Episode 43 - A Chat with Linear's Duane Paulson

We were pleased on this episode to be joined by Duane Paulson, Senior VP of Product & Market Development for Linear. Duane is a long time technology veteran whose background lends him a very unique perspective on the industry. We were eager to get his take not only on what Linear has been up to, but also on current trends in the smarthome at large. We close the conversation with a discussion of what we can expect form Linear at CES2015, where Duane surprised even us by breaking some news right here on HomeTech! But you'll have to listen to the end if you want to know more about that!

In the news portion of our show this week we discuss two stories. The first being the recent unveiling of Kaleidescape's new Alto movie player. This is the first product in the company's lineup to exclude the ability to load content from physical discs. Users instead will only be given the option to download content from Kaleidescape's online store. Although not explicitly stated in any of the releases we've read, this move is clearly a reaction to the legal troubles Kaleidescape has been continually battling. And at $2,500 MSRP, we suspect it will be a tough sell for consumers who can get much of the same functionality from a $99 AppleTV. Speaking of inexpensive streaming media servers, we also cover the recent update released by Amazon for the FireTV. What makes this story interesting is the inclusion of code that "bricked" jailbroken hardware. Anyone who had previously hacked one of these units now has themselves a rather expensive paper weight.

As always we thank you for listening! If you enjoy the show please don't forget to tell a friend, and to leave us a review on iTunes!

Episode 42 - A Single App Home with Tim McInerney of Savant

After a week off the HomeTech team is back in action. We are excited to present a new episode featuring Tim McInerny of Savant as our featured guest.  As discussed on our recent CEDIA Wrap-Up Special Savant managed to steal the show this year with the unveiling of their new app. Completely re-designed from the ground up, the so-called "Savant App" is a very modern, clean, and extremely intuitive user interface. Not only is the new app easy for integrators to deploy, but in keeping with current industry trends, it also empowers end users to create, edit, and modify their own scenes. In our conversation with Tim we cover the new app extensively. We also discuss Savant's history as a company, and what differentiates their product offerings in an increasingly crowded smart home space. We have been looking forward to sharing this conversation with you. We hope you enjoy!

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Show Notes

Episode 41 - Printing the Week's News with Mike Wolf

Episode 40 - Baby-Watch 2014 Continues

We did not book a guest for this week's show, primarily because Jason wasn't even sure he'd be able to participate. As it turns out he was able to join the show this week because his wife is still (very) pregnant. That's right, for those of you who have been listenting, no baby yet. At the time of this typing we are 5 days past due. Baby-watch 2014 continues...

Plenty to talk about in the news this week. We start the show with a conversation about the release of Savant 7.0. This beautiful new app made a big splash at CEDIA and we are excited to see that it has been released into the wild. This new offering from Savant is consistent with current trends in the industry in that it affords much more control to the end user than the previous version. Consumers are able to create and edit scenes from within the app, freeing integrators from having to roll a truck for such minor modifications. 

We then dove into a discussion about Sony, the megalith that's been surprisingly quite in the smart home space. Although we have yet to see a true smart home offering from them, they made the news this week with a Playstation Vue, a cloud-powered offering aimed at disrupting the traditional cable / satellite TV subscription business. 

Speaking of TV providers, we closed the show with conversations about both Dish Network and DirecTV. The former because it appears as though they may enter the smart home market with a product called Sage (unveiled recently by their parent company Echostar).  The latter because they have now unveiled (liminted) 4K TV offerings. Still not a lot of UHD content out there, but it's a start.

As always, we thank you so much for listening. If you are enjoying the show we would greatly appreciate a rating on a iTunes!

Episode 39 - Kēvo Smartlocks with Phil Dumas of UniKey

We opened the show this week giving our thoughts on the very sad news of Crestron founder George Feldstein's passing. George was a pioneer in the truest sense of the word. Through his work he did volumes to push the systems integration industry forward. Without his passion and diligent efforts it is hard to say what our industry would look like today. We want to extend our deepest condolences to his family.

We also covered recent news that both Walmart and Target will be rolling out smart home displays in time for the holidays this year. By our count this brings the list of big box retailers dabbling in the smart home up to 6 (Lowes, Home Depot, Staples, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target). We give our thoughts on what this means not only for the market at large, but also for home technology professionals. In a similar vein we cover the recent unveiling of Verizon's new router, which features a built-in Z-Wave radio. Clearly managed service providers are also keenly interested in the smart home. Tune in to get our take. 

For our guest this week we are joined by UniKey founder Phil Dumas. UniKey is the technology behind the Kēvo smartlock, which is produced in conjunction with Kwikset. Phil has a long history in, and a clear passion for access control. The backstory behind his company and the product very interesting. In fact, Phil is our second guest to have previously been featured on ABC's hit show The Shark Tank (Jamie Siminoff from Ring was the first). While Kēvo is undeniably a well thought out product which more than stands on its own, Phil feels it's only the beginning for what UniKey is capable of. Check out our conversation to learn more.

As always we thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to tell a friend and to leave us a review on iTunes or on Stitcher. We greatly appreciate any feedback you might want to offer as well, which you can do on our feedback page. 

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