Category: Current and Future Trends

Article

Lock Your Doors with Bluetooth Smart Technology | Bluetooth Blog

From the horse’s mouth

Kwikset

Product Page

Press Release

My Comments

Kwikset have released the first door lock to exploit the nascent Bluetooth Smart technology that is part of the iPhone 4 onwards as well as an increasing number of Android and Blackberry smartphones.

Like most of these “cutting-edge” electromechanical door locks, this unit is a “bore-through” cylindrical deadbolt, most likely because this form-factor is considered very popular on the American house’s front door. From the outside, the Kevo deadbolt looks like any other lock of this type but has a distinct blue ring that lights up under certain circumstances. This, and the fact that it still works with the regular key, keeps a perceived aesthetic and useability comfort zone that householders have valued with these locks.

But the Kevo deadbolt implements a proximity-based operation technique where you have a supplied key fob or a smartphone running the Kwikset Kevo app acting as the virtual key fob releasing this lock when you are near it from the outside. This will light up the blue ring on the outside and you touch the lock’s bezel to cause the bolt to retract/

Like most, if not all. of these “smart-locks”, the Kwikset deadbolt is its own access-control system with the ability to log when a person has opened the door. It also supports time-limited and “one-shot” keys so you can limit when a person has access to the premises, which is a boon with most of us who engage tradespeople, carers or even want to have friends and family around and factor in early arrivals. This even supports the ability to allow a user to send a key via email to another user which can play its part in many different ways such as a family member or friend who is lodging at your house while they are in town.

But the Kwikset Kevo deadbolt is more or less standalone in nature and not able to work with a home network. Personally, I would like to see this and other locks of this kind support the integration with home networks and home-automation systems either at purchase or through an aftermarket kit that exposes these functions to the network technology that you are using at a later date. The reason I support the use of an aftermarket kit is the fact that these products can be in service for many many years and upgrading towards newer network functionality should avoid the need to junk a perfectly good lockset.

This is one of many trends that are affecting the residential door lock and bringing this device towards the online and mobile era.

Article

HP, allies launch Mopria to keep printers relevant in mobile era | Mobile – CNET News

My Comments

HP Envy 120 designer all-in-one inkjet printer

A common reality with the desktop printer is that you need to implement drivers on a desktop computer in order to have the printer work properly with that computer. This has confused many people who simply wanted to “walk up and print” at another location or install a newer printer. The situation is very difficult for mobile and embedded devices where these devices require limited memory space or hard-to-adapt software.

There have been various attempts at providing driver-free printing for mobile and embedded computers. One of these was UPnP Printing which allowed one to print a JPEG image or XHTML-formatted document on a suitable network printer but this was only followed through by HP with their consumer multifunction desktop printers and Nokia with their Symbian-based feature phones. HP also took this further with their ePrint “print-by-email” setup which just about every consumer and small-business HP desktop printer is equipped with.

Apple made a bit of headway with this issue by implementing AirPrint for their iOS devices and Macintosh computers running MacOS X Lion. Here, this was totally “driver-free” and more printer manufacturers came on board offering it for newer printer ranges or as “field-update” firmware for some of their existing models.

There needed to be an effort that is centred around one or more existing standards and augmented by a logo-driven marketing platform in order to provide driver-free printing to other regular, mobile and embedded computing platforms. No doubt, as Apple and their fanbois have their faith behind the AirPrint ecosystem, the Mopria ecosystem will be offered as a complementary system for other “open-frame” computing platforms.

The Mopria platform is recognising the idea that the smartphone or tablet that runs a mobile operating system is serving users as either a sole or anciliary computing device. But I would also like to see Microsoft and the open-source community adopt Mopria as a driver-free system-wide printing solution for Windows and Linux respectively in order to provide the true “walk-up and print” ability to regular computers that run these operating systems.

The embedded device community could place value on Mopria as a way to add network printing to all sorts of dedicated devices. For example, the smart TV or set-top box could exploit Mopria for interactive TV’s printing needs such as coupon printing. Similarly, devices like energy meters or “wellness” devices could use the technology to print trend-based charts for energy used or personal-wellness stats.

This may be early days yet but by using a device standard with a distinct customer-recognisable logo, Mopria could be in a position to provide driver-free printing for most applications. They also need the help of other industry standards groups like DLNA or Blu-Ray Disc to provide leverage for Mopria in the embedded-device space.

Article

Cambridge Audio’s Minx Xi music streamer packs built-in amp and 24-bit DAC (video)

Link to video

From the horse’s mouth

Cambridge Audio

Product Page

My Comments

Another product appears that bridges the home network with high-quality sound, this time in the form a network media receiver that can connect to a set of high-quality speakers.

Cambridge Audio have released the Minx Xi which is a network media receiver that has an integrated 40-watt amplifier that can drive most good-quality bookshelf speakers. This is similar to equipment like the Denon CEOL Piccolo music system that I previously reviewed or the Linn DS network media players.

This unit has been engineered for high-quality digital sound reproduction and can serve as a digital amplifier for most digital-audio sources. Like most of these devices, the Minx Xi can pick up the “new shortwave” that is the Internet radio as well as access to BBC iPlayer or Pandora.

You can play the file-based digital music content from your UPnP AV/DLNA network-attached storage device and have the best-case sound coming from the content. This includes the content that is prepared for high-quality sound reproduction such as 192khz/24-bit master files or files delivered using FLAC or AAC. This content can also be held on a USB hard disk or memory key; or you could stream content from any Bluetooth-capable smartphone or portable device.

You could set this system up to work with a pair of bookshelf or freestanding speakers and choose to augment the bass for those speakers that are “thin” in that regard using an active subwoofer.

Like most of this equipment, this unit supports control from smartphones or tablets using a manufacturer-supplied app which can lead to quicker access to desired content. Of course, you can control the Minx Xi from its front panel or remote control, which comes in handy if you quickly want to skip tracks, pause the music to take a phone call or “wind the wick up” for your favourite song.

It represents a trend to provide network-capable audio equipment that can be the heart of a high-quality three-piece music system suitable for those small apartments that are part of the downsizing culture.

Articles

PlayStation companion app for iOS, Android due in November | Internet & Media – CNET News

Sony to Launch PS4 Companion App in November | Mashable

My Comments

Sony is intending to add value to the PlayStation 4 platform by releasing a companion app for the iOS and Android mobile platforms that works with this console.

But what benefits will it offer to the gamers who use this app and associate it with their console? One would be to exploit the smartphone’s or tablet’s screen as a second screen which would come in to play with a wide range of games. For example, the screen could be used to show a leaderboard or scoreboard for a game while using the big screen just for the gameplay activity. Some adventure-based games may implement this second screen as an always-displayed map of either the game’s whole world or area of local relevance so as to help with fulfilling a particular quest.

The other main benefit is to have the mobile device serve as a controller, which I would see as improving the gameplay experience for some games and players. The touchscreens offered by these devices could allow for intuitive positioning of players in a sports game or could make it real for a strategy game to be played on a console.

Sony is also intending to make these devices become a path to the PlayStation Network online gaming service such as to see what others are playing and how they are performing as well as buying games and downloadable content using the mobile device for delivery to your PS4.

What I like of this is that various gaming tasks can be made more intuitive for more players by exploiting the touchscreen rather than hammering D-pads and buttons to configure a game’s participant. Similarly, it could open the path for other games types to be playable on consoles rather than just on regular computers or mobile devices.

Similarly it could open up the games consoles to user classes other than the teenage or young-adult males of this world by making them easier to use by older people or women.

Article

Binatone’s Brick phone was acceptable in the ’80s (hands-on)

My Comments

Ever so often, a company will make a “modern” take of an older product or design that has attained “classic” status in some form. This is typically by exploiting the device’s industrial design and function; and making a device that uses newer technology in it.

In this case, the device of concern is the classic Motorola “brick” mobile phone. This was a first-generation mobile handheld phone design that was effectively shaped like a brick with the speaker, microphone and keypad placed along the narrow edge of this phone and it used a “rubber-duck” whip antenna. This design, which initially came about in the mid 1980s, was developed for the original AMPS analogue cellular-mobile-phone technology and the phone was gradually evolved with newer power-efficient circuitry including an LCD display rather than an LED display. When the GSM digital-cellular-phone technology came on line, there was even a variant of this handset that was designed for this technology.

This design became popular with people in the building and allied trades because of its durability and was valued as a way for these workers to “catch” new work while on the job without needing to be near their van to answer a car phone or carry around a very heavy transportable “bagphone”.

Binatone have given this phone the “One More Time” treatment by releasing a GSM mobile phone that is based on this design. It would be able to do what is expected of a basic GSM cellular phone including being able to support Bluetooth Headset/Hands-Free Profile technology.

But what impressed me about this phone was that it can be set up to be a Bluetooth Headset or Hands Free device for another phone such as a smartphone. A classic example may be to have a “retro chic” appearance or to have that cheap-looking phone so as to avoid flashing the iPhone 5S or other premium smartphone in an environment where a nice phone attracts the attention of street robbers or potential “gold-diggers”. Similarly, you could operate a 2-account setup to dodge exorbitant roaming fees for you or keep work and home separate.

The personal worry I have about the Binatone Brick phone is that it may not be a durable handset like the original Motorola designs but be more the “novelty” phone-accessory product that is flashed on the Internet in order to cash in on 80s retro chic. This is in a similar vein to the cheap table radios and music systems that are styled like the classic Wurlitzer 1015 juke box or the recent crop of cheap record players that copy portable-record-player designs of the 1950s and 1960s, where these products don’t necessarily do justice to the original design.

Article

Time Warner Cable will let you junk your set-top box next year | Internet & Media – CNET News

My Comments

Since the late 1980s, the American cable-TV industry had relied on the provision of a set-top box that they lease to customers as a way to control the business relationship. This was even though since the start of that decade, most “brown-goods” companies sold TVs and video-recorders with “cable-ready” tuners that can be directly connected to a cable-TV service.

The consumer-electronics industry and related press had been crying foul that the cable companies were effectively controlling their customers and these customers couldn’t gain access to desireable functions that the devices offered like picture-in-picture or improved remote controls. As well, the cable companies have required that customers use these set-top boxes for advanced services like pay-per-view TV and have supplied set-top boxes which are PVRs. Even the CableCARD technology which was to put more power in the customers’ hands has been met with frustration such as requiring a truck-roll for the installation of this equipment even though it could be supplied as a self-install kit.

A trend that is breaking through and affecting pay-TV is to use the home network to distribute the content to the display device. The need to bring this about was driven by the popularity of the Apple iPad and other tablet computers being used to personally view video content and these devices had effectively become an alternative to the old portable TV with the 12”-14” screen. The cable industry was also facing the reality of American households “cutting the cord” i.e. abandoning cable TV service and watching their video content either from free-to-air TV or online video services like Netflix and Hulu.

This has been aggravated through the availability of devices like multimedia-capable games consoles, Blu-Ray players and network video players that work as front-ends for the online video services.

In Australia, Foxtel woke up by providing IP-hosted pay-TV under the Foxtel Play / Foxtel Go banners where people just used particular games consoles, smart TVs, regular computers or mobile devices to watch Foxtel pay TV via the Internet.

Now Time Warner Cable have allowed a person who signs up to a “double-play” package of Internet and cable-TV with them to dispense with their set-top box if they use a Roku or XBox 360 to watch the TV content. This is starting to appear also as a trend amongst other US pay-TV firms and is overcoming various hurdles and requirements like closed-captioning, emergency alerts and “delay-to-the-gate” blackouts for sports broadcasts.

Here, these services may be offered as the “value option” for households who don’t need the PVR-capable set-top box whereas the PVR is offered for the packages with “all the fruit”. These packages would also integrate the IP-based functionality with, perhaps, support for network viewing of PVR-hosted content.

Personally, I would also see this evolve to other common platforms like the PlayStation 3 and the smart-TV / Blu-Ray-player platforms that the likes of Samsung, Sony and Panasonic are building up. It could end up as a chance for the cable industry to construct packages tariff charts and service options that exploit the capabilities of these IP-based setups.

In my first part of the series on this year’s International Funkaustellung 2013 trade show, I had covered the personal IT trends that were being underscored here. These were the rise and dominance of the highly-capable Android smartphone, the arrival of the large-screen “phablet” smartphones, Sony offering high-grade digital-photo abilities to smartphones and improving on these in their smartphones, the convertible and detachable-keyboard notebook-tablet computers becoming a mature device class as well as the arrival of the smartwatch as a real product class.

Now I am focusing on what is to happen within the home for this second part.

Television-set and home AV technology

The television set is still considered an integral part of the connected home, especially as a group-viewing display device for content delivered via the Internet or the home network.

4K Ultra-high-definition TVs

Most of the activity surrounding the 4K ultra-high-definition TV technology has been with manufacturers releasing second-generation 4K models with the focus on the 55” and 65” screen sizes. It is also the time when the HDMI 2.0 connection specification, which yields the higher throughput for the 4K ultra-high-definition video plus support for 32 audio streams and more, has been called and most of these manufacturers are accommodating this in their second-generation designs whether baked in or as a firmware update as in the case of Sony’s newly-released 55” and 65” 4K designs.

Panasonic had initially held off with releasing a 4K set but released the Smart VIERA WT600 which is a 55” OLED 4K which had the “second-generation” credentials like the aforementioned high-speed HDMI 2.0 connection. LG had launched a pair of 4K models with one having a 50-watt soundbar and “micro-dimming” which adjusts the screen brightness in an optimum manner for the video material. Even Haier, the Chinese consumer-goods manufacturer had jumped in on the 4K bandwagon.

There are still the very-large-screen 4K UHDTV sets with screens of 84” to 94”. Now Samsung have launched 4K models with astonishing screen sizes of 98” and 110”.

At the moment, there is some work taking place concerning the delivery of content with the 4K screen resolution. Sony have set up a download-based content delivery service with the FMP-X1 hard-disk-based media player and based around a rental-based or download-to-own business model. Samsung is partnering with Eutelsat to deliver 4K UHDTV broadcasts to the home using satellite-TV technology as well as others working with the Astra satellite team to achieve a similar goal.

OLED TV screens

Another key trend that is affecting the “main-lounge-room” TV set is the OLED display reaching 55” and above in screen size. Those of you who own or have used a Samsung, HTC or Sony smartphone will have seen this technology in action on the phone’s display.

Samsung and LG have increased their factory output of these large-size screens which has allowed the material price of these screens to become cheaper. Here, it has allowed for more manufacturers to run an OLED model in their lineup, whether with a flat display or a convex curved display. Most of these models are 4K displays and have a 55” screen. Haier even went to the lengths of designing a 55” flat OLED TV that is in a housing that can’t easily be tipped over while LG had fielded a model with a flat OLED screen and a model with a curved OLED screen.

For that matter, LG improved on the aesthetics of the flatscreen TV by implementing a “picture-frame” design which make the TV look like a beautiful large piece of art on the wall. This was augmented with a screenshow collection of artworks that are part of the TV’s firmware.

Other TV and home-AV trends

Brought on by the Philips Ambilight background-lighting initiative, some of the manufacturers are integrating LED-based background lights in to their TVs to provide the complimentary lighting. Philips even took this further with the ability to synchronise LED-based multicolour room lighting with their set’s Ambilight background lighting.

What I also suspect is happening with TVs destined for the European market is that they will be equipped with DVB-T2 digital TV tuners. This is to complement the arrival of DVB-T2 TV-station multiplexes in various countries that are primarily offering HDTV broadcasts.

Sony is also taking a stab at high-grade home audio by building up a file-based music distribution system that implements hard-disk-based media players with one downloading the music as files and syncing it to these hard-disk media players. Like SACD, this technology is meant to sound as good as the studio master tapes. Comments have been raised about the provision of two different files for each album or song – one that is mastered to best-quality standards where there is the full dynamic range another file, packaged as an MP3 perhaps, that has compression and limiting for casual or “noisy-environment” listening.

The home network

TV via the home network

Broadcast-LAN devices

There has been a fair bit of activity on the “broadcast-LAN” front courtesy of the SAT-IP initiative for satellite TV which I previously touched on. This has manifested in a few satellite-based broadcast-LAN boxes that are equipped with multiple tuners showing up at this year’s show including one 2-tuner model from Devolo and one four-tuner DLNA-equipped model from Grundig.

Similarly, SiliconDust have brought in the SimpleTV service model to Europe which provides a network-hosted PVR and broadcast-LAN setup for regular TV. I would see this has having great traction with Europeans because all of the European countries have free-to-air offerings anchored by the well-funded public TV services like BBC, ARD/ZDF, France Télévisions, and DR which yield content of high production and artistic quality. AVM have also used this show to launch a SAT-IP-compliant broadcast-LAN setup for the DVB-C cable-TV networks that exist primarily in Europe but links to an existing Wi-Fi network segment which wouldn’t let the device do its job in an optimum manner.

Other TV-over-Internet technology

Philips has also joined in the “over-the-top” cloud-driven TV party that Intel and Google were in by putting up their concept of a “virtual-cable” service delivered via the Internet.

LAN technologies

Wi-Fi wireless networks

Even though the 802.11ac high-speed Wi-Fi wireless network standard isn’t ratified by the IEEE, nearly every major manufacturer of home-network equipment has at least one, if not two, wireless routers that support this technology. Some even supply USB network-adaptor dongles that allow you to benefit from this technology using your existing computer equipment.

HomePlug powerline networks

There have been a few HomePlug AV2 adaptors appearing with the Continental-style “Schuko” AC plug on them, such as the Devolo dLAN 650+ and the TP-Link TLP-6010 but the manufacturers wouldn’t really state whether these fully work to the HomePlug AV2 standard. They are typically rated at 600Mbps for their link speed and are at the moment the Single-stream type.

As for Devolo, they have launched the dLAN 500 WiFi which is a HomePlug AV 500 “extension access point” for wireless networks. Here, Devolo have made an attempt in the right direction for “quick setup” of multiple-access-point Wi-Fi segments by implementing a “settings-clone” function. But this works using the HomePlug AV backbone and only where you use multiple dLAN 500 WiFi access points on the same backbone.

Home Automation

Some of the appliance manufacturers have gone down the “connected path” by equipping some of the top-end appliance models with Wi-Fi connectivity and implementing a manufacturer-developed dashboard app for the iOS and/or Android mobile platform. Here, these apps either work as a secondary control surface for the appliance or provide extended setup and configuration options that aren’t available on the appliance’s control surface.

Samsung went about this with their high-end washing machine where they use this connectivity as a remote “dashboard” so you can know if the machine is underway and on the correct cycle or be able to be notified when the washing is done. Philips uses a similar setup for their multifunction countertop cooker but it allows you to determine a recipe on your phone and dump that down to the cooker. But this, like a similarly-equipped coffee machine was really a proof-of-concept machine.

Thomson had offered a convincing home-automation kit which uses its own connectivity technology but can connect to Z-Wave or Zigbee networks using a bridge module. My question about this kit is whether you can start out with what is supplied but grow beyond by adding in the extra modules from Thomsom or other third parties as required.

Other Trends

This year has become a key year for vehicle builders to push forward connected app-driven infotainment and telematics in their vehicles that will hit European roads. It implements a mobile broadband connection to the car via the driver’s smartphone or another device along with apps for popular online services optimised for safe use in the car or to work with the car.

It has been exemplified by Ford implementing a “SYNC AppLink” setup that allows users to control favourite smartphone apps from their vehicle’s dashboard, including the ability to support voice control.

Conclusion

It certainly shows that at this year’s IFA, the personal IT products like tablets, convertible notebook computers and large-screen smartphones are becoming a very diverse and mature product class while the 4K ultra high definition TV technology is gaining some traction as a real display class.