First, a quick recap of LED’s advantages. In an LED projector, super-bright LEDs replace the high-pressure mercury lamp used in today’s conventional projectors. LEDs last far longer than bulbs; the PhlatLight LEDs used in some rear-projection TVs are rated to run 8 hours a day for more than 20 years. The lamps used in projectors today last 2,000 to 4,000 hours—and for the last quarter or so of their life, they become annoyingly dim. Replacement cost for these lamps is high, ranging from about $200 to more than $1,000. They also consume more energy than LEDs.

LED also offers the potential for picture quality improvements. LEDs can be dimmed quickly—on a frame-by-frame basis—so they can be adjusted to deliver the deepest blacks and optimum contrast for each shot in a video. Lamps respond too slowly to do this, although a similar if less profound effect can be achieved with an automatic iris. LEDs offer a wider color gamut than conventional lamps, and they come on almost instantly—there’s practically no warm-up time.

Chi Lin Technologies, the manufacturer that conducted the CEDIA Expo demo, gave us an update on the prospects for LED projection in 2009. Product manager Julian Chu said he expects the company to enter mass production in Q2 or Q3 of 2009, and confided that it already has at least one company signed up to distribute the projector in the U.S. (Chi Lin does not sell projectors under its own name in the U.S.—it makes them for other companies.)

Chu said that the company has completed a 2nd generation model which is more advanced than the one shown at the CEDIA Expo. He said the new unit is about 40% smaller and significantly brighter. Chi Lin’s specifications for the projector include a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and a color gamut 28% broader than the NTSC standard. The projector uses a liquid cooling system, which is necessary because the LEDs run at a very high current of 30 amps in order to achieve the necessary brightness. The prototype at the CEDIA Expo had a cooling fan that was vacuum-cleaner loud; no word on whether or not Chi Lin has improved that, but they’ll have to if they want into the home theater market.

Most companies that market projectors in the U.S. are keeping their plans for LED to themselves. However, Brian Carskadon, director of product management for Runco International, was willing to elaborate on LED’s future. He predicted we’ll see introductions of several LED-driven front projectors in 2009. He also predicted—not surprisingly—that the first ones will be expensive and noisy compared with their lamp-driven counterparts. He expects lower-priced, lower-performing models aimed at the casual market to appear toward the end of 2009.

And, most importantly, Carskadon expects LED to someday dominate the projection market. He said that once LED products reach performance parity with typical lamp-driven projectors (possibly as soon as two years from now), lamp-based products will be relegated to applications that require high brightness, such as extra-large home theaters.

For the integrator, LED has one big upside and one big downside. Of course, it will lead to more reliable installations and fewer service calls. But it’ll also give you fewer chances to interface with your clients.

The technology in question is the iPhone, which home automation manufacturers are starting to integrate into their systems. The idea makes obvious sense. After all, from a technical standpoint, the iPhone (and its cellphone-less cousin, the iPod Touch) isn’t terribly different from a wireless touchscreen.

But in other ways, the iPhone differs radically from a typical home automation touchscreen. It’s small: The screen measures only 3.5 inches diagonally, compared with 4 to 17 inches for a typical touchscreen. And it’s cheap: just $199 with a service contract (or $229 for the iPod Touch), compared to as much as $10,000 for a big touchscreen.

We wondered, though: How thrilled would systems integrators be to sell a $229 device when they used to sell one priced 10 to 40 times as much? And how much would their clients enjoy trying to control an entire home from a 3.5-inch, 480×320-pixel screen?

THE PROS

The big advantage of the iPhone in home automation is portability. You can slip it into your pocket and carry it around effortlessly. As Jim Carroll, president and cofounder of Savant Systems, described: “I can be in my media room and control that experience. I can use the same device to manage the media from my pool area. I can watch videos, listen to iTunes. There’s not a [touchscreen] remote I’m aware of that you can carry around which gives you access to and control of all those things.”

To Jeff Singer, marketing communications manager at Crestron, the biggest advantage is that the iPhone also works outside the home. “In the home, it communicates with your system via WiFi, but out in the world, it can communicate using the phone network. Anywhere in the world, our customers can see the lighting levels in their homes, the positions of the shades, the temperatures of all the rooms in the house, the status of the home alarm systems—and from anywhere in the world, they can change all that.”

Besides its unrivaled mobility, the iPhone has another advantage: public awareness. Many people don’t even know home automation even exists, but everyone’s heard of the iPhone—and 13 million have been sold to date. “The sex appeal of this is huge,” Carroll reported. “We’re signing up dealers because customers are asking for this kind of solution.”

THE CONS

The limited real estate of that little screen does demand some redesign of the control GUIs, but Singer and Carroll both say their companies don’t consider this a significant problem. “You may have to have a second page where before you could have just one,” Carroll explained. “But the resolution is high and with the number of colors it supports, you can do a lot with it.” Savant’s iPhone-based systems also use the TVs in a home to display control screens, in order to show more buttons on a single page.

However, Carroll and Singer strongly disagree in their predictions about how the iPhone will affect future system designs.

“I think the iPhone is definitely going to cut into sales of those things [touchscreens],” Carroll said. “Customers are cutting down on the number of remotes they’re using. People might have eight [touchscreen] remotes for everything in their homes, but if there’s only three people living there they might only need three iPhones or Touches.”

Singer doesn’t buy it. “That hasn’t been our experience,” he said. “Have our touchpanel sales been impacted because we offer control from PCs and laptops? Absolutely not. The iPhone is just another option. And when you have more options, you have more opportunities to meet or exceed the client’s expectations.”

Likewise, Singer sees no effect on margins for Crestron dealers. “The iPhone control app is absolutely free to dealers and programmers,” he noted. “How does that affect margin? However they want it to. If you want to throw it in to sweeten a deal, you can do that and it won’t cost you anything. If you see it as an opportunity to increase your margin, the markup can be whatever the client’s willing to pay.”

Asked if the iPhone will affect margins, Carroll replied, “I think in one sense yes and another no. In our implementation, it requires a server at the other end, which the customer will need to buy. And keep in mind that the iPhone is doing everything a touchpanel would do, so they make a margin on the integration as well.”

So the effect of the iPhone on home automation integrator margins remains an open question. But with Sooloos, Speakercraft, Proficient Audio, and others now offering iPhone control options, there seems to be no doubt that the iPhone will become an important interface—and perhaps even the primary interface—in homes of the future. As Carroll put it, “I think it’s a fundamental game changer.”

Calibrating television displays has become big business, but should you jump in? Companies like the Imaging Science Foundation and THX, Inc charge sizable sums for you to attend their instructional classes, while measurement equipment companies like Sencore, Data Color and Konica Minolta wait in the wings to sell you expensive color meters and test generators. Some consumers are willing to spend several hundred bucks to have their TVs professionally adjusted. Even big-box retailers like Best Buy sell the service to their customers. But while TVs of even a few years ago may have been horribly miscalibrated to achieve sales floor appeal, modern televisions—with their multiple picture memories and color adjustments—make a much more calibrated image available with just a press of a button. It’s enough to make you wonder if the calibration process is still necessary.

I do believe that a calibrated picture looks better than the average show floor image. For the sake of this argument, I will define “calibration” as the adjustment of a set’s so-called color temperature using a color meter. One could go further and include the adjustment of the actual primary and secondary colors themselves, a feature increasingly available on better displays. The adjustment of basic signal levels, like brightness and contrast, can also be considered a level of calibration, (and perhaps even more beneficial), but the tools and instructions needed to use them are available on a $40 Blu-ray disc or DVD.

Metered calibration is where things get interesting. For the sake of this article, I’m only talking about TVs, not two-piece projection displays, as the latter can’t be factory-calibrated for a given screen material. As the TV test manager for Samsung Electronics, I compare our TV sets with competitors, and I also verify the measurement results of our TVs that go to and come back from equipment reviewers. I’ve noticed a few things. For one, TVs from major manufacturers usually have a setting that comes reasonably close to 6500 Kelvin (the industry standard measure of a set’s color temperature). Secondly, what differences do exist rarely amount to much in a comparative analysis. Third, measurements from different people don’t match. What I might read as 6500 Kelvin, one reviewer might measure as 6300K, and another might say is 6700K. Both reviewers argue that the set needs calibration, and after adjusting levels up or down, declare the set as “improved” and much more accurate.

One can argue that the reviewers are compensating for differences in their source equipment. But if two different Blu-ray players output color temperature settings that are several hundred degrees apart, something is horribly wrong. It’s far more likely that different equipment will need slight adjustments to settings like brightness and contrast.

Different TV settings and tolerances between measurement equipment likely account for the majority of the disparity in results. Samsung uses a Photo Research PR650, a $20,000 color meter that, even though it’s considered the standard for accuracy, can measure up to 250 Kelvin (degrees) different from another PR-650—on the same display, with the same source equipment—and still be considered within spec. Lesser equipment can have even greater tolerances. But if two or three calibration experts using different equipment can’t agree on how the same set should measure, then how can we argue that one setting is more accurate than another? And we haven’t even touched on competence. I’m confident of the reviewers’ skill sets, but what of most calibration class graduates? Given that you can get a fairly accurate image from many manufacturers with just a change of the picture memory setting, it’s enough to question the process as a whole.

I don’t discount the process entirely. While metered calibration may not be as exact a science as many make it out to be, it can bring widely out-of-range displays, like second- or third-tier brands, back into the realm of the reasonable. And there is a small group of enthusiasts who appreciate knowing that their TV is “accurate.” Plus, how can you keep the manufacturers on their toes if you can’t measure their equipment to know what it’s doing?

More importantly, though, in addition to the profit stream produced by tweaking picture controls, many retailers and installers are finding that their “calibrated” clientele tend to be happier than normal customers, and may even have fewer product returns. One reasons for this is because otherwise simple problems are easily overcome when the installer is there to witness them firsthand. He or she can also verify that all of the system’s settings, not just the TVs, are properly adjusted. And even just knowing that the product is professionally calibrated can relieve an immense amount of anxiety for many people.

While these are good reasons for integrators to spend the $1,000+ entrance fee for a training program, or the $2,500 cost of a measurement tool, I do believe installers have a moral obligation to at least show their customers what the image looks like when you switch their display out of the factory default memory and into one of the more accurate modes. Some customers will want to go further and get professional calibration. But the greatest benefit may come more from the in-home personal service and attention than any change to the set’s gray scale.

The latest technology that has integrators curious but cautious is 3-D. There’s a lot of buzz about the resurgence of this decades-old technology. About a year ago, Samsung introduced the first TVs designed to accommodate 3-D gaming; now Mitsubishi is also offering 3-D sets. Da-Lite and JVC put on impressive 3-D demos at September’s CEDIA Expo. Last week, Sony introduced a new 3-D optical adapter that makes it easy and relatively affordable for digital cinemas to show 3-D movies; its demo at Sony Studios’ Culver City, Calif., headquarters blew us away. As a Sony spokesperson told The Integrator this week, having more outlets for 3-D will spur more moviemakers to deliver 3-D content—and the more 3-D content there is, the more consumers will demand it in their homes.

So is 3-D capability something that integrators need to consider when specifying new systems? Let’s look at the prospects….

3-D 101

It helps to start with an understanding of the technologies now in use for 3-D. The 3-D technology currently found in such sets as Samsung’s HL61A750 61-inch DLP rear-projection TV relies on special electronic glasses with LCD shutters. The TV alternates left-eye frames and right-eye frames; for this to work well, the TV needs to have a refresh rate of 120 Hz, so it can show 60 Hz video to each eye. The shutters in the glasses alternate to block left-eye content from reaching the right eye, and right-eye content from reaching the left eye.

From a display standpoint, there’s no great technical hurdle to clear here—there are plenty of DLP and LCD displays now with a 120 Hz refresh rate. However, there’s no video format that currently supports 120 Hz, which is why existing 3-D TVs can perform their tricks only when attached to a computer, and only with video games designed for 3-D. Also, the glasses need to receive a timing signal so the left and right LCD shutters “close” and “open” at the correct times.

It’s possible all of this can be incorporated into the Blu-ray “standard,” and it’s likely we’ll see 3-D capability in at least some of the next generation of video game consoles. But for now, it’s all via computers and it’s all from video games.

OLD-SCHOOL OPTICAL

Theatrical 3-D systems now in use rely on a more organic, analog way of creating 3-D. An optical device that attaches to the front of the projector polarizes the alternate left-eye and right-eye frames in opposite circular patterns—clockwise for the right eye, counterclockwise for the left eye. Glasses with one clockwise-polarized lens and one counterclockwise-polarized lens prevent the right eye from seeing left-eye frames and the left eye from seeing right-eye frames.

The advantage of this method is that it uses polarized glasses that are more comfortable and hugely less expensive than the electronic shutter glasses used for today’s 3-D TVs. The downside is that it requires an optical adapter on the front of the projector that must be moved or deactivated when conventional 2-D content is shown.

How this type of system might translate to home use isn’t clear. Of course, moving anamorphic lenses have become the norm in high-end home theaters, so it’s at least conceivable that an optical 3-D adapter could work in with a home video projector. But it’s hard to believe that the likes of Sony and Panasonic would put their efforts into a scheme with such a small potential audience. What seems more likely is polarization done using electronic, rather than optical, processing.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) is putting together a task force to develop 3-D standards for the home. A company called Sensio, which has for a few years now been selling 3-D systems that use specially encoded video, is working to license a 3-D compression/decompression technology to manufacturers. (JVC used Sensio’s technology in its demo of 3-D at CEDIA.) It’s great to see people putting effort into 3-D, but important to realize these are just efforts, which may or may not bear fruit at some indeterminate point in the future.

Now that you’ve got every dimension, in brief, of what’s going on with 3-D, the future from your standpoint should be clear: It’s not something you should worry about right now. From the home theater standpoint, there are no standards. There don’t even seem to be any proposed standards.

For now, the best solution for integrators who want to offer their clients the excitement of 3-D is to get one of the 3-D TVs already on the marketplace, set up a computer gaming system to go with it, and let the kids have at it.

They’re going pink by auctioning off a special, one-of-a-kind, hot pink Prism 50 from their Karim Collection to support Breast Cancer Awareness. The auction will begin October 20th on eBay with 100% of the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer fund.

In November, a gang of sneaker-clad Omnimounters, along with their friends and family, will participate in the American Cancer Society Making Strides 5K walk at Tempe Town Lake in Arizona. You can contribute to the Omnimount team by clicking here or go to the Making Strides Home Page to track down a team that’s walking in your area.

Cable Makers To The Rescue

The most exciting solution to HDMI’s problems is a new cable made by PPC that features a locking mechanism compatible with standard HDMI jacks. The shield part of the plug has two tiny prongs which mate with two slots inside the jack. A button on the plug body releases the prongs and allows the plug to be extracted.

PPC’s distributor, Ottovonmo Productions, claims the plug requires 7 pounds of tension to pull loose, compared with 1.5 pounds for a conventional HDMI plug. That’s not enough to let you drag a Blu-ray player across the floor by its cable, but it should be enough to hold the cables in place against accidental disconnection when you’re shifting wires around in a rack, or when the maid is dusting.

Prices for the PPC locking HDMI cables are surprisingly reasonable: For a 6-footer, it’s $49.95 for the standard model and $106.95 for the premium model. Unfortunately, the PPC cables are presently available only in 3-, 6-, and 12-foot lengths. These lengths are adequate for use in equipment racks and for some compact systems, but integrators need 25- and 50-foot HDMI cables to run between a rack and a video display.

A more robust, yet more complicated, solution is a new type of HDMI plugs with an attachment screw. The attachment screws are typically long and knurled so they can be turned with the fingers, like the screws found on many 9-pin RS-232 cables. We noticed a few pieces of A/V gear at the recent CEDIA Expo with HDMI jacks that have threaded posts to accept these screws. For most pieces of gear, though, you’ll have to remove the screw that attaches the HDMI jack to the chassis of the A/V component, then twist the HDMI plug’s attachment screw into the hole. Not every HDMI jack is secured using an externally accessible screw, but of the six HDMI-equipped devices we had on hand, five would accept the attachment screw.

Our quick survey found four companies offering HDMI cables with attachment screws: Best Deal Cables, Gefen, Lindy, and Xantech.

Wireless Solutions

Another HDMI solution that emerged at CEDIA is wireless HDMI, which can be implemented either through radio transmission or through the power lines in the home. These products were out in force at CEDIA, and demonstrated to good effect with 1080i and 1080p signals in the manufacturers’ booths. However, veterans of the CEDIA Expo know that a successful show demo does not guarantee dependable performance in the home.

These wireless HDMI products have significant limitations. Power-line HDMI products are generally limited to use with AC outlets running off the same circuit breaker; a manufacturer recently told us that most are designed to jump across at most one breaker. Radio-based solutions can be used room-to-room, but they have limited range. And while radio waves will pass through walls, the signal strength drops significantly with each thickness of drywall, and drops precipitously with each cinder block or brick wall.

Wireless HDMI is also expensive: $799 to $1,499 for the radio-based models from Belkin and Gefen, $399 for the power line-based product from Audiovox. Only time (and field reports from integrators) will tell whether or not these technologies are robust enough for use in custom A/V installations.

And as anyone who dropped by CEDIA for even an hour knows, umpteen companies introduced new baluns that convert HDMI signals to run on Cat-5 computer network cable.

Checking The Specs

HDMI’s always had problems operating correctly through long cables; integrators have had to either cross their fingers and hope the cable would work (bad idea) or test the cable before installing it (better idea, but hardly convenient). Although at least one cable manufacturer, Monster, certifies its own HDMI cables to deliver digital video of a certain resolution and refresh rate, you’re still placing your trust in the manufacturer.

The Digital Performance Level (DPL) Program seeks to give you a much higher comfort level with the HDMI cables you install. DPL Labs is an independent testing facility run by Jeff Boccaccio, formerly of Tributaries Cable. Manufacturers submit their cables to DPL Labs, which for a fee tests and certifies them to meet performance levels from 1 (minimum acceptable performance) to 5 (maximum performance). DPL Labs seems to be very open about its testing procedure, and its ratings are well-explained; this level of transparency is a welcome change of pace in the world of HDMI.

We can’t say the HDMI problem is solved, but it seems likely that some of these products will resolve some of the HDMI issues that integrators are facing. And yeah, that’s the most heavily qualified, wussed-out statement you’ll read outside a political campaign, but given the persistence of HDMI’s problems, it’s the best we can do for now.

And the high-end projector manufacturers also seem to agree, because they rarely submit their products for review anymore.

The general excellence of today’s affordable projectors makes survival increasingly difficult for companies that specialize in high-end video projection. But the recent CEDIA Expo in Denver indicated that there are still possibilities in high-end projection—and opportunities for integrators to differentiate themselves, wow their customers, and turn a bigger profit.

Let’s get one thing out of the way now: High-end companies who try to claim their projectors offer superior picture quality compared to the more mass-market offerings from Epson, JVC, Mitsubishi, Optoma, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, have succumbed to their own hype. Yes, five years ago, projectors from the big video companies generally looked inferior to the best of the boutique brands. But during the last two years or so, review after review after review has shown that many of the lower-priced projectors are competitive with the high-end stuff in almost every way. They often incorporate top-notch video processing chips and expertly engineered light engines, and many are calibrated at the factory so that all they need after installation is a fairly quick touch-up.

The one place where some of the high-end projectors beat out the cheap stuff is brightness. That’s important if you’re installing 10- or 15-foot screens, but most budget projectors deliver more than enough light to illuminate screens measuring 100 inches or smaller.

Of course, you might be able to sell your customers on the idea that the higher-end projector has superior picture quality, but be sure to disable the Internet service in their home when you do the installation. Otherwise, they might discover one of the forums where members delight in picking apart unsupportable claims made by dealers and manufacturers.

All that said, there’s plenty of room for high-end video projection in the future—if companies put their creativity into technical innovation rather than into marketing hype. At the CEDIA Expo, three companies in particular impressed us as making a strong case for their high-end projectors.

The first was Wolf Cinema, a new division of audio importer Sumiko. Despite the fact that Wolf’s “starter” model carries a suggested price of $60,000, and its most expensive models reach to $180,000, we heard no one scoff. The projectors’ unusual features—including xenon bulbs like those used in commercial cinemas, concealed anamorphic lenses, programmable zoom settings, and integral HVAC ducts—make them viable even at such stratospheric price points.

Ditto the Meridian 810 Reference Video System, which the company says delivers a 4096 x 2400 picture on screens as large as 24 feet. Given the projector’s $185,000 price tag, we doubt the 810 will find its way into many homes; its quality is wasted in anything less than a large personal screening room. Regardless, Meridian has generated a lot of excitement with this product. Even if a Meridian dealership never actually sells one of these monsters, they should take great pride in merely telling their customers about it.

We at The Integrator had all but written off the high-end single-chip DLP projector market until we saw ProjectionDesign’s Optix projector, part of its new Avielo line. The Optix runs $25,000, which is a lot for a single-chip model. However, it incorporates dual bulbs and dual color wheels for a super-punchy picture. At CEDIA it delivered an image so bright, deep, and detailed it left no doubt in our minds that any customer would be impressed.

The efforts of these companies show that high-end video projection still offers great opportunities. The rewards will go to those companies who innovate, and who focus on creating products that will excite their dealers and customers. Those who instead rely on suspicious claims of superior performance that they’re not willing to demonstrate by submitting their products for independent review—well, they’ll end up in the same place that HD-DVD went.

So if you read this column, you can, in theory, focus on schmoozing and partying rather than worrying about the details of, say, new doorbell modules for multiroom systems.

So what did we find in our reading? Lots of new A/V furniture. Lots of new TV mounts. New cable management products. New touchscreen control systems. New iPod docks. And a lot more.

Where, you ask, is the trend in that hodgepodge of “solutions”? Well, it’s not there. The trend is in what you don’t see: major introductions of mainstream audio and video products.

Of course, the Sonys and Samsungs and Panasonics of the world don’t always wait around for CEDIA to show off their latest wares. But throughout the spring and summer, we’ve seen the product introductions from these companies, and frankly, we have a hard time recalling any particular standouts.

We may have reached a point of diminishing returns with conventional audio and video gear. For example, the murmurs from display manufacturers hint at future 240 Hz refresh rates and 4K resolution, but neither of those technologies is likely to deliver a dramatic improvement in anything short of a 20-seat home theater. There are some promising display technologies in the future, such as ultra-thin OLED screens, but large OLED displays are a few years off—and the roll-up OLED screens we’ve been promised will probably take much longer.

While the big guys seem to be wondering where to go from here, the small- to medium-sized companies that focus on A/V integrators are bursting with exciting ideas. Consider SpeakerCraft’s new interface that lets the iPhone and the iPod Touch control its multiroom audio systems. Now your clients can pull out their iPhones when they walk in the house and immediately call up their favorite music, radio station, etc. No keypad needed. Sooloos includes something similar in the latest software revision for its music servers. And I know of at least one more manufacturer who’s pursuing the same path.

If Best Buy has anything this sexy that they can offer their customers, we haven’t seen it. In fact, barring some major unforeseen revolution in audio or video, it looks to us as if the mass merchants will mostly be stuck serving the replacement market.

On the other hand, integrators have at their disposal the offerings of many dozens (or even hundreds) of small, innovative companies. At the CEDIA Expo, it’s a safe bet we’re going to see countless speakers in cool new form factors, more entries in the outdoor TV market, and fresh approaches to home automation that will bring it to a wider audience. (We could list more, too, but on much of this stuff we’re under NDA until the show starts.)

It doesn’t look as if there will be any new audio/video product in the next couple of years that Best Buy can use to captivate its customers. But any good integrator ought to be able to dazzle clients with technologies they haven’t seen and new form factors they’ll love. If you can’t, you really should dig deeper at this year’s Expo, because the products and technologies you need will all be there.

Never in our recollection has a consumer electronics technology caused so many problems for so long as HDMI has. As one of the country’s leading custom installers recently told us, “Basically, it doesn’t work.” Some of the audio manufacturers we know become downright apoplectic whenever we bring up the subject. When the question “How many people here are installing HDMI?” was raised at the gathering of top Runco dealers in Mexico last April, only a few hands went up.

Yet we know that cable manufacturers have scrambled to solve the problem, creating cables that are guaranteed to pass a certain digital signal (720p/1080i or 1080p) without visible degradation. We also know that HDMI licensor Silicon Image has created Simplay Labs, a company devoted to certifying proper HDMI implementation and helping manufacturers get their products working right.

We decided it was time to check with a couple of leading integrators to get an update—and to find out if they’ve been able to make peace with HDMI.

“It has gotten better,” said Terry Menacker, president of Overture Audio & Video in Wilmington, DE. “But in 95 percent of our jobs, we still run component video cable as a backup. In most of our projects, even a 32-inch TV in a bedroom might be 20 or 30 feet from an equipment closet, and HDMI’s not always reliable at that distance.”

“You have to use it,” said Terry Mullin, CEO of Creative Stream in Costa Mesa, CA. “Now that Blu-ray has won, people want 1080p, and the only way to get that to the display is HDMI. But that has opened up issues. The biggest one we see is that if there’s any movement of the cables or the equipment, the HDMI plug can come out. Even if you do a strain relief, the cable eventually relaxes and you end up with the same problem. We make our own special strain relievers that pull the plug firmly into the socket, but it’d be so nice if they came up with a clip or a screw to hold the plug in.

“Issue number two is the length,” Mullin continued, echoing Menacker’s comments. “We use Gefen’s HDMI Cat-5 baluns to solve that problem.” At each end of these balun systems, there’s a box that has HDMI and Cat-5 connections. One box converts HDMI to Cat-5 (which can be run easily and cheaply), and another box converts the Cat-5 back to HDMI at the other end. “Cat-5 is a lot easier to run than HDMI cable, because that plug on the end of the HDMI cable is pretty big,” Mullins noted. Menacker reported that his crew has also begun using HDMI/Cat-5 baluns.

Despite Simplay Labs’ efforts, there still appear to be many products in which HDMI isn’t properly implemented, or in which an outdated HDMI standard is used. “We’re at the mercy of the manufacturers of cable boxes, receivers, etc.,” Menacker complained. “Comcast is still giving out boxes that have DVI output instead of HDMI.”

Menacker feels that cable manufacturers are no longer to blame for HDMI problems. “The cable has gotten better,” he said. “As long as you stay with major brands, it’s good. And some of the manufacturers have started to certify their cable for certain data speeds, so that should help.”

Mullins noted that he’d just read a magazine article talking about the possibility of yet another new HDMI level beyond the current HDMI 1.3b. But he offered a solution—one that shouldn’t have to exist, but integrators should be glad it does. “Run Cat-5,” he said. “It’s pretty much bulletproof. There’s not much you can’t do over two Cat-5s.”

So it seems the best way for integrators to solve the HDMI problem is to go around it. HDMI may improve further, but it should be obvious by now that it wasn’t designed with custom installation in mind. Indeed, it seems as if it were designed with no awareness that the custom installation industry even exists.

The Airborne Toxic Control Measure to Reduce Formaldehyde Emissions from Composite Wood Products stipulates two maximum formaldehyde emissions levels from each of the various types of composite panels. The higher Phase 1 maximum emission level takes effect on January 1, 2009, and a lower Phase 2 maximum level takes effect on January 1, 2011.

Manufacturers of composite wood panels will have to employ third-party testing companies to certify the emissions levels of their panels. Manufacturers of finished goods, such as speakers, will not have to have their products tested, but they will need to be able to show that they are using California-compliant panels in their California-bound or California-produced products. According to CARB spokesperson Dimitri Stanich, “Starting in 2009, they’ll have to talk to their wood supplier and insist on California-compliant wood. The wood has to be labeled as such. We recommend the final manufacturer insist that the invoice from the supplier include the statement that the wood is California-compliant.”

The final, Phase 2 emission levels are slightly lower than those currently required in Europe and slightly higher than those required in Japan. However, according to the Composite Panel Association (CPA), a trade group of particleboard and fiberboard makers, “the emission limits in the California regulation are maximum limits that 100% of the products must fall below, whereas other worldwide standards do not apply to all products and allow a certain percentage of the covered products to exceed the limits.”

The benefit of these new regulations, according to CARB, is lower cancer rates. CARB figures that the reduction in formaldehyde emissions will result in 35 to 97 fewer cancers per million people for adults, calculated on a 70-year lifetime exposure, and 9 to 26 fewer cancers per million for children under 9, calculated for 9 years of exposure. On the surface, that’s not an impressive figure—it’s less than 0.01% fewer cancers among adults. Furthermore, the CPA claims that CARB used an outdated, 1992 risk assessment to get these numbers. According to the CPA, “New risk assessment information used by the U.S. EPA, Health Canada, and other international bodies shows that there is virtually no risk of cancer from formaldehyde at the levels most people are exposed to over their lifetime.”

The costs that these new regulations may impose on manufacturers could greatly affect the prices you pay for speakers. The figures for plywood aren’t so bad: CARB projects a 1% to 5% higher cost per panel. But for MDF, things get downright ugly: CARB predicts an increase of 10% over current costs to reach Phase 1 levels, and a 40% total increase to reach Phase 2 levels. Such an increase would significantly boost speaker manufacturing costs, according to Kathy Gornik, president of speaker company Thiel Audio. “MDF is the biggest cost of all the materials we buy,” she said. “Even a small cost increase would be huge for us.”

On top of that cost increase will be higher administrative costs, as Gornik described: “We don’t want to go to this [California-compliant board] product for the rest of the world, so we’ll have to keep a separate inventory and separate records for the California market. One option for us is just not to sell our wood-based speakers in California. We do have some non-wood speakers like the PowerPoint that we could sell there.”

The total cost to industry to reach the Phase 2 standards, according to CARB, will be $127 million per year.

“How do you calculate the sum of all this?” Gornik asked rhetorically. “Even if it does save a few lives, how many lives will be lost if the cost increases force layoffs and the laid-off employees lose their health care?”

Gornik also worries that MDF panels made with formaldehyde-free resins may not perform as well as the panels her company has been using. “MDF is difficult to make,” she said. “We lost $100,000 two years ago due to a bad batch of MDF. That formaldehyde is in there for a very, very good reason.”

However, a composite wood industry expert we spoke with insisted that performance of MDF made with formaldehyde-free resins should be of no concern. “If the board suppliers don’t do anything stupid, there’s no reason they can’t get the same performance characteristics with lower emissions. But it will come at an added cost,” said Wade Gregory, an industry consultant and former president of Sierra Pine. He added, “I know that no-formaldehyde-added MDF panels have been used in speakers because I’ve sold them.”

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been petitioned by various organizations to adopt the California standards nationwide, but has rejected this proposal, at least initially. Also, as usual, several other states are considering adopting California’s new regulations as their own.

What’s all this mean for the integrator? If you’re based in California, you’ll be paying higher costs for wood-based speakers. If you’re not in California, but your speaker supplier decides to simplify inventory and record-keeping by using only California-compliant panels, then you, too, will pay higher prices. And for Cali-based integrators, there’s also the prospect, however slight, of a visit from CARB inspectors. “If we suspect that a speaker manufacturer is using non-compliant wood,” CARB spokesman Stanich said, “we can go into a local retailer and take a sample, bring it back, take it apart, and test the wood in our labs.”

The editorial staff of The Integrator can claim no expertise in cancer research, materials science, manufacturing, or accounting. However, after talking to several experts and perusing hundreds of pages of info, we have to say that on the balance, these regulations seem ill-advised. The cost is high and the benefits are suspect. And how much money did we Cali residents spend to make this mess?