First Meridian U.S. Showcase Store to Open in Florida

INDIANAPOLIS -- A Meridian store will open in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., this fall to showcase the high-end CE company’s products and bring its retail format to the U.S. for the first time, Ken Forsythe, director of product management, told us at the CEDIA Expo.

The store will “soft"-open late this month, with a grand opening set for Nov. 29, Forsythe said. The boutique will be operated by a custom install firm as that firm’s retail showroom, surrounded by Maserati and Ferrari dealers, he said. The store will showcase the breadth of Meridian products and include two sound rooms and a home theater area, he said.

The Fort Lauderdale location follows opening of similar boutiques in other countries, the most recent of which opened in Manchester, U.K., in July. Install Studio Eleven operates one in Moscow, while FG High-end has another in Santiago, Chile. Other locations are in Bangalore, India; Bangkok; Mexico City; Oxford, U.K.; and Singapore. “When you walk in, you will know it’s a Meridian store,” Forsythe said. “The U.S. is a key market for us and we would like to have a few of these in the major areas."

Meridian has a company showroom in New York that handles training and customer demonstrations, including those for the Reference 810 4K front projector, 29 units of which have been sold at $225,000 since their launch three years ago, Forsythe said. The projector (CED July 31/08 p3), which has three 1.27-inch JVC D-ILA panels with 4496x2400 resolution, is packaged with four Minolta, Schneider and Navitar lenses and four video scalers.

Meridian has no immediate plans to replace the 810, Forsythe said. Meridian is discontinuing the MF10 D-ILA-based front projector ($15,000) that used 0.7-inch panels with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution and was packaged with a video scaler at $29,000, he said. “The challenge for us is that since we are not a prime manufacturer, we have to source the technology and we struggle with what value-add we can bring to a category without controlling all the technology,” Forsythe said. “It becomes difficult for us in a $15,000 projector, and we are seeing that segment of the market compress down and even a $10,000 model is a very good product."

Meridian is making a push in in-wall speakers, replacing the DSP 420, which has been in the line for eight years, with the DSP520 ($10,000) and DSP630 ($16,000) that will ship by month’s end, Forsythe said. The new full-range speakers are being paired with a new DSW600 subwoofer ($5,000-$6,000). The speakers, designed to fit into a four-inch wall, feature Meridian’s DSP software designed around a dual-core Freescale Semiconductor chip, originally included in a McLaren sports car that also featured a Meridian audio system. The speakers borrow from Meridian’s M6 and DSP5200 digital active loudspeakers that were introduced earlier this year.

The in-wall speakers have a mount on the back for the new Media Source 200 audio endpoint ($995) for a Sooloos-based Meridian digital media system zone. The Media Source can be connected to Meridian DSP loudspeakers via the company’s SpeakerLink, which also can power the unit. Meridian acquired Sooloos in 2009.

As the company focuses on building its digital media products, Meridian will discontinue the i80 iPod dock product and will likely replace it with a device that provides access to a wider range of music systems, said Richard Hollinshead, director of engineering. “With the physical iPod, it’s a question of how you accomplish the other connectivity,” he said. “The iPod is one of many ways that people connect for music, so you don’t want to tie yourself too tightly to one, at the expense of the others, and that determines your design decisions.” -- Mark Seavy

CEDIA Expo Notebook

3vNet, formerly Colorado vNet, has begun shipping two new interim products that CEO Mike Anderson told us “prepare for what’s coming next.” Built around a “hardened Linux OS,” they're the first to leverage 3vNet’s new Linux-based platform. 3vNet’s new control bridge and gateway module will be supplemented by applications modules that will allow the company to be “a lot more nimble and flexible” and to shorten its development cycle “significantly” by leveraging the intelligence of a Linux computer, he said. Traditionally, home control companies have been behind the trends “because it costs so much in money and time to develop the products,” Anderson said. “By the time you recognize a need and then get a product through your development cycle and the quality is good, you're a little behind where the market would love for you to be,” he said. Product development time is typically 12-18 months, with a lot of the time spent on compliance with UL in the U.S. and comparable testing groups in other countries. 3vNet chose Linux for its platform because it’s “reliable and robust,” Anderson said, and “we can protect it from corruption.” The company’s vision, ultimately, is to be “an alternative” for a lot of dealers, Anderson said, falling between Crestron at the high end and the Comcasts of the world that are entering home automation for the first time (CED Sept 5 p3). “This is a difficult industry for big companies to get into,” Anderson said, noting that IBM and Microsoft came in and “made a big splash” and then “went away.” High-end leader Crestron’s sophisticated control products “come at a cost in time, resources and complexity,” he said. On the other hand, Control4’s approach to automation -- “to keep it simple” -- limits capabilities of a system but does “85 percent of what people want to do at a price point that’s really attractive,” he said: 3vNet sees itself as an alternative to Control4 that’s a bit more expensive, and has a “better aesthetic” that will appeal to interior designers, but less expensive than Crestron. Targeted dealers are those that have been buying through distribution and want to expand beyond audio into lighting, and long-term CEDIA integrators that want to get into automation but are looking for an alternative to “the complexity of a Crestron system,” Anderson said. 3vNet has a target of 150-200 dealers, he said. “We're not looking to take over the world, just a little part of it.”