Commence the “light bulb” jokes

From TWICE (registration required) comes news that 21 companies and organizations — including CEA (but not CEDIA?) — have joined to form the Home Lighting Control Alliance to promote lighting controls for new construction, renovations and retrofits. Of all the niche markets served by the professional installer channel today, I’ve long thought that lighting controls had the most potential to break out. Particularly with more reliable wireless technologies such as Z-Wave (already supported by Logitech in its highest-end Harmony remotes) and Zigbee gaining momentum, could be a natural growth opportunity for the Geek Squads and Firedogs after they have grabbed the low-hanging fruit of home theater installations.

However, there are a few key missing participants in this effort, such as Z-Wave and Lutron, which holds a commanding patent portfolio in home lighting. Furthermore, the business models of CEDIA installers leave little incentive for standardization. This space needs a major disruptive catalyst to set it in motion. Insteon products have hit the right price point; the obstacle is democratizing installation.

Logitech whacks Wi-Fi’s waiting game

As we continue to trudge toward a MIMO-based Wi-Fi standard that is robust enough to withstand the assault of microwave ovens and cordless phones, companies seeking to simplify wireless digital music distribution aren’t standing still. Squarely between Wi-Fi witholders Soundcast Systems at the point-to-point entry level and Sonos aimed at the Magnolia set.

Now Logitech is expanding its ho-hum 2.4 GHz-based Wi-Fi-alternative music streaming system marketed with the “Music Anywhere” logo in a dramatic way by adding a sleek remote control that can integrate with iTunes and other jukeboxes while streaming DRM-protected files by capturing processed audio output and then digitally encoding it again; the resulting system is the Wireless DJ Music System. Even with a two-room limit, this should be an exceptionally easy to use, flexible and robust system available for a fraction of the cost of the Sonos product.

Beam me up… to the highest price

Much like digital cameras have, in the opinion of some, now reached beyond the quality of their forebears, Slim Devices — a pioneer of the audio-focused digital media receiver — is attempting to surpass the finest of compact disc players with the Transporter. At nearly $2,000, the “no compromises” receiver is the first component rack form factor since Turtle Beach’s once best-in-class but now discontinued AudioTron. (Slim Devices has bought the Google AdWord “AudioTron.”) My favorite feature, at least on paper, is its “clever knob,” which sounds a bit like a British schoolboy insult.

It’s good to see nimble Slim Devices continuing to innovate now that the category has attracted the likes of Sony and its CPF-IX001 2.1 wireless streaming system. The Wi-Fi streamer lacks the expansive display of the Squeezebox, but integrates some powerful compact speakers. There’s also low-end competition from Philips’ SLA 5520, its’ $99 digital audio adapter.

You can’t keep a questionable idea down

Even after the passing of Prismiq, companies continue the quest to get audio from heyah to theyah inside the home. Philips, the most aggressive mainstream consumer electronics company in producing actual home networking products (as opposed to grand visions) is releasing the $99 Streamium digital media adapter, based on 802.11g.

The price point for the compact unit is a fraction of what previous DMAs have sold for, but consider that many consumers would want to connect this to some inexpensive boombox or shelf system in a bedroom. In addition, the perceived lack of need and complexity of home networking looms larger in keeping this market in a niche than price.

SoundCast is rolling out its iCast product, which uses low-bandwidth network-sniffing technology to avoid interference and is such interoperable with Wi-Fi. It actually sounds similar to the PlayLink cubes introduced by Logitech last year, which more flexibly served as an Ethernet bridge. The iCast’s Achilles heel is that, like AirPort Express, there’s no local control of the source audio.

Prismiq passes on

It looks like the big "clueless" consumer technology companies weren't the only ones who couldn't make the digital media receiver market work. Pioneer Prismiq, which PC Mag editor Bill Howard considered to have one of the best such products, is discontinuing all of its products, including the media player that won it Best of CES accolades in 2003. I'd always found its interface to be a bit raw and geeky, but such products were really ahead of their time and their functionality wasn't enticing enough to drive sales of standalone devices.

Furthermore, while the Prismiq media player may have been capable, many products in the category had simply abysmal interfaces, bringing down the whole category. The work going on now with DLNA should prove more useful to consumers in traditional consumer electronics categories.

And then there were less than Digital 5

Mediabolic acquired Digital 5 today, bringing inevitable consolidation of the home networking middleware market. Digital 5 had actually powered many of the early "connected DVD" players as well as the NetGear networked music player, but such products were beyond the home networking state of too many consumers' homes. Competitors remain, however, including Fabrik, the software behind the recently released Maxtor Fusion NAS drive from Seagate, and Implicit Networks, which developed the server software for the Acoustic Research MediaBridge digital media receiver.

Mediabolic has made good inroads with Intel and some of the networked storage vendors. It now needs to make more inroads with mainstream consumer electronics companies. At CES, DLNA was encouraging these giants to look more seriously at home networking than they ever have. That's a good climate for Mediabolic business development.

Averatec’s UMPC: Getting warmer

Reg Hardware breaks news of a T-Mobile Sidekick-inspired high-resolution, low-cost, fully loaded UMPC that Averatec plas to offer in the fall. Well, it won't be all those things at the same time, but that's ok. A $600 price point would go a long way toward helping consumers overlook the lack of a killer application for this platform.

The concept drawings Averatec's offering has a dedicated keyboard, which is generally good. However, I don't think the typing while standing usage scenario will prove very popular. Flat surfaces are plentiful, and having to type more than a sentence of two on a device as heavy as the UMPC s just palnful. I learned that a while back.

In other news, the Samsung Q1 bundle that will go for about $1,400 in Korea — with its wrap case that includes a detached keyboard — brings back memories of a Newton 2000/2100 package that appeared near the end of the line for Apple's uber-PDA.

DVR’s remote possiblities

If Cablevision's DVR in the cloud can withstand legal scrutiny and be at least as reliable as current video-on-demand services, it would not only mean increased pressure for TiVo and the other retail DVR also-rans, but a threat to Media Center, which has much of its value riding on digital video recording. Neither platform has introduced anything more compelling than its DVR capabilities and there are plenty of other solutions for getting media from Computer A to Television B.

By delivering video directly from its servers, Cablevision and its fellow oligopolists could cheaply provide the equivalent of that holy grail of multi-room DVR without having to deal with the thorny technology and expense of high-speed home networking. Most DVR users with flat screens would probably give their fast-forward buttons to lose the bulky boxes in their living rooms, although removing the hard drive would make it more difficult to enable portable device sideloading like DirecTV2Go.