Well you have managed to build some very successful businesses with little burned bridges. You have risen to the proverbial top of our industry. For the most part your clients are very pleased with the work your guys do. Your employees are prosperous and happy. Your showroom is second to none, with maybe the only exception a few product choices, but hey I understand the market your in and the choices that a dealer needs to make. The training facilities are again top notch. People far and wide respect and look up to you, and I do think you’re an all around great guy.

Not that my opinion amounts to jack squat but I hope that this helps.

Well thank you!! What product choices do you have issue with??? Jeff

It seems you replaced Revel that you had in some of the rooms with B&W. Are you still using analog PAD8's for the audio distribution?

CresNut,
We have never sold Revel. We sell Wilson, B&W, Klipsch and Triad because we believe that they represent the fewest number of venders and give us the most flexibility, choice and potential to meet the needs of our very diversified client base. We also sell Meridian and JBL Synthesis as complete theater packages. We put a lot of thought into these choices. Every vendor in this business wants to be displayed in our Design Center so we have complete flexibility as to what we choose. All of these lines are here because we think they create the absolute best selection and currently I wouldn’t change a thing.

Yes we use the Crestron Pad8 for basic music distribution in the Design Center and the surrounding outside grounds. The only exception to that is we use the Crestron Pvid to distribute digital signals directly into our Meridian speaker demos including the DSP7000's in my office. All of the major demos are stand alone systems so the Pad8 is not used there. Have you ever been here?

Sorry I stand corrected. I have been there a couple of times, once when you were in construction and then again after most of the rooms were finished. At that time the naked room was not yet finished.
Also it may have been that you were evaluating the Revel line then because you were talking about what models to showcase in a couple rooms.

Have a great Expo!

GotGame....yes we have been invited to the NASCAR racing...sounds like fun!

I agree with Jeff that Control4 will open doors and not be an immediate replacement for experienced AMX, Crestron and Lutron dealers. New and established dealers should give it serious consideration. Dealers in the ramp up stages have enough on their plates, so I suggest to wait a while.

I also agree that the PHAST founders had little to do with the direction AMX took it, however, ALL of the software and most of the hardware problems were at PHAST long before AMX purchased it. The Landmark software was extremely unstable UNTIL AMX took it over and spent wads of money fixing it. Ditto on the hardware. I disagree also with the comments that the hardware is the same as 7 years ago...yes, they are the same or similar p/ns, but every piece has had major reliability improvements. Both the software and hardware are very stable today.

The PHAST (Landmark) system still is ahead of it's time in many areas, but, w/o upper management support it is going away. The writing has been on the wall for some time even though AMX denies it. AMX dealers are not stupid; we know that most of the support has quit and moved to Crestron and Control4, very few SAM modules have been developed and/or updated over the past 3 years, AMX raised Landmark prices 15% across the board w/o raising NetLinx a penny, no support for full features of the Modero product line, etc.

We were a loyal AMX dealer for years and stuck with them even when forced to NetLinx. We are still an AMX dealer but have also picked up Creston and have found that they have a lot of similar features and problems as AMX, however, their support has been beyond comparison.

If allowed, we will continue to be dealers for both, and, if Control4 makes sense, them too. We are not members of the "product of the month" club and look long and hard at products before taking them on....that is why I politely decided against Xplore Technologies and look like a genius for not wasting my time or money on them. I got a lot of pressure from fellow dealers and even other manufacturers to support Xplore. In fact it was more of luck and just hunches that kept me away from what seemed like a very exciting product line.

I do wish Control4 the best of luck...it doesn't do our industry any good to have companies fail. I wanted Xplore to succeed, I just wanted to wait and see....maybe too many of us did the same?

Just my two cents!

Randy

I must have missed that part :-). OK, I agree, it got better. On the other hand, could it have gotten worse :-)?

See above :-).

I always liked the part where I would talk the AMX "tech support" person through the programming steps because they couldn't understand the question.

But look at the positive side! When they drop Landmark after they've sold off their inventory they'll drop support and repairs for it like a hot potato just like they did with AudioEase and the Landmark lighting stuff. And then you'll get to tell your customer how you can't service their 100K system and they'll have to buy a new one! Of course it may not be from you, but what the hey.

This message was edited by QQQ on 08/29/04 05:30 ET.

QQQ,

No, it probably couldn't have gotten much worse!

Unfortunately we have to talk some Crestron support people through some of the steps too. The part of their support that is "beyone comparison" is in the attitudes, quantity or engineers available and the quantity of classes.

Your last paragraph sums up my hesitations with not only Landmark, but also startup. If I didn't care about future supportability I would still be doing Landmark systems and taking the money to the bank! Since I have to look customer's in the eye and I like to sleep at night, I can't recommend any product that I feel has real potential support issues. With that said, I hope AMX will treat Landmark far different than Audio Ease and the lighting issues, precedence says "NO", but who knows??

Back to the original intent of the post, Control4 is exciting and something to keep an eye on. I felt this way when I originally heard about them and feel even stronger seeing the ex-AMX employees they have hired and, such strong comments from Jeff Hoover certainly doesn't hurt and alone would have grabbed my attention!

Again, I wish them luck, but a lot of us are hessitant to jump in with both feet...and justly so! If the product is right, hopefully I can help them succeed.

Randy

Companies like ours (www.charmedquark.com) have a big head start on providing IP based control systems. I spoke with the Control4 folks, and from their response, it sounds to me like they are heading to just be a 3rd tier company trying to compete against Crestron and AMX on their own turf (i.e. lots of custom designed hardware.) Why do you need another company doing what is already being done? That's my question.

To us, the deal is that designing your own hardware (and the expense and margins that requires) is a losing game. We believe that software is what is important (in terms of functionality of an automation system I mean, obviously service and installation and all of that remains the same either way), and that hardware design and manufacture should be left to specialty companies. That's the way to create a unique path to the same place, and justify an attack on the status quo. If you are going to try to out-Crestron Crestron, that's a losing game. They can beat you purely by marketing themselves as the 'safe choice' and a hardware based company probably will not be able to afford sufficient cost margins to get past that.

That's my view anyway.

Dean

As with most of these posts over at AVS your product IMO is best served with a marketing team. You design but a marketing team can help shed light on where your product will grow. I can't ever see installing your product in a client’s home until that basic concept is in force. As with AMX acquiring Audio Ease. Dropped the support and many potential clients who need support and upgrading now have a sour taste of automation.

I bring this up as unless a business has a plan of growth and brings in outside help to 'audit' the direction why would I believe your product will be around anymore than an Audio Ease product. What steps have you taken to insure the support of your product in the event of a company buying your product or an unfortunate accident to you?

Question to ponder and ones I will be waiting on an answer.

Are you planning on attending CEDIA? Will you have a booth? As a designer shouldn't you see what products are and will be in the market as users will be expecting your product to control them?

I'll be asking Control4 some of the same questions about my conserns.

QQQ- Your up!

Dave

There is no guarantee that any company will be around, no matter how large. But we have incorporated now, so there is a legal entity beyond me and I'm not the only person in the company anymore, and the product is owned by that entity now not by me.

So many people have continued to say from the day I first started talking about this project that I won't be around and I won't be around, but the product keeps growing and growing. I've been working on this product (and the underlying software technology) for over 12 years, there's no chance I'm going to just throw that away and go join an ashram.

If some other company buys the product, then one would assume that they are buying it because they want to take it onward and forward, else they wouldn't spend the money to buy it. It's always possible that any company will drop a product line, and it's certainly possible that any product line you buy from AMX or Crestron will be dropped. It's the cost of doing business I guess.


I would like to, but at this point we need to put our limited investment money and time into improving the product. As with sports, sometimes you learn more by watching it on TV (or reading about it later in this case) than actually being there anyway. So though I'd love to schmooze and all, there will be plenty of discussion of what was there for all of use to read after the fact. So I don't think I'll be unaware of anything important going on there. I'd prefer to put a week into development at this point.

I would think though that next time around we will definitely be there ourself as a vendor.

The way to make money is to have something for the masses. From a monetary stand point the largest producers of truffles or fine wine palls in size to the Wrigley gum or Campbell soup. Ferrari versus GM. Take this stuff, make it reliable, repeatable and EASY to use. I have an expensive LCD control that I need to rely on when I'm sitting in front of a big TV something doesn't make sense. It's not the hardware - it's the person that can make it happen - so more than the upper stratosphere of people can buy afford it. You can have all of that target market and I'll take 10% of the other and we'll compare check books at the end of the year! And I bet I'll end up getting a fair share of your market also.

It's not about how fancy I can do things it's about putting music in people houses and making them smile and tell you how much they love it.

Marc

I agree. But the problem is that market really doesn't exist, so in the real world (for now) you wouldn't even make a living. You have to convince the hoi polloi that they *want* it first, and then you can sell them something. Clearly I think that IP based products like ours stand to do well in such a market should it come to pass, but it hasn't so far and it probably is a ways out.

And the other problem is that unless they can install it themselves (and you can forget that), you cannot sell it for a price that would be acceptable. Most CE companies will tell you that $300 is the 'masses' break point for price. If it's more than that, it becomes a steeply harder sell as you move up from that price. Do you think you could deliver a control system for $300? I know I couldn't. Even our software just by itself costs almost that much, and that's without anything to control or setup of the automation system.

The only way I see it happening is if new construction starts putting standardized packages of electronics. Then it would become feasible. If I could sell you CQC with the F34RB package or whatever, and you could unpack it, plug it into your network and it would know that certain devices are there and be set up for that system, then you'd have something.

Of course the other, even less likely, scenario is a completely ubiquitous auto-discovery mechanism used by all devices, so that a system like ours could just interrogate the home system and adapt to it. But that's even further out, if ever.