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Tag Archives: Convergence

Musing on Apple Building a Television

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I don’t think I’ve ever waffled on a topic as much as this one.  Back in ’07 I wrote two articles on Apple “owning” the living room and building TVs.  Ever since, I’ve gone full tilt in both directions.  Until about a week ago, I agreed firmly with Erik Schwartz on the topic, as he wrote today:

I am quite sure that there has been a team at Apple working on TV projects for literally the last 20 years. I am also quite confident that they are not going to release a TV in the near future.  (read more)

He continued to espouse on the four issues he saw: Margins, Replacement Cycles, Logistics, and Integration.  And on all four counts, I’ve agreed with him.

But now I have second thoughts.  My friend and coworker Adam Burg has long been a believer of “iTelevision” as has Dijit (and TiVo and many others) investor Stewart Alsop (who was quoted today in VentureBeat’s article on the topic).  For them, and many others, the rumors were way too much smoke for a lack of fire.  And on that point, I tend to agree that the rumors are a little stronger than what the Apple PR team will let flow when there’s no substance whatsoever.

So first, the case against iTelevision

Generally speaking, the two strongest “con” arguments are:

1. The margins in TVs suck, and since you can’t get away from the reality check of what it takes/costs to make a TV (hint: glass), the margins will suck for Apple too, and Apple doesn’t play in the “sucky margin” business.  This would force Apple to make a notably more expensive TV than anyone else, and even Apple can’t somehow get people to spend $1500 on the same sized screen they can have from Samsung for $1000.

We make THIS many!

2. The TV replacement cycle sucks, as the average family won’t replace a TV for ~7-8 years, and that’s not a world Apple typically plays in either.  Unlike phones (1 year) and PCs (2-3 years), consumers won’t be up for buying a new set very frequently, and the concept of having an “outdated” television will cause more infuriated people than Apple typically likes to create.  Note: this is a concern of the entire “Smart TV” industry (well, it’s probably not, but it really should be), and you can mark my words that backlash is going to hit these manufacturers in the next 6-12 months.

I’ve had a 3rd argument personally, which is Apple can’t make an iTelevision for $1000 whilst selling a “$99 upgrade” Apple TV product that brings the same functionality/services to any other manufacturer’s device.  Now the counter to that would be the Apple TV is there to enable wider content consumption, etc, but it’s still generally considered a “no-no” to cannibalize your own market.

We'll pre-announce while our existing product is on the market. What could possibly go wrong?

So now, why I’ve come around, and the case for iTelevision. I’ll start by refuting the arguments above.

1. Apple makes awesome margins on everything. If Apple’s building a TV, they’ve figured out their own amazing supply chain methodology to do it profitably.  Very profitably.  So if everyone else is selling a 50″ LCD for $999, they will too, only instead of making less per unit than the price of a really good bowl of soup, Apple will rake in the cash as they go.  They are the only tablet manufacturer selling at a real profit (HP not withstanding.  What, too soon?),  and I see no reason why, if they enter this space, they won’t do the same thing.

2. Apple will change or solve the replacement cycle issue.   Before iPhones, the US market was radically less likely to buy a new phone every year.  I have a much harder time accepting that Apple can successfully convince people to lug a 50″ screen home (and correspondingly, out of their home) once a year (or every other year).  This is way too painful a process, even for a fanboy.

I'm on a truck!

This implies either Apple can make a TV that is easy to move/replace or the components which would require upgrade can be guaranteed upgradeable for a few years.  Both are actually feasible, though the former requires some more impressive technology (flexible or roll-up displays, for example, could do it).  The latter is probably more likely – after all, even the original iPhone can still run a lot of the apps that are on the market.  What would matter the most here is that each generation of iTelevision is guaranteed to mostly compatible with the same content offerings as future generations (in other words, regardless of apps and whatnot, if Johnny Homeowner’s TV can only play 1/3 of the movies as his neighbor, he’s pissed – if he can play mostly the same stuff, just no Angry Birds, he’s less so).

3. They could coexist, if the other product is iTelevision and it isn’t the same thing as an Apple TV. So if the rumored iTelevision isn’t about “Apple TV inside a flatscreen” and is instead something new/different, this could be more feasible.  I’ve heard and debated scenarios ranging from built-in DVRs to TV tuners to CableCard and more.  Here’s all I know: whatever they do will be fully end-to-end thought out.  You won’t buy an Apple TV then have to go to the mall to pick up a CableCard.  You will do everything in an Apple store or online (or from your phone), and it’ll just work.

If I have to weight the pros vs cons these days, I have to say, the pros seem to have it.  Will it come out in 2011 or 2012? Hard to say.  Will they dominate the TV market the way they dominate tablets? Unquestionably NO, but they’ll probably profit more off the sales of TVs than anyone else, more akin to what they do in phones.  Will they shock us with their offering when it comes out? Probably, though probably in the same “why isn’t everybody just doing it that way” style they do with everything else.  Will they create a massive gaping wound in the side of the TV industry, and opportunity for a brand new type of ecosystem to emerge?  Absolutely.

Now, back to the waffling.

They Pulled Me Back In! I’m Joining Dijit Media as Chief Product Officer

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A week ago I announced that Jim Schaff would be taking over active duties at Stage Two, and that I’d be focusing on “other stuff.”  Today I’m excited to share the stuff:  I am joining the management team of Dijit Media as Chief Product Officer, where I’m responsible for product and marketing (here’s the official update).  Not only that, my virtually common law married colleague (business partners for much of the past 14 years) and very close friend Adam Burg is the company’s VP of Business Development.

What???

Last Fall, I gave a presentation at the Set-Top Box Conference in San Jose, and the entire drive back I had a feeling of near elation.  Not that I had said anything extremely profound, but it was wrapped up in the feeling of doing something I had a lot of passion for – in this case, discussing the future of television.  Over the next few months, I spent a lot of time doing research in the Smart TV (also called Connected TV or Internet TV) space, and started seeing some trends emerge, and realized there were some very interesting business opportunities on the horizon.

Adam and I spent months developing a prototype concept of the vision we had, and went to meet with some of the brightest folks we know in the convergence field.  One such bright folk was well-known VC Stewart Alsop, who I’ve known since the late 1990s, who introduced us to Maksim Ioffe, CEO of Dijit.  In our very first meeting with Maksim it was clear he shared much of the same industry and product vision and philosophy with Adam and me. I’ll keep this part of the story short, as we’ve all seen this movie before – we ended up agreeing to join the company. And there was much rejoicing (yay).

Why Dijit?

The grand vision of Dijit is to create the ultimate “four screen” (phone, tablet, computer, TV) social entertainment experience, one which seamlessly merges disparate products and platforms and content into one single, easy to use, consumer offering.  The company is well on its way, and its first product is an iPhone app that enables a really sophisticated, yet elegantly simple control experience for home media centers.   As Maksim put it, “Consumers have 21st-century home entertainment experiences but are stuck with remote controls that haven’t been updated since the 1980s.”  The company partnered with Griffin to produce the Beacon, a clever take on the “IR blaster” product, and one that’s already receiving solid reviews (and I haven’t even done anything yet!).  This is going to be a very exciting company to be a part of, and I’m thrilled to have such an opportunity.

Reminiscing.

I still recall the early days at Mediabolic, where we enabled networked home entertainment solutions that interfaced with legacy, analog consumer electronics devices (yes, we were networking the living room in an era where there were virtually no HDTVs, no YouTube, no Pandora, and no… iPod!).  At Mediabolic I learned what it takes to design and build embedded entertainment devices, to work with consumer electronics manufacturers, and the deep set of challenges surrounding the connected home industry (fun trivia: I heard the phrase “this is THE year of the digital home” every single year starting in 2001 – possibly earlier).  It was a great experience, and key people from that team now work at amazing companies like Netflix, Rovi Corp (Rovi acquired Mediabolic in 2007), etc.

At Sling Media I had the unique opportunity to work for and with some outstanding individuals, not to mention the position of being tasked with figuring out how to deliver the perfect “living room experience” – only over the Internet.  The company’s CEO, Blake Krikorian, taught me the meaning of focusing on every detail and nuance, remaining truly innovative, and keeping the consumer’s wants and needs in the forefront of every product decision.  I also had to learn the ins and outs of social media, back in the era before it was called “social media,” where “the bloggers” were a special, hard to understand subset of humanity (or, as I rapidly learned, just cool people).  We accomplished a great success building the Slingbox, and I’m proud of the product, the team, and the experience.

Over the past four years at Stage Two, I’ve had tremendous exposure to startups, big companies, CEOs, visionaries, the media, and managing a great team.  We literally put companies like Boxee, Bug Labs, and Pogoplug on the map, and have also had the chance to work for well-established firms like Electronic Arts, Best Buy, and VUDU (now Wal-Mart).  I’ve learned from entrepreneurs like Jim Lanzone (now president of CBS Interactive), Peter Semmelhack (Bug Labs), David McIntosh (Redux), Rahim Fazal (Involver) and so many others (I’ll write another post in the next little while chock full of shout-outs).  I’ve redesigned product experiences for dozens of products, and created marketing/PR/social media campaigns for dozens more, and had the pleasure to work with great teams along the way.

The Future.

And now I’m taking all of the above, and putting it to work at one place.  Welcome to Dijit.

OTTCON Wrap Up

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Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the Over-The-Top TV Conference and wanted to quickly share some of my experiences at OTTCON.

Overall, it was an enjoyable experience with many knowledgeable industry experts in attendance. My talk on how the Connected TV space has changed in the last 6 months went well and was written up by Ken Pyle at the Viodi View. His article is worth a read, and discusses many trends in the Smart TV space, including the rise of the second screen. Quoting from his piece:

There are kinks with two-screen interactions that need to be ironed out, as pointed out by Jeremy Toeman of Stage Two. He cited the example of the use-case where multiple people are watching television and the one, whose smart phone is controlling the program, goes to the bathroom, effectively taking the remote control with him. Similarly, who is the master, when multiple people are trying to control the second screen from their respective personal media devices? This could portend a new generation of “remote control wars”.

Jeremy Toeman also gave designers some good tips, including:

* Lean back means “passive experience”.
* 2nd screen should have all the text heavy comments.
* People don’t want to log-in or have passwords on their televisions.

Toeman’s updated his predictions for losers and winners in his session. He cited the big service providers, TV manufacturers and content owners as being among the winners. He suggested that the biggest winner would be the consumer, provided the new features that the over-the-top approach unleashes are not overwhelming.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks to everyone who attended the Over-The-Top TV Conference and shared their passion for the next generation of TV.

An Analysis of Amazon's Free, Unlimited Streaming Video Service

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Starting today, Amazon Prime customers can take advantage of the company’s new, unlimited video streaming service. Amazon Prime Instant Video is free, with a few caveats. Quoting from Engadget:

This is only for paid Prime subscribers, so if you’re a college student or the like with a free membership you’re sadly out of luck. Also it’s US only at this point.

Of course, comparisons to Netflix are inevitable here. Early reports say that Amazon’s catalog of titles is comparable to Netflix, while the quality of Prime’s video has been so-so. Prime Instant Video will have some ground to make up if it wants to compete toe-to-toe with the market leader.

Amazon streaming is missing from a few key set-top boxes, including video game consoles and TiVo.

There are 180 million current generation video game consoles on the market, and they all offer Netflix. So that means that Netflix is in more components, has a larger content library and offers higher quality video.

Which is not to say that Amazon is DOA. Not by a long shot.

It would be interesting to know what the goal of Prime Instant Video is. Do Bezos and company want more people to pay for Prime shipping, or is this offer aimed at getting people used to watching videos on Amazon and – later – purchasing media from their ecosystem?

Amazon can assemble a formidable library of content. They don’t need the same titles as Netflix, but the shows and movies need to be compelling. To win here they need to offer a blend of new releases and older classics (think TNT shows and the kind of programming you chill out with on a Sunday afternoon). Expect the library to mature as the service does.

Amazon could also white label Prime Instant Video and let other content providers offer their videos over the Prime streaming media center. The troubled Blockbuster brand could find new life here as a streaming only service (although at this point we’re not even sure if Blockbuster knows what streaming video is).

Finally, Amazon needs to get on as many pieces of hardware as they can. If people can only use Prime Instant Video on their desktop, it will have limited value. One of the first goals needs to be getting on gaming consoles, mobile devices and televisions. Again, this is an attainable goal, especially for Amazon.

I have always maintained that there can be more than one “winner” in the streaming media wars and there is certainly room for Amazon’s service to grow alongside Netflix. While the two services will probably compete for some customers, one does not have to lose for the other to win. It is clear, though, that the stakes of the online distribution game have just been raised.

Thinking about Googling my TV

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Google, Intel, and Sony have apparently teamed up (and Logitech too) to develop an Android-based platform for interactive television. Let me start my post with some important background points and disclosure:

  • I was a cofounder of Mediabolic, a startup who built a platform for connected devices.  While there I designed about a dozen “convergence” products (one won a best-of-CES award), and the company eventually got acquired by Macrovision.
  • I was an early employee at Sling Media, where I was responsible for developing the Slingbox (another best-of-CES award).
  • I once interviewed at Google for a position in a “google TV” role, but didn’t feel it was a really great fit for me personally (not to mention the commute).
  • I am currently involved with Boxee.TV, a startup in a highly-related field. There is some amount of overlap here, though that is in no way related to this blog post.
  • I’ve also worked with VUDU, Clicker.com, DivX, and others on “future of TV” systems, services, and products.
  • I was on the original working group committees for UPnP (AV) as well as DLNA (even before it was called that).

Through the above experiences, I have seen a lot of failure and some success in the “connected TV” space.  But mostly failure.

It’s a space where techies dream, entrepreneurs try, and companies fail. The list of failed convergence companies is notably longer than the list of successes. It’s a field where even Apple, the current king of the world when it comes to entertainment technology, can’t get a reasonable foothold in the home.

Most of the failure is due to deeply entrenched systems heavily controlled by huge corporations with little interest or need to innovate.  While we can yell and scream about how bad a job the Cable/Satellite companies are doing at future planning, the blunt reality is it’s hard to argue that it’s necessitated.  These megacorporations can drag their feet, and deploy mediocre DVRs and HD services, and consumers (for the most part) are satisfied with their experiences.  Further, due to their current business structures, the concept of opening up the market to third-party devices, content, services, or applications is not just daunting, but likely unprofitable.

When I consider the opportunity in the digital home, I am convinced it cannot come about by directly competing with traditional broadcast models. Broadcast TV, and all the services with it, are generally easy to use, convenient to pay for, and effectively “good enough” for most people – making “better than current TV” offerings a significant challenge to bring to market.  Historically, the only thing to attract the attention of consumers beyond their existing entertainment solutions are:

  • Transformative content playback experiences. From VCR to DVD was one example, and from standard definition to HDTV is another.  The key word here is transformative – it can’t just be “better quality”, as evidenced by virtually all other introduced formats and technologies based around content.
  • Notably difference content offerings. Again, moving up to HDTV-enabled set-top boxes was a natural flow, game consoles are the other shining example of a successful category.  Boxes that simply deliver “more of the same” or “stuff you can get elsewhere, now get it here (e.g. digital pictures)” are typically not big hits.  Consumers have to see some kind of service that’s worth the extra money.

Everything else has failed to make a dent.  Most “Internet Set Top Boxes” have been, and will be failures.  The typical logic that brings these products to market goes something like “consumers are about to cut the cables for their Internet content, and really hate watching it on their computers.”  The evidence behind this claim?  It’s in the same folder with the WMD evidence the government started a war for (zing!).

I’m very curious as to the potential from Google, Intel, and Sony.  Intel has wanted in on the “connected TV” for a long time (disclosure: they were an investor in Mediabolic), and has never really executed very well.  It’s not to say they can’t, but it’s safe to say the space is far far away from their core DNA.  Sony too has stumbled frequently in this space (here’s their version of a convergence device). Logitech? See Sony. And then there’s Google.

Part of me thinks Google believes that all devices are effectively the same, and their (limited) success in the phone market implies opportunity in the TV market.  Another part of me thinks Google is just so big they take on any sector they see opportunity in.  But most of me thinks Google wants to get firmly entrenched in the biggest advertising market there is – television.  And as hard as doing phones might be, doing TV boxes is much much harder.  Here’s why:

  • Phones play highly restricted media types.  Converged TV devices are expected to play all media types.  This topic alone is probably worthy of a blog post, but trust me when I say – it’s hard.
  • Consumers buy new phones on a recurring basis (multiple times a year in some countries). Consumers replace TVs infrequently, and buy TV “accessory” devices only a couple of times per decade. While the market is huge, it’s hard to get new devices into the home.
  • Carriers are motivated to push new devices and services into the hands of their customers, it’s part of their business model.  TV service providers are not motivated to do so (as discussed above).
  • As much as phones are “closed systems”, a manufacturer is able to purchase equipment and get a device certified and get it on the network without too much involvement by a carrier.  While the path is actually similar (CableCard Tru2Way certification), the realities for both the manufacturer and, more importantly, consumer are much much worse.
  • Again, as stated above, consumers are generally dissatisfied with their phones (a problem unlikely to go away) and are excited about new ones.  Consumers literally dread changing equipment in their living room – even us geeky dads with cool quadrophonic sound.

Now with all that said, I’m truly excited about the future of converged entertainment in (and out) of the home. I remain mostly cynical about seeing any real change anytime soon.  I think there are a few companies who have built the right foundation to make some inroads, but I’m hoping everyone involved is prepared to win their “realist” and “slow and steady wins the race”  badges over the next few years-to-decade (or longer).  Can Google be the catalyst of change, or will they just be the next in the long list of companies who tried and missed the mark?

15 vs 50: The Battle of the Future of Television

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When you look at the stats for video consumed on computer screens, it’s fairly staggering.  Literally hundreds of millions of videos per day on YouTube alone, 26 billion videos online in the month of September, averaging about 10 hours per month per person.  From one perspective, this could be considered inconsequential relative to the estimated 8 hours per day on the old fashioned TV set (though that stat is open to some interpretation).  However, considering this is still the early days of quality content being available online, it’s pretty safe to say that the computer (and of course Internet) is a successful media playback device.  So is the future of entertainment going to live on the 50″ HDTV display or the 15″ laptop?

The old argument: the PC is a terrible entertainment platform
At my job a decade ago I used to travel around the world meeting with virtually every company who built PCs, phones, and other gadgets.  At the time the focus was on the emerging “digital home”, a wonderful place where we envisioned the PC (for sake of typing, when I say “PC” I mean “computer” and include Macs in this generalization) as the “server” device, providing media to enjoy on connected TVs and stereos. We used to talk about how terrible a laptop or desktop was as a media consumption device, and how nobody would really want to sit around a small screen to watch any kind of premium content.  Other than the time I thought Amazon wouldn’t get anywhere selling books online, I can’t think of a time I was more wrong about something.  In reality PCs are now phenomenal media devices.  Laptops are unbelievably convenient when it comes to portable entertainment, and you can readily purchase surround sound setups for desktops.

All the ways the PC rules
The computer is unquestionably the most versatile product since the invention of the wheel, and when it comes to entertainment offerings, there’s no shortage of tools and services to enhance one’s experience.  With a computer and a high-speed Internet connection, we are a hair’s width away from a true all-content on-demand any-time lifestyle (and for those willing to skirt some pesky laws, they are already living that way).  Whether it’s Pandora or last.fm, Hulu or Windows Media Center (or even the remote possibility that TV Everywhere actually delivers as promised), you can have truly personalized media experience, all the time.

The kids today…
As a youth I distinctly remember our home’s expansion to a few dozen channels and our fancy remote control (which was actually wired to the cable box).  By the time I was in college, we had a couple of hundred channels, pay-per-view content, and premium cable offerings.  The living room was the only real place in the home for entertainment, with our CRT TV, video game console, cable box, and VCR.  College-age kids today have a very different perspective.  Paying for content (other than video games) is a generally foreign concept, as they’ve been surrounded by free for a long, long time.  And this is nothing compared with young children who are growing up in the post-DVR, on-demand world, where programming schedules seem utterly arbitrary.  People under 25 (and some above, of course) are used to taking their entertainment with them, and the only reason to bother going into the living room is to use their game console for gaming, chatting with friends, or watching movies – all activities they’d prefer to do in their own space anyway.

So is my $4000 (2000 1000 500!) high definition set with surround sound a dinosaur?
Ask me that after I watch Dark Knight in 1080p for the 3rd time. Or during the Stanley Cup Finals. Or even for an episode of Glee (yeah, I watch it, but I offset it with Man vs Wild, so back off). There’s just some content that, if given the option, I’d rather watch on a humongo-screen with amazing sound.  And no matter how much time we spend watching content on our laptops or phones, it’s just a different type of experience.  Further, the TV industry isn’t about to go quietly into any goodnight – innovation in televisions is probably moving faster than we’ve seen in the past 3 decades.  Today you can already buy TVs with built-in Internet streaming from a variety of sources, and we’re seeing numerous experiments with 2-way interactivity and 3d displays.  So the era of “making em bigger and cheaper” seems to be fading into the era of “making em do more”.

Some infallible predictions:

  • The popular categories of TV sizes will remain the same for the foreseeable future
  • PC/online media consumption rates will increase (rapidly) over the next 5 years
  • TV viewing rates will NOT decrease over the next 5 years
  • Cable attachment rates (# of people who pay a cable/satellite company) will decrease over the next 5 years, specifically due to people “cutting the cord” and consuming Internet-provided content instead
  • All major sports will have full live and archived streams available online within 2 years
  • At least one major sport will provide direct-to-TV streaming services within 2 years
  • Blu-Ray will continue to flounder, but will show continued (mild) growth for the next few years
  • Real-time interactivity will be tested on major TV shows in the next 2 years (and it’ll be more than just a twitter stream!)
  • Apple will do something more interesting in this space than Apple TV.
  • 3D will not drive the sales of new sets anywhere near what “the industry” hope or project
  • The biggest growth area will be the confluence of laptop use simultaneous to TV viewing
  • There will likely be a resurgence in more dedicated portable media players (that aren’t iPhones) with native streaming services.  They will fare poorly.
  • The concept of the “convergence/Internet set-top box” as well.  These too will do poorly.
  • In 3 years there will be 14 different versions of CSI on the air. Also, the writers of Heroes will still fail in their attempt to kill a character permanently.

I’m loving it
Let’s face it, this is an exciting time for being entertained.  There are so many ways to consume content, and so many interesting experiments occurring around the industry.  Further, many “standards” are pretty well in place, meaning the 720p 42″ plasma you bought 3 years ago is still going to work just fine 3 years from now.  This is unquestionably a good time for innovators, entrepreneurs, and consumers alike.  If you find yourself bored and you have a screen somewhere nearby, you just aren’t trying hard enough.

Disclosures: I was on the steering committee for UPnP, DLNA, I built the Slingbox, and have consulted on topics related to convergence and marketing/PR for Boxee, DivX, VUDU, Clicker.com, NETGEAR. As such, I’ve attempted to avoid anything specific to those companies in this post. In no way are any of my consulting clients related to my tech blogging, though one could argue I’ve seemed to align myself with companies who build cool stuff in the convergence space – and they would be right.

Home Renovation: What Tech Do I Need?

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My wife and I bought a house a few months ago, and it needs some renovation work (read: holy crap, we’re practically gutting the place, what the heck were we thinking???). One aspect of said work is redoing the entire electrical system, which gives me the opportunity to put in all sorts of cool new tech.

Things I know I want for sure:

  • Sonos as my distributed audio system of choice. We’ll be putting in-ceiling speakers in a few rooms, and they’ll be wired to Sonos units which we’ll have clustered in two locations. I debated putting iPod docks in the walls, but they’re pricey, we don’t currently use iPods, and don’t allow for multi-room distribution.  Plus this’ll give me a chance to check out their new hardware!
  • NETGEAR/Infrant NV NAS to serve media (this replaces my Maxtor Shared Storage Plus which appears to have just died, gah!). In my current apartment I’m a bit leery of the NV as it’s loud and we don’t have a place to hide it away, but this won’t be a problem in the new spot.
  • Current Panasonic plasma + Xbox + Pioneer receiver all move into “JT’s Cool Room (no girls allowed!)”. But the Bose speakers go “buh-bye” and my Definitive towers return! FTW. I’ll probably also hook up a Mac Mini with Boxee on it for photo/Internet streaming. The only other TV in the house will be a smaller (25″-32″) flat-screen in one of the sitting rooms – yes, we’re actually going to make the living room a place where people don’t watch television!

Things I know I don’t want for sure:

  • Central Vacuum. We thought this would be great, but after a little digging in, seems like they are consistently underpowered poorly designed products. Pass.
  • Video Intercom Front Door System. The day I move into my 15,000 square foot mansion I’ll consider it, but until then, I can run down the stairs to see who’s there. Plus I’m going to try to jury-rig something myself with a Bug Labs setup.

Things I am on the fence about:

  • RJ45 (Ethernet) outlets in every room.  Seems like a waste.  When I ask my friends, the overwhelming reason for it is “to stream 1080p video around your house”.  Now that is really just not a good reason in my opinion, but I do like the idea of future-proofing.  Plus I guess it’ll be easier for hooking up printers or other networked devices where wireless is not built-in… ?
  • Insteon (or other) smart lighting systems.  I’m not a fan of home automation systems (wait, for only $50K I can have my lights turn on and off and I don’t even have to get off the couch?  where do I sign up?), but Insteon is fairly inexpensive and the platform is open enough to hack around with.  From what I’ve read, however, I can always add it after-the-fact, so I’ll probably save the $ now, then do some tinkering down the road.

Anyone have any recommendations here, or notice anything I’m missing?  Would love some thoughts ASAP  as wiring starts in ~2 weeks!