as Denon’s HEOS and DTS’s Play-Fi.
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The Connected Life
Getting Surrounded
John Sciacca  |  Oct 22, 2014  | 
Manufacturers have been so busy focusing on video upgrades with 3D, 4K, local dimming, and OLED, they’ve pretty much forgotten that audio makes up at least 50 percent of the experience. The end result is that we haven’t really seen any significant surround sound advancements since 2000 following the release of Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace, which brought Surround EX and rear channels.
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The Connected Life
Smart Power: Why Not Give Your Surge Protection a Brain?
John Sciacca  |  Aug 27, 2014  | 
Your home is likely filled with all manner of smart devices, but your most precious electronics—your rack of AV gear and video display—are likely all connected to one of the dumbest devices in your house: your surge protector.

When most people go shopping for a surge protector they focus on figures like clamping rate, response time, single pulse energy dissipation, voltage protection rating, number of outlets, and the warranty. And these are all important things – especially if that sad, sad day ever comes when your house is visited by The Big One; that dreaded bolt of lightning that picks out your home like the angry finger of God. But there are some real advantages that come from giving your surge protector an Ethernet connection and a big o'le steroid shot full of IQ points.

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The Connected Life
Tech for Life
John Sciacca  |  Aug 20, 2014  | 
When you think about technology, you probably imagine the sexy-cool stuff like multichannel home theater systems, über-thin flat-panel displays, or high-res audio from your favorite artist streamed to any room of your home. And, yes, these are definitely the fun parts of tech that make this such a great hobby for us all.

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The Connected Life
How to Avoid AV Information Overload
John Sciacca  |  Jul 29, 2014  | 
One of the most disappointing things I face is spending time going over different options for someone’s new home’s entertainment and automation system and having them leave my showroom saying, “Wow! Now I’m even more confused than when I started!” (More disappointing is the, “Oh, I wish I’d come to you to do my system!” regret that comes when they can’t get the other guy/company to come back to finish or service the system.)
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The Connected Life
If This, Then That: Automation and Security
John Sciacca  |  Jul 16, 2014  | 
When you think about a home security system, you probably think about protection and sirens that go off and keypads that go BEEP-BEEP when someone opens a door. And while that is a huge part of a security system’s mission statement, a security system is also a huge source of information that an automation system can mine to execute events around the home!

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The Connected Life
Stick it to the Man and Surf the Web Better!
John Sciacca  |  Jun 18, 2014  | 
Because you are currently reading this, I’m going to make three assumptions…

1) You have fine taste in A/V writers.
2) You are currently alive.
3) You have a barely concealed disdain for your Internet Service Provider and would like to pay them as little as possible while retaining the maximum surfing speeds.

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, American ISPs now have the lowest customer satisfaction ranking of any industry in the country. And bottoming out that grim list of corporate scum and villainy is Comcast and Time Warner, the two most hated companies in the US. So, congrats, guys! One of the reasons why we seem to hate our ISP so vehemently is the growing cost of service coupled with horrific customer service and reliability and speed issues. Read on if you want to do something about it…

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