Home Building Trends Affecting the AV Integration Industry

This week’s post is about how the housing market affects the audio / visual integration business. When the economy suffers, less new homes are built. When less new homes are built, less potential clients are available to residential audio / visual systems integrators. When the economy is strong, about 1 million new homes start construction per year in America. In 2010, construction began on only 587,600 new homes. In 2005, almost 2 million houses were built. 2 million to 587,600 is a drastic drop over five years. That means that there were only about a quarter the number of prospective new home construction clients for audio / visual integrators in 2010 (Crutsinger, 2011). That cannot possibly be good for the industry, but perhaps there is a solution.

Alternative Energy Sources

We live in a world that is fueled by fossil fuel and organic compounds found in the Earth. Oil and coal are non-renewable resources that are quickly approaching an end. Our daily lives rely so heavily on these things that it will take drastic changes to end non-renewable resource use. There are a couple renewable options available for homeowners today to reduce their carbon footprint: they are solar panels and wind turbines. The reason that every home is not equipped with either of these technologies is because of their high initial cost. Both will save people money in the long run, but the cost of entry is steep. So, which is better? It all depends on the application and where you live.

Steve Jobs' TED Speech

This week’s post is about Steve Jobs and his speech at Stanford University. Perhaps the rest of the class will chose to write about this TED speech as well, but the products Apple made under Steve Jobs’ leadership directly affect the residential audio / visual integration business. The man talks about how he overcame being adopted, dropping out of college, and having cancer.

CEDIA: The Association for the Best Residential Electronics Systems Integrators

CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) is the industry association for audio and video integrators. CEDIA is based in Indianapolis, Indiana and it offers certification, standardization, and network opportunities to its members. There are about 3,500 CEDIA companies around the world. Jump past the break to learn more about what CEDIA does for the industry and what it could do for a business.

Audio for Green Rides

Get ready for an Innovation special. This week’s post will shift its focus away from the green home audio / visual world and into the automotive world. But, don’t worry; this post will still be very green and there might even be a touch of audio. Manufacturers of new energy efficient vehicles do everything they can to squeeze out every last mile of range possible. Improving aerodynamics and reducing weight usually accomplishes this. Hybrid cars that use both a gas engine and electric motors to power the wheels can manage good gas mileage and performance just by improving those two things. However, vehicles powered solely by electric motors (or they have a gas engine whose sole function is to charge the batteries; the electric motors only power the wheels to propel the car forward) need more than just low weight and good aerodynamics; they need to have energy efficient electronics and low drag auxiliary components (the air conditioning compressor is usually powered by an electric motor instead of the engine).

Mac Mini: Home Theater PC Redefined

            Home theater PCs have become a popular thing in the last few years. The ability to download and stream media right to a TV is something that I can’t live without. Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube make it easy to live without physical media. Most people don’t want a giant computer tower cluttering up their home theater. The solution to this is the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini might be the best choice for a home theater PC to date. Not only is it compact and powerful, it is green.

LED Backlit LCDs

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) have been around for many years now. For an image to be visible in low light levels, LCD panels require light to pass through them from behind. This is called a backlight. Conventional LCDs use cold cathode fluorescent tubes (CCFL) as their light source. Today, the most common way to backlight an LCD is by using light emitting diodes (LEDs). They present several advantages over CCFL tubes from power efficiency to improved contrast and colors.

LED backlit LCD TVs consume considerably less power than similarly sized plasma and CCFL backlit LCD TVs. Plasma displays do not have a backlight like LCDs do. Each pixel in a plasma display is its own light source. So, the higher the plasma display’s resolution, the more power it consumes.  LCD power consumption does not depend on resolution as much as plasma displays do. It is more dependent upon size. LED backlit LCD displays use an array of LEDs to supply the light. The number of light sources is significantly less than a plasma display. As of April 21, 2010, the average power consumption for plasma TVs was 301 watts. The average power consumption for CCFL LCD TVs was 111 watts. For LED backlit LCD TVs, the average power consumption was 101 watts.

Another advantage that LED backlit LCD TVs pose over CCFL LCD TVs is their improved contrast. Contrast is the difference between the darkest blacks and the lightest whites. The improvement comes from the way the LEDs sit behind the LCD panel. The LEDs can be arranged in a grid, covering the back of the entire panel. A feature called Local Dimming allows each LED to be turned on and off independently. So in dark areas of a scene, the LEDs are turned off behind those areas and the blacks are blacker. In light areas of a scene, the LEDs can be brightened. Local Dimming can also save power.

LED backlit LCDs are the greenest TV choice at the moment.

Source: http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/tv-power-efficiency/