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.

Wiring for an IP Home

When my wife and I began to plan our new home 3 years ago, I was determined to wire it for everything under the sun. Heading up a company that was leading the custom electronics market into the next era of technology and applications, put a significant self-imposed burden on me. Mostly because I felt that instead of keeping up with the Jetsons, it was my responsibility to ‘be’ the Jetsons.

When I started the research process, my head was filled with questions, and for awhile it seemed that the more I researched, the more questions I would generate. What cables, standards and technologies would I use in our new IP home – Coax, CAT5e, fiber, Ethernet, wireless or power line technology? And what connections would I use for my displays – HDMI, DVI, Component or other? What format would I use for streaming audio around the home – MP-3, AAC, WMA, or WAV? Whose products would I use to compliment NetStreams’ multi-room audio/video/control products, for things like lighting, cameras, thermostats, theater products, etc…? I did know one thing, and that was that I did not want to narrow down product decisions three years before our home was to be completed because of the extremely fast pace of which technology and products change in our market. I did not want to wire my home exclusively or specific to any manufacturer’s products, because I wanted our infrastructure to address the many products available at the time my home was completed in the future, and the many products coming in the future beyond that point in time. These decisions would involve a lot of research because many of these standards were still under development or just coming to the market, and were unproven.

Months later I reached my conclusion and decision, and almost three years later, it has proven to have been the right one. What I determined after the many months of research was that there was no ‘one single standard’ that would address all of my needs. Here is what I learned:

The CEA 802.3 standard (Ethernet) is the most widely used standard, internationally, for both residential and commercial computer networks, control and now audio and video distribution. CAT5e is the most widely used cable for computer networks, control, telephone, professional video distribution, and more. I learned that this 20+ year old standard is solid and provides us with the right infrastructure for current and future products. The CEA 802.3 standard suggests “home runs” from each outlet. A “home run” is a direct run of cable from the “head-end” location (the location where telephone, cable/satellite and home network cables are originated inside the home) to one or more locations in each room. Using this standard would allow me to later choose from the myriad of products and technologies available for distribution of our video, while also providing us with the cables needed for our home network and telephone needs, in each room.

OK, one decision made…. CAT5e everywhere.

Much like electricity is distributed from a central panel(s) to locations around the home, and the electricity is fed to these panels from the meter box, where the power company connects their services to, telephone, home network, cable, and satellite service providers connect to boxes outside of your home known as ‘demarcation points’ and their services are then extended to the panels where they are distributed around your home. This wiring infrastructure is called “structured wring”.

The most widely used cable for structured wiring is called a “2x2 ”, which is a bundled cable with four cables inside; two RG-6 (coax) cables used for cable/satellite television or analog camera distribution, and two CAT5e cables, used for telephone, home network, video distribution and more. The standard for structured wiring cable is the TIA/EIA 568. Although this standard covers a good portion of my infrastructure needs, I learned that implementing only this standard would not be enough, because this standard did not address the needs of our lighting control system, our multi-room audio and video system, our home control system, our security system, our IP cameras, our thermostats, or home theater. It is mostly designed for distributing home network, cable/satellite television and telephone. However, if I want to distribute high definition television signals from a central location to all of our rooms, or want to centralize my three satellite boxes so that I don’t have to add a box per television set in our home, which in our case is 8-10 TVs, traditional structured wiring solutions can’t help me. This typical requires a professionally designed system and a video matrix switch.

So that I don’t turn this blog post into a book, I’ll now summarize what I did for my wiring. Because I believe that in the future most products will be IP-based or IP-controlled, I made sure to run CAT 5e almost everywhere that I anticipated installing a product or system.

Audio Distribution: For our multi-room audio needs, I chose to use the CEA 2030 standard, as I found this to be the most flexible and best standard. This standard requires a CAT5e cable plus a 4-conductor cable (#16 or #14 gauge wires) from the head-end audio/video location to each keypad, then looped up to the speakers. This can be accomplished with two separate cables or a Siamese cable that is a cable that offers both the CAT5e and 4-conductors in one jacket, making it easier and cheaper to install. I found that other standards address the distribution of analog audio or digital audio, but not both; and I found no other standard that addressed the requirements of an IP-Based audio distribution system. The CEA2030 addresses the needs of analog, digital and IP-Based audio distribution systems. Because my company is involved in the development of technology for IP speakers, I knew that having a CAT5e available at the speaker for network connectivity, along with the 4-conductors for power was critical.

Video Distribution: Because I wanted to distribute high definition video signals around my home from centrally-located satellite boxes, so we can access and view content from any video source, (including our TIVO), from any room in the home, I found that we could not use the typical coax distribution in my GE Security structured wiring panel. Structured wiring panels typically use traditional radio frequency (RF) amplifiers and splitters for its video distribution. These do not distribute high definition signals from the new HD sources such as BluRay or HD-DVD, nor do they distribute Dolby Digital, DTS, or other similar audio effects. However we still ran 2x2 cables from the structured wiring panel to each TV location in the home, and in addition ran CAT5e cables from each location to my equipment rack. This CAT5e would be later connected to a NetStreams Panorama video distribution system for distribution of our standard and high definition video signals from our satellite boxes and our centralized BluRay player around the home. More on this product line on a future post.

Telephone / Computer Network: This one was the simplest of all of the wiring standards to implement. Since a 2x2 cable contains two CAT5e cables, by running a 2x2 home run to each location that I wanted Ethernet and/or telephone, I was able to achieve both. And in locations where I did not need telephone, I could assign the two CAT5e to our home network.

Lighting Control: Wiring for lighting control was a little different because it forced me to decide, in advance, on the type of lighting system that I was going to use and the manufacturer. The reason for this is that lighting devices fall into two general categories: a) dimmer/relay switches that are installed at the traditional switch location and then networked through CAT5e, RF (wireless), or power lines, and b) dimmer/relay modules that are installed in one or more central locations somewhere in the home. Each of these methods has its own requirements, costs, and benefits. After weighting all of these heavily and looking at many different products, I decided to use the Lutron HomeWorks products. This system required us to run a shielded CAT5e cable from each keypad location back to multiple panels that would house our Lutron dimmer and relay modules and processors. The shielded cable can be Class II (CL-2) in-wall rated cable, but Class III (CL-3) burial grade – is recommended. These cables are comprised of a pair of 18 gauge wires for power and pair of 22 gauge shielded wires with a drain ground for communications.

Other: The above wiring schemes covered the majority of the needs of our IP home, but there were other subsystems and products to think about and each of these carried its own wiring needs: Security system, Intercom, Cameras, Thermostats, Drapes/shades, Pool controls, Garage door openers, Irrigation system, Outdoor lighting and more. If you are integrating these products with your whole house control system, the wiring requirements are different than when these systems are installed ‘stand-alone’.

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: info@netstreams.com.

The Great Audio Experience

Last year I blogged about the very audible difference between MP3 and uncompressed (WAV) audio file formats, particularly when it comes to good quality home speakers and audio systems. I must say I am extremely humbled to find so many in the artist community that support this idea of great quality audio. Compression really does ruin their work. Artists spend quite a lot of time in the studio working on the sound and ambiance of their creation, and when they do hear their songs played back over a compressed format, it can be downright demoralizing.

And now they're starting to do something about it.

The band 3 Doors Down has joined forces with the Consumer Electronics Association to promote what they call Great Audio Experience. They just launched their website today and it was very interesting to hear from them how they view audio quality.

Check it out by clicking the link below:






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

Is it Christmas yet?

Last week we released a new version of DigiLinX Dealer Setup software to our authorized dealers that takes our DigiLinX system to a whole new level. Our NetStreamers have been working very hard and the result is very exciting. The following is an outline of the new products that we introduced recently or began shipping.

Favorites – This is the feature set that we have all been waiting for. Favorites allows dealers to setup ‘one button’ macros for their end-users, so that can launch a host of actions by the selection of onscreen buttons. i.e. An Evening Favorite button tells our Lutron lighting system to set the lights to a predetermined level and it turns on our jazz music. Our HBO Favorite turns on the TV, selects the correct channel, dims the lights, and sets the system to a predetermined volume. Favorites takes DigiLinX to a whole new level and it will only get better from here as our NetStreamers add more customization to Favorites and DigiLinX over time. A very cool feature introduced is that I can make Favorites my home page and even change the name to something else.

Streaming Music Manager (SSM) – This product is a rack-mount or set-top product that plugs into the network, then auto-discovers PCs, MACs, network storage or other devices that touch the network, which contain uncompressed (WAV / PCM) or compressed (MP-3) shared audio files. The SMM then proxies up to six uncompressed streams of music.

My nephew and I just installed my SMM a couple of weeks ago. In my house, I have my music and video stored on a network storage device and this product is exactly what we needed. The most exciting feature for me is that the SMM finds the music on our home network, no matter where it is stored, PCs, MACs, or Linux machines and network storage, and consolidates all of our music so that my family and I don’t have to remember where a particular song or album is stored. We see one list and we can chose our music by Song, Album, Artist, Genre, or Playlist. I am told that, in the near future, we will be able to create playlists, dynamically, by just clicking on songs that we want. I can’t wait.

One final SMM feature I want to tell you about is that when we plugged our iPod into one of the SMM’s USB ports, we were able to auto discover it on the network and extract up to six (6) streams from the iPod, along with its meta-data, so that each family member could listen to their own song from the iPod, at the same time as other users were listening to their song of choice. Very cool indeed.

DoorLinX – This is going to be the world’s first IP-based ‘door intercom’. I am told that this starts shipping this month (Nov-2006), and it can’t come a moment too soon. My wife is tired of the hole by the front door and our visitors having to knock on the door very loudly in order for us to hear them. However, I believe that it will be worth the wait.

Our IP Intercom system is the best intercom system that I have ever heard because it comes out through the room speakers and not a $2.00 speaker on a wall intercom or on a phone. Besides the obvious ding-dong, DoorLinX will give us some additional features. We will be able to select any MP-3 that we want to use as a ringer and tell it what rooms or hallways to ring into. In the future, DoorLinX will be able to play different ringers at different times of the day, or different days of the year. I can’t wait until it can also ring my phone to let me know that the UPS guy is there when we are not home. I could then answer the door and ask him to place the package on the side of the house or in the garage, after I open the door for him remotely.

MediaLinX Pro (MLA4000) – Today to integrate a legacy source product (an audio or video product that does not speak TCP/IP such as CD players, tuners, DVDs, etc…), and have that available for listening on the network with native products (music servers, PC, etc…), a NetStreams dealer must connect that source to the network via a media converter product, which NetStreams calls MediaLinX. Until now, an installer had to purchase one MediaLinX per source. NetStreams will soon bring out a 4-channel version of MediaLinX that will also bring with it some new features that dealers will be able to take advantage of to create more cool and compelling applications. This includes controlling curtains, screens, and more.

Well… that’s it for now folks. Although Christmas is less than two months away still, it sure felt like Christmas this week. You can expect that I will be playing with all of these new options and features this weekend.

In my next blog entry I plan on telling you about wiring for the house of the future – today. This allowed me to build a full IP-based home, ready for all of those wonderful IP products on the way. I am especially excited to see and ready for IPTV (more about this in another future entry).

Changes

Well… no excuses…. guilty as charged. It has been a long time since I have made new entries into this blog, but I thought that given that we are launching this new website, I’d take this opportunity to recommit myself to this blog. I am also happy to announce that I have hired a new CEO – Kevin Reinis, to drive the NetStreams bus and free me up to do the things that I love to do the most – driving the vision for the Company, its products and technology, and evangelizing the emerging world of IP-based networked entertainment. In addition to the latter, I will now serve as the Company’s Chairman. I am very excited about Kevin joining our team and look forward to working with him.

Another exciting thing that has happened to me over the last few months is that my family and I have finally moved into our beautiful IP-based home here in Austin, Texas, which was under design/construction for over two years. We are delighted with our home and it is a must see house, as it is loaded with the latest and greatest IP-based systems and products including our very own DigiLinX and Panorama products. Other products used were Polk Audio IP speakers and XM tuner, Lutron, Panasonic IP cameras, Parasound tuner, Marantz and Lexicon AVRs sitting on Middle Atlantic racks. Over the next few weeks, I plan on giving you more details about this IP home and its products and share our experience with you. As they say in the industry ‘I am now eating my own dog food’. But let me tell you…. it tastes awfully yummy.

Tell Congress NOT to let Hollywood control your home!

Gary Shapiro of the CEA testified recently in front of Congress against a proposal to protect this distribution and recording of all audio & video content. This proposal was made by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Way back the days when the VCR was first introduced, Hollywood was upset and concerned that people would record broadcasts and not watch live news or go to movies. A similiar hearing was held in front of Congress and legislation resulted that allow a consumer to make 1 copy for personal use.

What this new technology yielded was an entire new business resulted -- video releases of movies, video rental, etc.

Now with new digital technologies there is a push to eliminate the ability to create copies for personal use AND prevent the time and space shifting of content.

If they succeed, you can say goodbye to your TiVo. If you are one of the fortunate people to have a Multi-Room Video system, you can say goodbye to watching 1 DVD movie on multiple TVs throughout your home during a party. And forget ripping music from a CD, or distributing music to different rooms in your home for playback.

If they succeed, you will probably have to buy all new equipment. Because the broadcast flag they want to embed in the encoder and the decoder of the content hasn't been developed yet. So some CE manufacturer will have to develop some costly copy protection scheme, get everyone to adopt it as a standard, and then you'll have to buy all new expensive equipment just to receive TV or satellite radio broadcasts.

Check out Gary's speech transcript on http://www.ce.org/. And stick up for your rights as a consumer by calling your congressman!

MP-3... Not for Demanding Music Lovers

If you're making the investment to upgrade your home by having a multi-room audio system installed, please remember this point....

MP3 audio quality is nice for headphones but is not as good as uncompressed (CD Quality) .WAV files.

The science behind compressing an audio file supports this, and on occasion I have heard the difference but nothing like I had heard yesterday. A friend had a party to show off his new multi-room audio system. At first glance, it was impressive -- 12 rooms of audio with in-wall keypads and high quality speakers (Polk). But we soon noticed a difference in sound quality when switching sources from his CD player to his ipod. The sound floor automatically dropped several dB and the high frequencies with the song recorded in the compressed MP3 format vs. the same song we had heard previously off of the CD were non-existant.

Simply put -- the song on MP3 sounded dull and flat over the Multi-Room Audio system, but the same song on CD sounded rich and full.

When I had asked my friend what bit rate he had recorded the song to MP3, he told me it was 300 kbps, not a bad sampling rate at all. In fact, when we unplugged the iPod and listened to the song over the small headphones, it didn't sound as flat as it did over the Multi-Room audio system, though admittedly it wasn't as good as the original CD.

We then recorded the song to an uncompressed (.WAV) file format and it sounded almost as good as the CD.

Why the difference in audio quality between MP3 and uncompressed (.WAV)? Well, let's look at the technology. MP3 audio is a specially formatted and havily compressed computer file. Depending on the sample rate, the audio quality can sound close but not equate to that of a CD. An uncompressed audio file of 1 minute consumes nearly 9 megabytes (MB) of disk space. An MP3 file uses only about 1 MB of disk space for that same minute of audio. This reduction in file size has revolutionized the delivery of music, because it is now easier to transmit music over the internet. A song that would have taken almost an hour to download (depending upon the connection speed) can now be download much quicker. However, in exchange for the smaller file size, the listener sacrifices 70% of the data that holds what some describe as the 3-D characteristics of the audio necessary to create staging, imaging, and rich audio texture. An uncompressed (.WAV) music file contains all of the data found on a CD, without any of the compression of loss of data. This offers the listener the highest quality audio available from a CD.

The difference in audio quality is of course more perceptible with better quality speakers and better quality amplification.

If you're interested in hearing for yourself the difference, visit the demo section of our website. http://www.netstreams.com/demos.aspx

Our Hearts Go Out

Our hearts go out to everyone in the gulf coast who are suffering from Hurricane Katrina. Many of our NetStreams employees have donated their time and skills to the American Red Cross building computers and assisting in creating networks so that displaced people can contact their families, and those separated from eachother at various Texas shelters can be re-connected.

Our hearts are with all those suffering.

Digital Music Servers

Maximizing your digital music server can allow you to take full advantage of the technology. Why? Well, think about this. Digital music servers are a great way to store and enjoy all of your songs. Depending upon the size of the hard disc drive, you can record 10,000 ~ 30,000 of your favorite songs with the cover art, artist and album information, as well as the genre for each song.

But, with a traditional system, how many songs can you listen to at one time in different rooms of your home?

Well, the answer to that depends upon the number of discrete audio outputs on the music server, because each output must be connected to a multi-channel amplifier so that it can be routed to each room.

So we were thinking....there is a fundamental disconnect with what the technology can provide from a music server and how it is implemented with a traditional system today in the marketplace. Imagine this -- I can run multiple applications on my PC. Right now I've got my browser open, my email open, an .xls spreadsheet, and a press release from my VP of marketing open on my PC, not to mention several Microsoft word documents. All open. All running at the same time.

Since a digital music server is essentially a PC (it has a hard disc drive, a microprocessor, a CD-ROM drive for recording music, and an operating system), why not be able to listen to several songs in several rooms throughout the home?

And with a traditional installation, I need to turn on my TV to listen to my music coming from a music server, because I need to be able to select what I want to listen to. So that's another cable I have to hook up. When I explained all this to my daughter a year ago, the conversation was really funny, because she kept asking "But Dad, why do I have to turn on the TV to listen to music?"

Why indeed...

With our IP-Based DigiLinX products it can be done. We've partnered with some of the best digital music server companies in the marketplace - ReQuest (http://www.request.com/); Escient (http://www.escient.com/) and Imerge (http://www.imerge.co.uk/) and made them compatible with our solution. What does this mean -- well, with one CAT5 connection from the media server to our switch, I can listen to up to 6 separate songs (or "streams" of music, as we like to call them) in different rooms or groups of room s at a time. And I don't need to run a video cable because the menu to select the songs stored in the media server appear on any touch screen in the home.

Now that's progress.

The State of the Industry

I read an article today in the September / October issue of Robb Report Home Entertainment & Design about "networked control" and it struck me how far behind the consumer electronics industry is in thinking about TCP/IP. (Note this edition is not yet posted on their website but the print issue is beginning to circulate. Go to your newstand and look for this magazine. I find it very insightful!).

Yes, controlling audio, video and home automation products over TCP/IP is a no brainer. Frankly, we all should have moved towards this years ago. My company was beginning to work on this 7 years ago, back when we were the incorporated as GE Smart and were a joint venture with General Electric and Microsoft.

Why do I say the industry is behind where it should be? It seems to me that too many people in our industry think about TCP/IP in the sense that it is just another protocol, like RS-232, RF or IR.

CE Manufacturers of high end equipment started putting RS-232 connectors on their devices in 1997. In the Robb Report article, Jared Lewis (an installer) is quoted as saying "If you think about it, we never got there on RS-232. I mean, you're just starting to see RS-232 on entry level to mid-grade components." And this is now 2005!

To think that our industry may take just as long to transition to a complete IP-Based system (not just IP-Based Control) makes me worry about the future of the CE manufacturer. Our counterparts, the PC Manufacturers, move much quicker on a new technology, especially when they identify a significant enhancement which will improve the value proposition for the consumer. (The key here is improving the value proposition significantly!).

Sure, you could use TCP/IP to control products, but TCP/IP was designed to deliver content too. It's not impossible to do that. At NetStreams, we've proven that with our DigiLinX system, which has been selling for several months now. A whole host of media server manufacturers have enabled their Ethernet connections so that audio is distributed over TCP/IP (more about that in a later post).

Simply controlling A/V equipment over TCP/IP is, in my opinion, not a compelling value proposition to the market. However controlling AND distributing the entertainment content is very attractive to the consumer. Why? Well to name a few reasons:
- Audio can be distributed to multiple rooms digitally and with high resolution (over TCP/IP)
- Multiple songs can be listened to from one hard disc drive based media server (over TCP/IP)
- the system is extremely flexible and scalable

There IS a difference between IP-Based Control and a complete IP-Based system. For those investing in a new system in their home, make sure you're compatible for the future.

My First Blog Post

My name is Herman Cardenas and I am Chairman and Founder of NetStreams, a company based in Austin Texas. NetStreams was formed with the idea that all consumer electronics (your TV, DVD player, Speakers, PC etc) in the home will distribute their entertainment content and communicate with each other using TCP/IP (the same language as the internet).

Why TCP/IP? It's the same language as the Internet. The architecture makes it easily expandable. It's an open protocol, so it's easier to configure a system to communicate with and control a variety of products from a variety of manufacturers. And it's the same language that the computers in your home use to talk to each other.

No Question -- IP is the future.

With this vision, Netsteams created and shipped DigiLinX, the world's first IP-Based Multi-Room Audio system in the market. (IP-Based meaning that the system distributes audio, data, and control over TCP/IP).

So what's so difficult about creating an IP-Based Multi-Room Audio system? Well the biggest issue that NetStreams overcame is the ability to synchronize the audio. Synchronization of high quality audio is important in a Multi-Room Audio system. Why? TCP/IP was primarily developed to distribute data, and never designed to be real-time. Imagine if I'm sitting in a room with 3 people and I send one email to all of them. We're all in the same room, but one person might get it before another person and so on. With audio, if you're listening to the same song in the kitchen and the dining room over an IP-Based system without synchronization, you would hear a strong echoing effect when you're walking from one room to another.

Maybe you're wondering why I wrote this blog? Well... several reasons....

• I wanted to share, with interested people, my thoughts on the future of home entertainment and technologies, as wellas my personal experience with the same.
• I know that from my experience as a home builder that choosing the right technology and wiring for your home (whether it's a new build or a remodel) is a confusing and frustrating experience for many, so I thought I might be able to help.
• And of course, I'd like to hear your comments and ideas.

Best,

Herman