Rebecca Day

Competition is heating up in the home security industry, with Groupon and Angie’s List running deals Thursday for 1st Security home security systems. Under “The Big Deal” section, Angie’s List offered a $25 voucher toward $100 worth of home security system upgrades, including installation. It cited 1st Security as a “highly rated service provider on Angie’s List” as a plus. Another offer bundled the deal with an Angie’s List membership for $34.99. Groupon is offering a security system from 1st Security for $79, which it calls a $300 value. Included are a touchscreen keypad and 10 security sensors -- nine window or door sensors plus one motion or glass-break sensor -- for homeowners who sign up for a 36-month monitoring agreement at $34.95 per month.

Following Google’s buy of Nest earlier this year, and a week ahead of a much-rumored announcement from Apple that it plans to enter the home automation market, Control4 is banking on its 10 years of experience in the space to keep it ahead of the pack, CEO Martin Plaehn told investors Thursday at the Cowen investor conference in New York. “The Internet of Things is a global phenomenon, and everything with a battery or a power cord is going to become network-aware,” Plaehn said. Saying the “biggest companies that produce valuable and highly used products are also going to jump into this space,” Plaehn said the opportunity to tie devices together will “get larger and larger as more products become network aware.”

Worldwide smartphone shipments will reach 1.2 billion units this year, up 23 percent from last year, and reach 1.8 billion units by 2018, said IDC. The industry research firm, in a report (http://bit.ly/1ko36sY), forecast a compound annual growth rate from 2013-2018 of 12.3 percent, driven by a doubling of shipments in emerging markets including India, Indonesia and Russia. China will account for nearly a third of all smartphone shipments in 2018, IDC said.

Denon on Tuesday bowed three sub-$1,000 network AV receivers with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and video sections compatible with HDMI 2.0. The models are part of Denon’s IN-Command series of AVRs geared to the custom installation channel. Previous Denon models with Wi-Fi go back three or four years and would have started at a $3,000 suggested retail price, Paul Belanger, Denon product manager-North America, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Now, the company tops out at $2,499 for an AVR, he said. The three latest $499-$999 models for 2014 are sold via select distribution through AVAD and Magnolia Design Center stores, Belanger said. “Like all things CE, if we want to be competitive with the Sonys and the Onkyos of the world, we have to take less margin internally to put more features on for the consumer,” he said. “It’s a major, major trickle down,” he said of the palette of features required on AVRs in today’s market. The main step-up features enabled by the receivers’ HDMI 2.0 ports are higher frame rate 60Hz video with 4:4:4 Pure Color pass-through compared with a prior frame rate ceiling of 30Hz and limited color bandwidth via earlier generation HDMI, Belanger said. He said there’s currently no source for 4K 60 frame-per-second content, aside from Netflix 4K streams. The middle Denon receiver, the $699 AVR-X2100W, will upscale content to 4K 30Hz, and the top-end AVR-3100W ($999) will upscale to 4K 60Hz, Belanger said. On the audio side, all three AVRs support Sirius XM and Pandora on-board so the music streams can be driven via the receivers’ graphical user interface or a Denon mobile app, Belanger said. The receivers are also compatible with Spotify Connect, which subscribers can use via Spotify’s app to “hand over the Spotify URL to the AVR,” Belanger said. Spotify music is queued up, not streamed, by the phone, freeing the consumer to use the phone for other activities, he said. AirPlay and Digital Living Network Alliance are included on all three models for streaming from iOS devices or from a network attached storage drive, Denon said. On the high-res audio end, all three receivers support gapless DSD, AIFF, ALAC and FLAC playback, according to specs. The midrange model is Imaging Science Foundation-certified, and the top model adds Crestron control system integration, Audyssey’s Gold suite of DSP technologies and Audyssey Pro, Denon said. Denon Eco mode features an on-screen meter that lets users see a power consumption reduction effect, the company said. Auto Eco mode automatically switches between normal and Eco modes, depending on the volume level chosen, Denon said. The top model is slated to ship in July, and the other two will ship in June, the company said.

Amazon is offering select Amazon Prime customers a free 30-day trial of Fire TV, said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, who was offered the trial in an email Thursday. Amazon is shipping the box gratis and customers who choose not to keep the product may return it at no cost. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to our request for information. Greenfield noted in a blog post that 30-day free trials are commonplace in the software/premium content space, citing similar promos offered by HBO and Showtime. Netflix has a similar promotion for new customers. In the technology hardware world, though, they're less common, said Greenfield, and he sees Amazon’s offer as a way to stimulate sales of IP-based TVs. The shift toward IP-based, on-demand, ad-free TV is primed to “notably accelerate over the next two years,” Greenfield said. Not only will it be more challenging for content providers in the linear TV model to break successful new live TV shows as the reach of IP-streaming devices expands, “but convincing consumers to endure 20 minutes of untargeted commercials will be infinitely harder,” he told Consumer Electronics Daily. Citing Google’s Chromecast for $35, Roku’s efforts to build its software directly into TVs and Amazon’s becoming more aggressive with Fire TV marketing, “We wonder if a price-cut heading into the 2014 holiday season will occur to drive penetration even faster,” Greenfield said.

It’s discount season for Ultra HD TVs as retailers look to flush out inventories of 2013 models, we found in a scan of e-commerce sites Thursday. The clearance section on the h.h. gregg website Thursday had an eclectic assortment of TVs, led at the top end by 55- and 65-inch Sony 4K Ultra HD TVs.

The custom electronics industry expressed surprise Wednesday -- at the news and the valuation -- that Harman International has agreed to buy control company AMX for $365 million. Harman said in a news release that it plans to integrate AMX into its Professional division, which is known for audio and more recently, lighting, after the company’s buy last year of Martin Professional.

H.h. gregg lost $7.2 million in fiscal Q4, vs. a profit of $9.9 million in the year-ago quarter due to “the worst weather in 109 years” from January through early March and “continued volatility in the consumer electronics business,” said CEO Dennis May on an earnings call Tuesday. May said h.h. gregg’s regional footprint in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic makes it more susceptible to regional weather conditions than most of its national competitors.

GoPro has sold more than 8.5 million HD video cameras since 2009, the company said in an S-1 SEC filing Monday in advance of a planned initial public offering. While the overall camcorder category has struggled for years, action camera maker GoPro had revenue of $234.2 million in 2011, $526 million in 2012 and $985.7 million in 2013, according to the filing. Profits for the three years were $24.6 million, $32.3 million and $60.6 million, it said. The company sold 3.8 million cameras in 2013, it said. For the quarter ended March 31, GoPro had revenue of $11 million in net income on revenue of $235.7 million, it said.

Sony’s long-awaited FMP-X10 4K Ultra HD Media Player is available for pre-order now at $699 and for purchase in July, and consumers who pre-order through July 15 will save $200, Sony said Friday. The player will be able to stream the 4K version of season two of House of Cards from Netflix along with the 200-plus titles available from Sony’s Video Unlimited 4K content library, the company said. Sony said some 50 titles will be available to consumers “at no charge,” but 4K title pricing for top-tier titles remains a mystery. David Berman, operations manager at Stereo East, Frisco, Texas, told us Sony’s 4K movie pricing has been “the best kept secret,” and he likened the situation on the 4K video side to high-res audio downloads. “There’s so much press out there about high-res music,” but sites including JRiver and HDtracks have selections that are “extremely limited,” Berman said. “Much as they did with 3D, I think they're trying to create a buzz for a new era of profitable sales,” he said of Sony, and taking the route of high-res audio and video “is the only way they're going to survive.” Until there’s content to drive high-tech hardware, “it’s a non-issue,” Berman said. At the same time, Berman said Stereo East is remaining “high on Sony” because the company owns a content library. According to a Sony news release, the 4K menu at Video Unlimited includes American Hustle and The Monuments Men, and future offerings will include The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Annie (2014) following their theatrical releases. Episodes of the TV series The Blacklist are also available in 4K, Sony said. The Media Player comes with 1 TB of built-in storage and is compatible with any Sony 4K Ultra HD TV or 4K Ultra HD projector, the company said. Berman said it isn’t clear whether the Sony FMP-X10 will only work with Sony UHD TVs and projectors. Sony didn’t immediately respond to questions.