IMO - Sonos was the beginning of the end of custom AV, and if you tried to fight it, I'll bet you're *really* feeling it now.

Lately, I've been trying to leverage the features that are built into modern displays (mainly Sonys), and when I listen to customers, they say they use YouTube for music. YOUTUBE. They just put it on and it plays and plays and plays.

Where does Sonos fit into that? Well, if the stupid Connect Amp had an optical input and behaved like the Playbar, I could use it to power a pair of local speakers that I could install and actually make some money on, and not be on the hook for any remote programming, which we've needed mainly for input switching and controlling STBs. Sorry, but the Playbar looks like garbage in most high-end installations, and is too small to be an LCR bar. It's not even close. In fact, it completely sucks in that regard, but the functionality is hard to beat!

So now this new amp comes out and seems to address this issue. DVDs are all but dead - everything is streamed, which comes through the display. The audio can be handled by Sonos, locally as well as distributed. And STBs can be controlled through the displays (and usually can link together for distributed video), so now all the hardware you need can pretty much fit into a SnapAV TV backbox.

The way I see it, we install networks (until 5G kills THAT), TVs and speakers. That's about it. Even the network required to support all this can fit into a 42" can for many jobs. On top of that, there's *no* programming anymore, which is awesome, IMO, because I don't want to be on the hook indefinitely for anyone's job - I've had to manage enough Crestron jobs to be VERY sick of that. I don't feel the *least* bit bad telling a customer that some huge company sent out a duff firmware update that screwed things up.

The bummer in all this, IMO, is lighting control. People have tried to cheap out on that too, and while it "works", it's garbage compared to properly done panelized lighting.

Anyway, sorry for rambling, it may have been the (several) Guinness's talking. But I'm staying busy AND still making pretty good money, so it's not like things are bad. They're just changing, which is nothing new for us.