Curve Your Enthusiasm

The TV manufacturers (Samsung I'm glaring at you) seem determined to push Curved Tv's as the new standard of high-end televisions.

Their arguments are that compared to flat Tv's curved Tv's offer;

Improved Immersion
Greater Sense of Depth
Wider FIeld of View
Uniform field of view
Better Contrast

Now some of these may well be true, but in reality only if you are siting in the sweet spot, directly in the centre and at the exact right viewing distance.  It's incredibly rare for anyone to be in that sweet spot, let alone a couple or a family watching a movie. Also these are all minimal differences, it's not a new viewing experience in any way.

What they will not tell you is that Curved screens also brings issues when compared to normal Flat Screen Tv's.

For example curved screens tend to;

Exaggerate Reflections
Be tricky to place
limits viewing angles
Be Difficult to Wall Mount

In my opinion (and I've been wrong before) I think its a current fad, unlike 4K or OLED which bring real hard tangible results and are technology driven, That's where my money would be going, the biggest, flattest, OLED, 4k Tv you can afford.

Razer buys THX

Razer, made famous for gaming peripherals like mice, keyboards and gaming accessories has bought sound system supremos THX.  

THX will continue to operate as it's own entity with current management in place.

THX is an American company headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 1983 by George Lucas. It develops the "THX" high fidelity audio/visual reproduction standards for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, car audio systems, and video games.

Tomlinson Holman

Spun off from Lucasfilm in 2002, THX was developed by Tomlinson Holman at George Lucas's company, Lucasfilm, in 1983 to ensure that the soundtrack for the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, would be accurately reproduced in the best venues. THX was named after Holman, with the "X" standing for "crossover" or possibly "experiment" as well as in homage to Lucas's first film, THX 1138. The distinctive glissando up from a rumbling low pitch used in the THX trailers, created by Holman's coworker James A. Moorer, is known as the "Deep Note".

THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer. THX also provides certified theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard. Certification of an auditorium entails specific acoustic and other technical requirements; architectural requirements include a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, non-parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise ("ensures noise from air conditioning units and projection equipment does not mask the subtle effects in a movie's soundtrack."

"For over 30 years, THX has maintained a proud legacy of being one of the leaders in audio technology and certification worldwide," said Laurie Fincham, senior vice president of Audio Research and Development at THX. "With their focus on quality, design and innovation, Razer supports our vision to optimize and deliver the best audio-visual experiences to audiences worldwide."

Razer Co-Founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan said, "Razer has a vision for innovation at every level of entertainment, a vision which THX has championed since its inception more than 30 years ago. This acquisition will allow us to reinforce Razer’s leadership in gaming and extend the brand into broader areas of entertainment, while at the same time empowering THX to develop into a global powerhouse, independently."

"Our focus has always been on ensuring that anyone can experience high quality entertainment, regardless of their medium of choice. With Razer, we can now continue to strengthen our core lines of business while delivering excellence for our customers’ ever-changing needs," said Ty Ahmad-Taylor, CEO of THX. "As a standalone company, THX will work with Razer but will primarily continue to service our partners in the industry in order to deliver great products to consumers."

Sonos has a new CEO

Wireless audio company Sonos have promoted a new CEO from within the company to take over from founder John MacFarlane.

The billion dollar a year company is expecting further growth after growing sales 20% in 2016. Sonos is now 15 years old as a company and its wireless music systems are among the most well known, especially within the multi room audio market.

Former Blackberry manager Patrick Spence will take over as chief executive.

Former CEO (and founder) John MacFarlane

New CEO Patrick Spence

The change comes as Sonos readies itself to work alongside the growing number of voice assistants and connected SMart Home technologies such as Amazon's Alexa and Google's Home. 

2017 should see the Sonos music system be able to play music simply by calling out requests for an artist, album or track.

Roth Oli Range of Speakers

We recently unboxed the entire range of Oli RA speakers that we distribute here in Thailand. These are some seriously good looking speakers, The finish is beautiful and the modern look will fit in with most decor.

We also gave the entire range a listen to, I own a couple of pairs already so I knew what to expect, They sound great will go into that side of things in further details later in another post.

What does 2017 hold for the Smart Home

Voice control apparently, specifically Amazons Alexa technology. It's been taking the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in the USA by storm.

PocketLint reports

Some are saying that CES 2017 is all about AI - artificial intelligence - but it isn't. It's very specifically about Amazon Alexa.

We saw an emerging trend through 2016, expanding the smart personal assistant, going far beyond the sort of thing that Google Now and Apple Siri had been offering through various phones. 

CES 2017 has seen the launch of an unprecedented number of devices that aren't "compatible" with Amazon's Alexa, they're powered by it. There's an important point of distinction to be made here: your thermostat and lights are compatible with Alexa, not powered by it.

The deluge of devices powered by Alexa at CES 2017 confirm one thing: Amazon Alexa isn't a step ahead of its rivals in the battle for smart connectivity, it's a full country mile in the lead. 

You might say that that simply comes down to timing. Amazon launched the Echo in the US in 2015, taking the UK by storm in late 2016. The Amazon Echo is a device that sells itself: anyone who plays with it can't help but be drawn to the range of things that it does so simply, and the more technical love the wide support for third-party devices and services. The Echo is a true home hub.

There are two important things happening here: firstly, in June 2015, Amazon announced the Alexa Voice Service, making the brains available to developers; secondly, Alexa is established, meaning everyone wants to play nice. 

With more and more third-parties moving to work with Alexa, Amazon is in a position of critical mass: it's the product you need to work with, it's the natural interface within the emerging smart home, just as Philips Hue is for smart lighting. 

That's all come to fruition at CES 2017 with an overwhelming number of companies launching devices that take advantage of Alexa Voice Service. It's found its way into cars, with Ford confirming it's coming to its Sync service, it's in fridges, with LG adding the smart technology to appliances. Alexa appears in Huawei's Mate 9, it's the interface for home robots and is even appearing in TVs. 

Then there's more regular rivals to the original Amazon Echo that started this Alexa trend in the form of the Lenovo Smart Assistant.

If there's a theme that's pulling CES together, it's that Amazon has stolen a march on its rivals and that Alexa is going to be everywhere in 2017.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/139910-the-machines-are-coming-ces-2017-is-all-about-amazon-alexa

Unboxing the ROTH Oli RA1 (White)

Towards the end of last year we received our first shipment of ROTH Speakers, In this video I unbox a pair of the ROTH Oli RA1's for the first time.

These speakers are fantastic sounding, What HIFI awarded them 5 stars and they really punch above their weight, some of my favourite small speakers ever.  That's why we became the Thai distributor.

These Retail for 6,000 baht per pair, an absolute bargain. Fantastic speakers.

Before Your Cinema - The 4 Important Questions To Ask Yourself

I was thinking about the Home Cinema that I will be building at my home this year and I caught myself asking 4 main questions. I thought I'd draw them up whilst fresh in my mind.  The 1st question is the main question of any home cinema. All the questions are in order of importance.

Acoustic Foam

The acoustics of your room probably have more to do with sound quality of your system than any other component, that's right - those expensive speakers can sound crap in a room with poor acoustics. Inversely mid-level equipment can be made to sing with a properly treated room.

Acoustic foams are generally found as pyramid or wedge shapes. They work not only to absorb sounds, by enhancing the quality of sound and speech in a room. They are able to help tame both mid and high frequencies at the same time to minimize sound echoes and reflections which would colour or muddy the sound.

By reducing the amplitude of the waves, our acoustic foam helps to dissipate the sound energy. This in turn helps the clarity of sound. Bass Traps help to trap the Bass energy to stop booming in the room.

Typically we would use acoustic panels in home cinemas or dedicated stereo listening areas.

Post Install Cinema Setup

As part of any home cinema that we design and install we will run through a full setup so that the image is the very best capable for all of the equipment.

It's amazing the amount of very high end equipment we see that has been incorrectly installed, badly aligned or using the wrong cable or setup.  It's pretty easy to make a $10,000 projector act like a $1,000 one if it's configured incorrectly.

Just before Xmas I was running through an optimisation for a recent client - Normally I use AVIA for configuration but this time I had the old Joe Kane DVE (Digital Video Essentials) in PAL DVD format, I used this as the owners at this time will be mainly watching their DVD collection (I know, I know).

Joe Kane

Digital Video Essentials (PAL DVD)

Joe Kane is a bit of a big deal in the video image display measurement industry - so you won't have heard of him, suffice to say his measurement, testing and configuration discs are among the best references available.

I spent around 2-3 hours at the clients house on the video configuration and around the same time on the audio, microphone setups have made things much easier in that regard nowadays, not perfect but pretty good.

34 Seat Retro cinema built in back Garden (UK)

Andy Jones day job is as a Bus driver, his real passion though is home cinema and he's dreamed of building one in his back garden since he was a kid.

In 2010 he moved into a new house with 1/4 acre back yard, he applied for planning permission, which was granted and then spent 5 years building his dream cinema. A tribute to beloved ABC movie houses of the past.

Andy built the cinema himself (he used to be a plasterer and kitchen fitter) from reclaimed cinemas.  It's been his dream since he was 6 years old and he spent his entire life savings of £70,000 making it happen. 

Andy's been collecting movie memorabilia for a long time and this is the culmination of his childhood dream "I’ve been a cinema fan since as long as I can remember and since I was at school I’ve always wanted to build a cinema”

ABC Cinemas were founded in 1927. At one point there were more than 400 of them throughout Britain. Larger multiplexes arriving in the early 1980's ushered their way out of existence.

reBoot PC's going in this week

As part of our reBoot initiative that puts refurbished 2nd hand computers into the hands of youngsters who wouldn't otherwise have access to computers, we have this week been installing into the BanYa literacy centre.

We are looking at completing 6-7 computers, we've bought brand new monitors, keyboard, mouse and Os and they have new Windows 10 installs and a laser printer  it should be a good computer room..  We are always looking for donations of old computer parts, cables and monitors etc...  to provide other youngsters with access to computers and keep our installed PC's maintained.

BanYa accomodates some 100 children who are between the ages of 4 and 14 whose parents live in construction camps, this is their only chance at an education - The children are taught English, Math, Social Studies, Dance, History, Science and Burmese Reading and Writing and soon computers.

Our plan is to continue ongoing support of the school with maintenance and hopefully some lessons and fun activities.

to learn about other ways you can help please visit the good shepherds page at http://goodshepherdphuket.com/projects/banya/

Layan Hills Estate added to our Case Studies

We really enjoyed working at Layan Hills Estate for all of the different homeowners. We installed Sonos wireless multi room audio with Nuvo in-wall, in-ceiling and outdoor speakers at many of the homes, KNX lighting control and home cinemas.

The estate itself is very beautiful, a lot of the owners actually live here in Phuket - they aren't generally holiday homes so a lot of what we installed was individual to owners tastes, which is great - we are not a fan of cookie cutter systems as everyone has different tastes and needs.  Some listen to music mainly outdoors, around the pool (or even in the pool with the underwater speakers we installed at some of the houses).  Whilst others like to relax around the dining table with some tasteful music in the background.

All in all we have completed projects at maybe 9 or 10 of the villas here, there are still some for sale - we really like the overall design and the developer has done a great job keeping the estate looking very nice.

Details can be found at ; http://layanhillsestate.com/