The Celebration

Dear readers,

Today our company celebrated our 5 year anniversary. Our team thought it would be great to share this with my Blog readers. The following is a letter that I read to our NetStreams team, at our celebration today.

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To the NetStreams Team,

Today we celebrate two significant milestones – the anniversary of the Company, and the anniversary of our Startup Team. It is not often in life when we can stand back to look at an accomplishment and say, “If I had to do it all over again, I would do it again with the same team”. As I think about the things that I would change if I had to do it all over again, to achieve a better outcome for this Company, the one thing that I would do exactly the same, is to hire the same startup team. The accomplishment want to highlight for a moment is – the building of the foundation that allowed our beloved Company – NetStreams, to reach its five year milestone; one that most startups never get to see.

The Startup Team (2002)

Mike Braithwaite
Paul Bryson
Kirk Prisock
Buzz Goddard
Tim Burks
Bill Levene
Peter Radekevich
Dan McGauley

As I stand back today looking at five years of this Company’s history, the many trials and tribulations, challenges and achievements; the stressful times, the sad times, and the happy times, which of course outweigh the bad times, it is easy to see now what has shaped this Company’s culture. So what allowed us to get to where we are today? – It was our passion and love for what we do, our unshakable faith – knowing that we were the team to do it, our tenacity and courage – which never allowed us to throw in the towel when times got tough, and our commitment to change an industry by changing the rules with compelling products and technology that solve real problems and bring joy to people’s lives.

What is music to me? It was one of the first things that brought joy to my life and wooed me to fall asleep as a baby. It is the element that stirs my memories and has left markers at some critical, and some not so critical junctures in my life. It is fuel to my inspiration and joy to my soul. It moves me and it makes me move. But as life gets busy and time speeds up, we often forget much of the music and the impact it had on us.

So, ‘who’ is NetStreams to me? It is the Company that developed the products that made me ‘fall in love with my music all over again’. Soon, NetStreams will do the same for our movies and videos. ‘What’ is NetStreams? It is a team of spectacular people with a diverse set of skills, every one of which is needed in order to accomplish this most important mission – helping people re-discover their First love – Music.

Thank you all for being part of our NetStreams team.

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Over the last 5 years, NetStreams has experienced an overwhelming amount of growth and has seen a lot of changes, both inside and outside of the company. We now ship into 45 countries around the world, and continue to lead the industry in IP-Based audio, video distribution products and control. It takes great people to build a great company, we have that here.

I’d like to thank our customers out there for being a part of our success. If you are one of them, and would like to share some thoughts, feel free to drop me a note.

Herman Cardenas


If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, or if you have any comments or questions, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com

Falling in Love with your Music All Over Again

My family and I have recently realized that our multi-room system has made us fall in love with our music and movies all over again. CDs that I haven’t heard in 5-10 years, because they were in a box somewhere in the garage, now appear on my list of hundred of CDs and I am rediscovering them all over again. You name the genre, and we probably have it.

The same is happening with our movies. One point of caution though… once you go High Definition (my preference is Blu-ray… more on this in another post), you’ll never want to watch anything else. Well….never is probably too strong of a word. But I will say this, “When we watch DVDs that are in SD (Standard Definition) now, the different between them and HD is obvious to us; even our 10 year old daughter recently said “Daddy, that’s not Blu-ray® right?”, the last time we watched an standard definition DVD movie, and she was right. But…I’ll talk about video and our video distribution in my next post.

The audio distribution in our IP home was accomplished though a NetStreams®’ IP-Based DigiLinX™ system which offers an amazing and very satisfying performance. Instead of brute forcing analog audio signals through long runs of big cables around our home, which causes the audio to degrade over distance, picking up noise and distortion along the way, DigiLinX uses our home’s network to distribute a virtually unlimited number of digital IP streams from our audio sources, to any room(s) or groups of rooms, of choice. The quality of the audio is very impressive and it is largely due to the fact that NetStreams’ StreamNet™ technology reproduced the audio, bit-for-bit, exactly how it comes out of the source component; so the better the source and source content, the better the audio will sound. I should mention that the side other of great audio is having great speakers. In my case, I am using Polk Audio speakers.

Sources:
I used to think that our XM Radio source, which receives compressed audio, sounded pretty good, and even better than our MP-3 music files, but now that we have compared it to the music content that we have stored in WAV (uncompressed audio format), on our NAS (Networked Attached Storage), the difference is amazing. Our WAV files sound great and equal to the quality of music that comes out of our high-end CD player, directly. The reason this is that WAV is the format that music is natively stored in, on all CDs. We still listen to our XM Radio stations, for songs and artists that we don’t have music for in our NAS, but our best sounding source is now our NAS, which delivers WAV audio streams.

To organize all of the MP-3 and WAV music found in our PCs and network attached storage, we installed another NetStreams product called “Streaming Music Manager”, which simply plugs into the home network. This product then locates all of our music stored on PCs, MACs, networked attached storage, and other computing devices around our home, and aggregates the music into one list of Songs, Artists, Album, Genre, and Playlists, for easy playback. Now we don’t have to remember where the music is stored. It doesn’t matter. We can also choose any of the individual computing device where some of our music is stored, for playback.

Another cool source that we have is our iPod®. To select, control and listen to the music stored in our iPods, we use an in-wall docking station called iPort, made by a company called iPort™ – a Sonance® company. Our friends like to bring their iPods over, dock them in our iPort, and play their music around the house. People find this way cool!

For local only radio stations and sporting events, we also have a Parasound® FM tuner, whose audio is also distributed and controlled from any room in our house.

And finally, we also distribute the audio from our (3) satellite boxes, located in our equipment rack in the theater.

How our NetStreams DigiLinX system works:
There are two methods to accomplish multi-room audio distribution. The first and more traditional method is to distribute the audio from centrally located amplifiers. The downside to this method is that the audio is pushed up to its destination through copper cables that allow the audio to pick up noise and distortion along the way, and also losing a significant amount of the power produced by the amplifier(s). This results in a lower performance. The other method is distributed amplification. In a distributed amplification system, the amplifiers are placed in each audio zone or at the speaker. The closer the amplifiers are to the speaker, the less power will be lost and the less audio noise and distortion will be developed. This is the method that that NetStreams DigiLinX system uses.

In our home we have about 20 distributed audio zones; each capable of playing music from any of the audio sources that we have configured to play in that room. The wiring from each zone where we have installed a SpeakerLinX IP-Based amplifier, to the ’head-end’ (the place/rack where our equipment is centrally located), is CAT 5e + 14-4 (4-conductors of #14 gauge), which is the industry standard for distributed audio – CEA 2030.

In my home I used two types of SpeakerLinX IP-Based amplifiers, available from NetStreams. The SL220 is a 20 watt per channel amplifier and I used these in our smaller audio zones. In the larger audio zones I used the SL250 amplifiers, which are 50 watts per channel.

Each SpeakerLinX amplifier, typically installed in a closet or behind furniture in the audio zones, fits in a backless 2-gang electrical box (installed at electrical outlet height) and is covered with a ribbed plastic plate (available in various colors). Like all amplifiers, they do get a little warm, but are designed and UL approved for installation in walls, but can also be mounted on walls with an optional mounting plate. The small footprint makes it an easy and convenient installation. The CAT 5e cable digitally deliverers the IP streams to the amplifiers and the 4-conductor cable is used to power the amplifiers from a central power supply located at the rack. Where a central power supply is not possible, local power supplies can be used instead. In addition to the latter connections, the audio zone’s speakers are also connected to the SpeakerLinX IP amplifier and after software configuration, the zone is ready to play audio.

I saved the best for last. NetStreams is very proud to be the pioneer of IP speaker technology and to have partnered up with Polk Audio to produce the world’s first IP speakers. Of course you know that as a ‘Toywizard’, I had to have a few pairs of these IP speakers. I had one pair installed in our living room, one pair in my home office, a pair in the Master Suite, and (6) pair in my home theater. All I am say about the audio that comes out of these speakers is “awesome”! You have to experience these for yourself; simply incredible.

Aside from the incredible audio performance that NetStreams technology and products offers, the thing that my family and I enjoy the most is the simplicity of the DigiLinX’s intuitive interface, and the rich experience that that it delivers. As I complete this Blog post, I am sitting in my backyard, listening to some great music, and I am selecting and controlling that music from my laptop.


Cheers!

Herman Cardenas


If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, or if you have any comments or questions, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com

Audio / Video Around the World

Hello Readers – Once again I find myself having to apologize for not keeping up with my Blog. Over the last three months, I have been jet-setting around the US and internationally and have managed to travel to many wonderful cities on business, including: Mexico City, London, Dubai, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Myrtle Beach. At least I found a slot in all that travel to take a cruise with my family on a Caribbean vacation. However, I did get a hard time from the family for taking pictures of the digital signage displays at the port of entry and ship; just could not resist.

The wonderful thing in common that I find, as I travel around the US and internationally, is the love for music and movies. And everyone loves those flat screens. The adoption of high definition movies, however, is a bit further behind the US, but I was told at the CEDIA UK that over the last few months, the buzz about high definition movies has increased substantially. They expect the sales of high definition players and movies to take off now.

Dubai was a wonderful place to visit. I even got to see a ski resort inside of a mall, with people skiing and snow boarding – unbelievable! I have never seen as many modern buildings and new construction in one place as I witnessed there. Over 1,500 new towers, residential and commercial, are either in construction or about to start construction in Dubai, and more behind those every month. And guess what? All planned with digital signage and multi-room audio and video.

Another thing about what I am seeing across the globe is that, where a few years ago custom electronic installers everywhere were saying “IP what?”, now everything is about IP products. The tradeshows also are making it all about the convergence of IP and audio video, or networked entertainment.

There are so many exciting technologies and products in development now, by so many companies, including NetStreams. This coming month we release our IP Video products, and the response at the shows so far has been overwhelming. The future looks exciting and fun, and I am just glad to be a part of it.

I will be busy this week working on the continuation of my IP Home Blog posts.

Cheers!


If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, or if you have any comments or questions, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com

Planning and Designing your IP Home

What is an IP Home anyway? An IP Home is a home whose systems and products (entertainment, lighting, cameras, thermostats, etc…) are integrated to work seamlessly over a home network. These systems/products use the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) as their glue. IP Homes typically contain a combination of both wired and wireless products. This all sounds very complicated, and it is, but if installed and configured correctly, for the end-user, this actually translates into simplicity and a lot of convenience – a richer experience.

Ground-zero for most electronic products are the custom electronics industry tradeshows like CEDIA, EHX, and CES, where Integrators/Installers go to learn and see the latest and greatest products and systems. Over the last 5 years, the reaction in our industry tradeshows has gone from – “IP what”? to “This is the future of digital entertainment and control in homes – and I have to have it”. IP is now the new buzz at these shows.

With so many electronic lifestyle products, including entertainment PCs and MACs now available for homes, how does one go about selecting and designing an IP Home? The key to this is research and/or finding a good ‘Integration company’ that understands and installs IP-Based systems. Investing in products that are not IP-Based today is like buying an extremely ripe fruit. It is no longer a question as to whether homes will have networks, or whether TVs will have Ethernet connections in the future. Many consumer products selling today have, or will soon have, Ethernet connections. And in the future, they all will. After making a significant investment in ‘electronic/computing products’, don’t you want these to interoperate seamlessly in your home? Unfortunately, without a professional’s help, even products that are IP-Based, don’t do this automatically.

So… how do we plan for and design an IP Home? The first thing that you need to establish is you budget and your priorities for the products that you want in your home. I tie these two together because I have concluded that no matter how much money you have, unless you have several million dollars to assign to your electronic systems (and some people do), you will probably have to make choices on what you want to spend your money on. These will be different family to family. For my family, because we enjoy music so much, it was multi-room audio. Although we enjoy watching movies a lot too, we knew that the multi-room audio system would get used the most. But let me tell you…. It was hard, because we wanted to do everything possible. Our budget kept climbing every week, until we finally got to the pain threshold. We then had to defer some things and reduce our budget in some categories in order to get what we wanted in our priority categories.

The good news about designing an IP Home is that if you plan ahead and you wire it properly, as per my earlier blog post, you don’t have to do it all at once. You can scale your electronic lifestyle, one system or product at a time.

The most common areas to consider as you plan are:
Multi-room Audio
- Standard Analog audio distribution – for background music (Good)
- High fidelity audio distribution (Better)
- IP-based audio distribution (Best)

Multi-room Video
- Traditional coax RF distribution (Good)
- Balanced-line video distribution (Better)
- IP-based video distribution (Best)

Home Theater(s)
- Combo rooms with a home theater system (Good)
- Controlled-light multi-purpose room (Better)
- Dedicated Home Theater room (Best)

Intercom
- Stand-alone Intercom System (Good)
- Integrated Phone/Intercom System (Better)
- Intercom System that uses your multi-room audio speakers (Best)

Lighting Control
- Power line or RF Lighting control system (Good) – For retrofit (Best)
- Wired lighting control system (Better)
- IP-controlled and wired lighting control system (Best)

Security System (including cameras)
- Wired or Wireless Security System (Good)
- Wired or Wireless Security System with Fire Protection (Better)
- IP-based Wired or Wireless Security System with Fire Protection (Best)

Automated shades and curtains
- Since there are no IP-Based shades available yet, you will have to control these through your lighting system or contact-relay controller

Climate Control (HVAC)
- This one is a touchy one. Although I love the idea of integrating everything in your home, if you are building a new home and you invest in a multi-zone HVAC system with high efficiencies, you should never have to control your thermostat remotely; unless you go on vacations a lot and want the ability to take your home out of temperature setback remotely. In our home, after the first 30 days of tweaking the temperatures and times, we haven’t found the need to touch the thermostats. However, if you have the need to remotely control your thermostat(s), and IP-Based thermostat like AprilAire is a great option.

Other (Pool controls, irrigation controls, fireplaces, fans, etc…)
- RS-232 controlled input/output (I/O) control products are good, but an IP-Based I/O control product is your best option. The products connected to these I/O products can be combined with each other or other products, via programming to accomplish some very convenient things like one button control of your theater (turn on your theater equipment, open curtains, mask the screen, dim the lights, select the right audio mode, turn on the projector or display, and start the movie).

Control System
- This will be your toughest or easiest decision, depending on whether you are being given a sales pitch without good data, or one with good data. Most people, given good data, will make the right decision for them. Of course, no matter which direction you want to take, always look for a system that is IP-Based, as it will offer you the most options, longer life, and most scalability and expandability.

Each of these product categories offers a lot of choices from many manufacturers in the Custom Electronics market. Sorting through all of these choices is not something that I recommend you take on alone. By working closely with a reputable and knowledgeable Integrator, you should be able to avoid the many products/systems in the market that are not ready for prime time and don’t work well, or don’t offer the performance that you desire, or won’t scalable or grow with you, or won’t meet your needs and expectations.

Now that IP is in vogue, some manufacturers are putting Ethernet connectors on their products, and then adjusting their brochures to claim that they are IP-Based, when in fact they are not. At best, some of these products give you simple control over some functions of their product, but that is a far cry from being designed using IP technology and web services from the ground, up. Your Integrator will know how to navigate these dangerous waters.

If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, or if you have any comments or questions, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com


Herman Cardenas

Thank you, Readers!

I wanted to take out a moment to express my appreciation to all of the readers of my blog and thank you for your comments. Please keep them coming. Your comments are encouraging and give me guidance as to what my blog readers are interested in me writing about. The number of people interested in IP Homes is growing significantly, and NetStreams is feeling the ground-swell and benefiting greatly from being in the leading position of this emerging and very exciting and market.

I recently had the opportunity to meet a couple of my blog readers at the recent Electronic House Expo in Orlando. Bob – it was a pleasure meeting you and your wife and I am glad that your Integrator advised you to go to this show. Thank you for allowing me to show you what we do. : ) I hope you enjoyed yourself.

As always, feel free to email me at hermansblog@netstreams.com

The Year of IPTV and 1080P Televisions

Now that you know all about wiring for an IP home, let me tell about what I believe is one of the most exciting benefits of an IP home – IPTV, which will change our television experience forever.

2007 looks to be a very promising year for many new technologies, but two of these promise to change our lives forever. This is the year that IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) will begin to go mainstream. In 2005 many of the large TV manufacturers stuck their IPTV flag in the ground by announcing that they were planning on releasing their first IPTVs in 2007. In 2006 many of the other TV manufacturers announced their plans to introduce IPTVs in the near future as well. So this is the year that we get to see these arrive at a store near you.

What is IPTV? It is television programming distributed to us over the Internet. Yes…a broadband connection will be required. Stations will be offered across the Internet as stand alone stations, and some service providers may offer a ‘build your own bundle’. What does this mean for us? More choices. More service providers will offer us ‘on demand channels’, which allow us to select from a list of pre-scheduled programs. This means that we can watch these programs whenever we want and stop, rewind, or fast forward them, just like we do with our recorded programs on our PVR/DVRs (Digital Video Recorders or Personal Video Recorders). Many of the IPTV channels will allow you to watch programs that they have streamed that week, anytime after the original broadcast, just like the major networks are doing on the Internet with their prime shows.

IPTV also offers the small guys a chance to put their programs on the web, much like Internet Radio allows anyone with a computer and a microphone to broadcast on the web. And don’t forget that you will also be able to select short videos posted on sites like U-Tube and watch them as you wish, on your TV. Not only will you be able to view them, but you will be able to post your own videos on these types of sites for anyone in the world to see, or just those that you give permission to. Everyone now has a chance for fame.

New types of programming will become available and the TV will become more interactive. So that if you see a commercial and you want more information, with the click of a button, you will be able to request that information. If you are watching a cooking program and want the recipe, a click of a button and it’s on your printer. But if you are looking for a different or related recipe, you can do that too, while you watch your favorite cook on TV.

With technologies like NetStreams' IP Video, in the future you will be able to select 4 sport events and watch them simultaneously by splitting your display into four parts. But if the baby is asleep, you will be able to assign one of those quadrants to the IP camera in the baby’s room.

1080p High Definition – Of course, IPTV would not be complete without a better High Definition display. 2007 also promises to be the year where most TV manufacturers introduce their 1080p HD displays. Most High Definition TVs sold today are 1080i. The ‘i’ stands for interlaced, which means that in reality, you are only getting 540 lines of video, alternated faster than your eye can see, so that it gives you the illusion of 1,080 lines. 1080p is actually 1,080 lines of video, which gives you twice the resolution and a much better, crisper picture. All you need to know is that the higher the number, the better. And a ‘p’ is much better than an ‘i’.

Together, 1080p High Definition and IPTV will redefine how we enjoy and interact with our televisions and our homes. Maybe its time to replace the name ‘television’ with a new, cooler name like ‘ViewPort’ or ‘IPvision’.

Of course my house is wired and ready for IPTV and 1080p television. J For more information on how you can do the same, see my previous post. In fact, I am already enjoying my Marantz 1080p projector. All I can say is… WOW!!! Oh… and you can bet that NetStreams is working on IP Video products that will support up to 1080p video distribution.

If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you: hermansblog@netstreams.com.


Herman Cardenas

Labeling and Certifying Your Cables

Proper Labeling – If there is one thing that my integrator and I would do all over again, it would be to certify and properly label all of the cables in my home, during the ‘wiring phase’. This would have saved us a tremendous amount of time (days) and money. I can’t even begin to tell you how much pain and time it cost us not having properly labeled and certified cables. My Integrator’s plan was to do this done from the very beginning, but the installer that he assigned to my job chose to label my cables with numbers and then create a reference table, which he kept to himself. Sometime after my house was dry walled, this installer got fired, and as retaliation, he chose to conveniently lose this table, leaving us back at square one. It also turned out that, although he originally put numbers on both ends of the cable, when he cut the cables to stuff them into their appropriate wall boxes, he did not label the cables again.

Recommendation – Since we know what each cable is intended for prior to wiring the project, and adequate label printers are available almost anywhere, starting as low as $29.00, the way to go is to label each cable in plain English: i.e. ‘Dining Room Amplifier’, ‘Living Room Touch Screen’, or ‘Patio Speakers’. This way, if a new installer is assigned to finish the job months later, there is no guessing involved. The label maker that I bought is made by Brothers. I bought it at Office Max and it cost me $39. I then ordered special ½” label tape that is designed for application on cables. When labeling equipment that is black, like power supplies or rack mounted equipment, we used white-on-black tape. For all other label needs, we used black-on-white. Now it is so easy to see what is connected to what, and if we want to make a change, there is no guessing or ringing out cables involved.

Certifying Your Cables – There are a couple of ways to certify your cables documented and undocumented. The first is to simply test all of your cables during the ‘wiring phase’ of the job. The second is to test them, then print out the results to serve as documentation for the integrator and the customer, that all cables have been tested and passed during that phase. Although it is not required, it wouldn’t hurt to test the cables again after drywall to insure that none of the cables were damaged by other contractors on the project. In many commercial projects, this is a requirement.

Many installers believe that a simple continuity test is sufficient. It is not. That was OK for telephone, but now that we are installing devices that require significant bandwidth from your network, like IP Audio and IP Video, it is extremely important that these cables are terminated properly and that their integrity is intact, so that you can maximum performance from your network.

The difference between a reliable system and one that is plagued with problems is usually in the wiring and termination. My installer was able to demonstrate to me that a bad cable that passes the ‘network’ test with a simply continuity cable tester, can fail when tested with a proper network cable tester.

Recommendation – Test all cables during the ‘wiring phase’ of your project, before drywall and consider testing them again after drywall, if budget allows. Printing the test results of all of the cables is a great option, and may even be required on some projects.

If my blog has been helpful to you in any way, please drop me a note. I would love to hear from you and learn what other parts of my ‘building an IP home’ experience would be helpful to you: hermansblog@netstreams.com.