Rebecca Day

World Wide Stereo revamped a brick-and-mortar retail location in upscale Ardmore, Pa., from a traditional AV retail environment to a lifestyle showroom down the street, President Bob Cole told Consumer Electronics Daily. The retailer is in the process of phasing out the old store to focus on the custom side of its business, which accounts for 80 percent of revenue in that location, he said. World Wide Stereo also has an e-commerce operation that drives 60 percent of overall company business, Cole said.

In its review, NAD examined advertised claims by Nest about the number of programmable thermostats that are programmed by consumers (11 percent) and the number that are not programmed because they're so complicated (89 percent) and that thermostats from other manufacturers waste energy. In its recommendations, NAD said Nest’s substantiation for its 11 percent and 89 percent claims was based primarily on a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that concluded that 89 percent of Americans rarely or never program their thermostats to save energy. Following its review of the findings, NAD recommended that Nest discontinue advertising “its unsupported specifically quantified claims” that only 11 percent of other programmable thermostats are programmed to save energy, that 89 percent of other programmable thermostats are not programmed because “they're so complicated that most people don’t bother to program them” and that “other thermostats waste energy.”

It’s hit or miss for customers looking for Sony’s Ultra HD TVs at hhgregg, we found in a search of the company’s e-commerce site Friday. As expected, prices are holding for Sony’s 65-inch XBR65X900A 4K model ($6,999) and the 55-inch XBR55X900A ($4,999). There were no customer reviews of either product on the e-commerce site.

Suncraft Solutions is licensing the Stanley name for a 10-piece lineup of flat-panel TV mounts that will begin shipping next month through Amazon, Michael Roach, general manager, told us on a press tour in New York. Suggested retail prices of the mounts will range from $30-230.

Nortek custom electronics subsidiary Core Brands launched Korus, a wireless speaker system that it’s billing as a “premium alternative” to Bluetooth- and AirPlay-based playback devices and to the Sonos system. Korus uses the SKAA wireless audio protocol, which the company said improves on other wireless audio technologies because it provides “superior signal connections with near zero latency.”

U.K.-based Aquavision is the first company to announce a commercially available TV that uses HDBaseT technology to deliver video and power over one cable, said Dana Zelitzki, marketing director of Valens Semiconductor, supplier of HDBaseT chipsets, on a press tour through New York Wednesday. Aquavision makes waterproof TVs that are used in bathrooms and kitchens, and the ability to run a single wire -- and not have to bring in an electrician to add a power outlet -- is an appealing attribute for custom installers, Zelitzki told us. The Power-over-HDBaseT feature enables the transfer of DC power along with data signals in wire runs up to about 300 feet. Valens ensures “safe delivery” of up to 100 watts of power over the four pairs of an Ethernet cable used in an HDBaseT solution, and offers an answer to power challenges manufacturers face when designing thin, wall-mounted TVs that require bulky companion AC-DC power circuitry, she said. In a prepared statement, Alastair Benn, technical director of Aquavision, said the company designs its displays so customers can put them in any room “without sacrificing a sense of style,” but the bundle of audio, video and power cords required in an installation “can ruin that effect.” The HDBaseT solution allows consumers to include a video display in their interior design plans “instead of trying to design a room around the display and location of power outlets,” he said. Silvertel provides the PoH display for Aquavision. Meanwhile, Savant Systems became the latest company to join the HDBaseT Alliance member list, which now totals about 60 companies, a number that’s doubled in the past six months, Zelitzki said. HDBaseT “is evolving more and more as a standard,” said Jim Carroll, executive vice president-corporate strategy & business development at Savant. It’s also a lower cost solution than other options for delivering uncompressed audio and video over long distances, he said. Savant has been using a fiber wiring solution and HDMI over extenders to date. The combination of extenders with HDMI -- since HDMI on its own can’t handle long distances -- “is a very expensive proposition,” Carroll said. “HDBaseT essentially takes those extenders and integrates them into the same product,” he said. Instead of having an output switch card running to an extender and to another extender at the other end to convert back to HDMI, “it all comes out of one card,” he said. Economies of scale bring cost savings from an HDBaseT solution to as much as 40 percent less expensive than an extender option, he said. Although HDBaseT is capable of combining uncompressed audio and video, Ethernet, power and control in a single Cat 5 or Cat 6 cable, Savant separates power and control from the audio and video, Carroll said, because IT organizations don’t like an unmanaged IP network inside of their networks. “When you're talking about banks and Fortune 1000-type corporations, they're not real excited about HDBaseT running on their corporate network,” he said. Savant systems are used in both commercial and residential applications. Version 2.0 of the HDBaseT 2.0 spec has been drafted and is under review by the HDBaseT Alliance members (CED June 18 p1). It’s expected to be finalized by the end of August, which Zelitzki called “a formality.”

Bandwidth isn’t the leading cause of poor sound quality in the mobile streaming environment, said Chris Kyriakakis, Audyssey’s founder and chief technology officer. Instead, he said, it’s the acoustical limitations of the headphones, and Audyssey hopes to capitalize on reducing those limitations through the AmpIT software development kit it released this week for streaming music providers. Kyriakakis cited the tiny transducers behind plastic that don’t seal with the ears and cause leakage, which reduces bass, along with resonances in the sound cavity and “all the acoustical problems you can think of in a cheap speaker.” While acknowledging that higher bandwidth generally translates to higher quality, Kyriakakis told us, “After a certain point, in order to hear this improvement from better bandwidth, you'd better fix the sound quality of your playback device. Otherwise you're wasting your bandwidth.”

Nortek’s SpeakerCraft brand, within the Core Brands group, had planned to launch a 2.4-GHz-based wireless audio system early this year, but those plans were scrapped and the product never delivered, Starkey said. Synergi, which was to follow the ill-fated Nirv multi-room system, was scheduled to come out at about the time the company was integrating SpeakerCraft with its other custom electronics brands including Niles Audio, Elan, Panamax/Furman and Gefen into Core Brands. The company halted Synergi development and “stopped for about 60 days to evaluate what we were going to in the wireless audio space,” Starkey said. The personal audio product that Core Brands will unveil next week is positioned as superior to Bluetooth, Sonos or Jambox because it’s based on the SKAA wireless music standard, which Starkey said was “beyond Bluetooth” in range, connectivity and multi-user capability.

The DaVinci Group (TDG) said it signed manufacturer rep firms Aim High Audio and Innovative Marketing for its portfolio of products that are sold through the custom electronics channel.

Between three and five speaker systems are “queuing up” in the Sunnyvale, Calif., Simplay Labs test facility that opened for Wireless Speaker and Audio-enabled products last week, said Jim Venable, president of the WiSA Association. The test center is set up to qualify products including wireless speakers, soundbars, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, TVs, AV receivers, game consoles, media hubs and other electronic devices, but only speaker systems are currently in testing, Venable told us. He said 15-20 WiSA-certified products are expected to launch by next CES.