Items Tagged With reviews

Submission by Mark Harrison - As all readers of Automated Home know, there is no substitute for the flexibility of CAT5 cabling. (See the wiring guide). However, as all homeowners know, there are some places that are hard to reach.

Wireless is the obvious alternative, but not perfect. Wireless tends to work well for connections where either latency isn't an issue, or buffering helps - moving large files between computers is a classic example of the first, and MP3 replay the second - provided you have a 5 second music buffer on your network MP3 player, it doesn't matter if the connection drops for a second and a half! Where wireless tends to run into trouble is with voice telephony - cutting out, even for a couple of seconds, midway through a phone call is more than annoying - it's enough to make the phone unusable...

The SmartHome Show 2006 took place in the NEC in Birmigham over the 2nd to the 5th of March. AV was once again a large component of the exhibition and the ubiquitous flat screen LCD's and Plasmas seemed to be on every stand. However there was also plenty of lighting control, home networking, whole house audio and cctv/security too...

It's not often there's a new style X10 device around to review, but as it's Christmas.

The new X10 Mini Controller (MC10) is an all white affair. The colour and shape are a tad more 20th Century than the previous mini-controller, but maybe not quite 21st Century yet....

Submission by Rob Mouser - Disclaimer - Before I start I must point out that my programming knowledge is pretty darn limited, well more like non-existent! Many of us C-bus owners will know that the ability to add true logic based programming has always been somewhat lacking with C-bus unless using third party software/hardware solutions. I've had the Comfort to C-bus UCM since I installed and that works well but as with all things Comfort you need a good deal of patience to programme using Comfigurator....

Submission by Keith Finnett -  Let's get straight to the point - does Microsoft Windows work as an entertainment centre? If you read the computing press you'll know the answer is yes, no, and maybe. If you want one, you'll have to be an early adopter with deep pockets - most pre-built systems retail at around the £1,000 mark. There are some great looking systems out there (Elonex's range look very tempting), but few of them would look good in my living room - and certainly not at that price...