Consumer Crashes the Pro Party
05 August 2009
Author : Tim Kridel
A growing number of end users and even integrators are selecting consumer AV products for commercial installations. Tim Kridel investigates the reasons why and the impact on pro AV.
At roughly €175, the Defender Stealth1 looks like a bargain. Disguised as a motion sensor, it’s a motion-activated surveillance camera with a built-in DVR that records up to 45 days of video onto the included 2 GB memory card, or sends a live feed to a TV.
The Defender Stealth1 also is an example of the blurring line between consumer and pro AV. It’s marketed for both home and business use, and it’s sold through retailers, such as Staples, that cater to small and medium businesses.
Do products such as the Defender Stealth1 compete with professional video surveillance systems that cost four or five digits? The answer is, it depends.
For example, small business owners often opt for the low-cost option, especially in a down economy. Other simply can’t justify paying a premium for a pro product when a consumer model can do the job – part of the reason why Apple’s iPod is making inroads in the pro market.
“An example for increased price [to] performance ratio requirements is the unbelievable pricing for a legacy control system touch panel,” says Carsten Steinecker, director of business development at COMM-TEC, which sells CommandFusion’s iViewer application that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a control panel. “The integrator but also the end customer is not any more willing to spend a fortune here, and alternative reliable solutions are available.”
But at the same time, business owners also don’t want to have waste time tinkering with an off-the-shelf product to make it fit their needs. In those cases, hiring an integrator and using pro products might be cheaper, faster or both. (Indeed, one user wrote in a review of the Defender Stealth 1: “The only issue I am having is how to save all images/videos to a program or CD for viewing or copying on computer. The factory said to use Windows Movie maker [but] I am not having any success with it.”)
Meanwhile, some AV integrators and vendors are finding that products designed for the consumer market are a potential fit for pro applications, too. Two examples are Apple’s iPod and iPhone, which vendors such as Crestron, Peavey and Yamaha are using for media servers and control systems. (For more information about pro applications of the iPhone and iPod, see “i for AV” in the November 2008 issue of InAVate at www.inavateonthenet.net.)
Another example is Apple’s Mac Mini.
“When we ran digital signage software on it, it actually performed as good as some of the larger, rack-mountable PCs that we had used,” says Blaine Brown, director of technology at Sensory Technologies, a U.S.-based integrator.
“It’s better than the pro equipment. There’s some truth to that,” adds Andrew Sellers, a principal at Sensory. “It worked better. It could handle things better.”
Sizing Up the Market
It’s impossible to estimate how much consumer hardware and software winds up in business applications. The main reason is sales channels: When a product is sold through an integrator, it’s easy for the vendor and analyst firms to track. But if it’s purchased from a retailer that sells to both consumers and enterprises, it’s literally anyone’s guess where and how it will be used.
“It’s pretty impossible,” says Paul Butler, analyst director at Meko, which tracks the European display market. “They don’t know what the use is, and they never will be able to.”
But there’s ample anecdotal evidence that a significant and growing amount of consumer AV gear – including higher end “prosumer” equipment – is winding up in businesses. That amount varies by a variety of factors, including the type of gear.
“The prosumer trend is definitely a reality in the flat panel display market, where some estimate that up to a 40 percent of the units sold are consumer/prosumer, especially when the use of the product is a very basic point-of-sale/point-of-interest application where not a lot of professional features, flexibility or extra reliability are needed,” says Enrique Robledo, professional plasma marketing manager at Panasonic.
Westinghouse Digital has a similar perspective.
“Some of our digital photo frames are being used as shelf talkers,” says Rey Roque, vice president of marketing.
The amount also varies by region.
“In the Middle East and African regions, we are definitely seeing lots of businesses opting for cheaper consumer projectors,” says Adam Dent, MEA sales manager at Optoma. “In addition, the lack of CEDIA-registered installers means there is sometimes a tendency to opt for the easier-install products, which are mainly the consumer product sets.”
Some vendors have lines of consumer and pro products but keep a tight rein on their sale channels to ensure that one type isn’t poaching from the other.
“Although PC World, [a U.K. retailer], does sell some AV equipment targeted at small businesses, Optoma classes this as a business channel because of their terms and conditions of sale, which requires proof that the buyer is a business user and is generally run separately from the consumer retail side of the business,” says Kendra Ingram, U.K. pro AV account manager.
A Real Competitive Threat?
With only anecdotal evidence to go on, it’s difficult to estimate how much business integrators and pro vendors are losing when companies opt for consumer/prosumer gear. For those who view it as a major competitive threat, one consolation is that for every hair salon that installs its own audio system based around an iPod, there’s a convention centre, train station or executive conference room where both integrator and client agree that only a pro product will do the job.
In other words, for integrators and pro vendors that cater to small, relatively unsophisticated installations, the influx of consumer gear represents lost business. But for installations that are large, complex or both, there are more opportunities for do-it-yourself business owners to screw up – and for integrators to show how they and pro products add value.
Take digital signage. One restaurant owner chose a professionally installed system that allows him to wrap crawls and banners around broadcast programming to promote certain menu items and specials.
“He’s seen a 100 percent in lift in sales of those items he’s put on screen,” says Roque of Westinghouse, whose products were used in that installation. “That’s easier to do on a commercial display than on a TV.”
Digital signage also shows how a growing market creates opportunities at the high end that can outweigh losses at the low end. For example, signage installed atop gas pumps – such as PumpTop TV – requires specialised displays and installation expertise. Ditto for verticals such as mining, where eight megapixel displays are must-haves.
“That’s still an opportunity for pro AV,” says Westinghouse’s Roque. “That’s not something that can be matched by a consumer [product].”
And although a Mac Mini can be ideal for powering a digital signage system, the displays themselves might need to be pro models if features such as panel lockouts, RS-232 ports and metal enclosures are must-haves that can’t be found on consumer versions.
More blurring lines?
But one wild card is the pace at which consumer products – especially prosumer models – are adding advanced features, including plug-and-play networking. That can make it easier for some end users to do more complex installations.
“The lines are starting to blur in regards to some equipment because the consumer stuff is typically getting features, newer technology quicker than the pro equipment gets them,” says Sensory’s Brown, who uses pro equipment when applicable. Adds his colleague, Sellers, “As products become more plug-and-play and easier to set up, end users will do it on their own.”
Another wild card is growth amount of interaction between business and consumer systems, such as a doctor on a professional videoconferencing system communicating with a patient who’s using a Mac or PC at home. That kind of interaction could become easier as more consumer products add support for standards such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), or with the use of gateways that reconcile disparate capabilities.
“What I am seeing in the videoconferencing market is the deployment of infrastructure products that allow for the integration of consumer and pro products,” says Scott Christianson, owner of Kaleidoscope Videoconferencing, a U.S.-based integrator. “For example, the wider spread use of SIP for video and phone communications allows for a system that can support a high-end LifeSize videoconference product in the conference room, as well as desktop video systems or several of the newer options for cheap videophones. It allows people to bring different end solutions to the table, so to speak – even the Mac Minis.”
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