Automated Home

UK specialist Custom Controls recently undertook one of their most ambitious projects. Read on for all the photos and details… This project saw Custom Controls using and integrating just about every piece of automated control kit available including advanced audio, video, lighting and heating controls. This project covered a total area of 10,000 square meters, including [...]

  UK Distributors RGB, have just opened a Savant Experience Show Home to demonstrate how Savant has brought the familiarity of the Apple user interface to home automation. The system powering the central London Show Home is based on a Savant SmartMediaPro12 modular matrix switch/controller fitted with cards for 8 zones of audio and 10 zones of [...]

  Data Robotics have announced that a new Plex Media Server app is ‘coming soon’ for their Drobo 5N.  So as well as hosting all your media files, the Plex enabled NAS will be able to natively run PMS too, eliminating the need for a computer to be running the server. More details from the PR extract [...]

Yes yes, I know you’ve heard it a million times before but we love Plex!  One of the best new features over recent months, PlexSync is used with the many mobile devices in our family, it’s such a fantastic way to take your media with you. Here’s a scenario, it’s Friday afternoon and you know you have [...]

Plex team leader Elan Feingold has blogged an introduction to their new improved Android app.  The ground up rewrite targets devices running Android 3.2 or newer, dropping support for older versions of the OS.  However this has allowed the team to bring a vastly improved feature set and user experience.  You’ll be able to grab [...]

Control4 have announced they are adding the TuneIn service from April this year along with a new hardware device – the Wireless Music Bridge. The unit will connect your phone, tablet or computer to your Control4 system using AirPlay, Bluetooth and DLNA and will enable you to stream audio from your devices to your main system.  Both [...]

HD Connectivity have just announced a new range of high-end HDMI Matrix switches. The HDanywhere Modular range has been designed and built in the UK and is aimed at professional installers and integrators. The system is capable of carrying uncompressed HDMI, Fast Ethernet, Power over Ethernet, CEC and IR over a single Cat5e/6 cable. Full [...]

A few months ago we got our hands on the latest product to come out of the Sonos stable and we’ve been listening to it ever since.  Their wireless subwoofer is a handsome beast and its relatively neat dimensions (402 x 158 x 380mm) belie its heft – a dense 16kgs.  If quality equalled weight then we’d already [...]

This little £15 wonder could be just the thing you need to distribute audio between rooms. USB FM TRANSMITTER - A compact pen-drive style USB FM audio transmitter that makes it easy to play your computer music through any FM radio within range. Simply plug it into your computer USB socket and install the supplied software. [...]

Plex have released another raft of update goodness in the last few weeks including a new web based media manager, offline media syncing to your mobile device and Windows 8 support.  But another new addition has really made our day – after a lot of hard work the Plex app for Samsung TVs now supports [...]