Gadgetory

it'd be easy to argue that we're in the golden age of entertainment never before have we had so many options at our fingertips but with all these possibilities the modern home is faced with a number of problems content spread across multiple devices different apps and various streaming services our home of the future should be able to bring all of these options together into one simple and intuitive interface that should be fun to use as well so how do I turn the TV on Alexa look there's a lot of components that go into modern entertainment systems there's the TV speakers gaming consoles streaming devices even virtual reality headsets that's a lot of power Ethernet and HDMI cables to wrangle the challenge for our technology integrator Pete Sanford and his team is to make all of that disappear the goal when you have a system like this is to masquerade as much as possible and make it real clean so we've got everything hidden all the speakers are in ceiling we've got a Roku in here of PlayStation for a Nintendo switch our surround sound receiver powering all of our speakers and subwoofer and so knows for music management all the wiring is connected inside this credenza and runs straight to the back of the TV when it's turned off the TV doesn't have to be a rectangular eyesore on the wall we can program it to display a piece of art seamlessly folding into our interior design there is one thing that has disappeared though which to be honest threw me off the first time I sat down to use of TV there's no remote it's not just hidden it's gone at home I've got a drawer you know in my Heat we all of that drawer yeah it's got like six remotes in there yeah and then you know when you want to do something you have to open up the drawer like a Kuwait this look and then this mode and yeah we remove all the stock remotes because it'll force the clients to you know adapt to their new system but it'll also kind of prevent them from hitting a button that might put them in the wrong mode or cause them to lose audio or lose video and things just get out of sync so you're really making the system more efficient and forcing the client to just dive right in and you know learn how to use it the right way this iPad is running a system called RTI and besides controlling our entertainment system it's built to control all the functions of our home so here we are this is your remote okay so we'll be able to do everything and operate all of those individual pieces of equipment just using this one interface so since we're in the living room we'd go ahead and choose that icon and then we have our list I choose Netflix and it'll go right into Netflix and we can then go in and choose the options that we have here for for viewing there's a lot of button pushing here and this is the home of the future yeah I feel like I should be able to do something like voice control oh yeah can I interface that way yeah and there's a lot of options for voice control we built a page here under the icon Amazon Alexa just to kind of give you a few examples Alexa tell home Butler to set the living room to Hulu okay and now we're watching Hulu since everything is connected through this one system it does allow for what's known as macro commands so I could say hey Alexa tell the home butler to set the living room to movie mode which will turn your TV to Netflix while dimming your lights and kicking your a/c on and in our limited experience playing with it the controls work well but currently the Roku API doesn't allow you to simply say play the next episode of your favorite show you end up still needing to poke through some sort of virtual remote control on the iPad and to be honest using the system for the first time folks pretty clunky the iPad is just a lot more cumbersome than traditional remotes now it is possible to install RTI on your phone but the much smaller screen means you only have a few of the buttons easily accessible for your smartphone while it's important to bring all these controls into one system I think the next step for the future is designing a more seamless experience one thing our universal remote does excel at is how we play music throughout the house the best feature knowing where the limits are we've created a shortcut page here on our RTI app so the left side we've got our different areas we've got our bedroom our Atmos surround sound system in the living room our office play 1 and then our Sonos connect which is feeding all of our outdoor patio speakers I see it a lot of what look like radio stations on here but what if I have my own personal playlist so this is really just your shortcuts right so if you were our client we would have that as a shortcut on here your favorite playlists your favorite stations but we're not going to try and rebuild what Sonos has already done so over here we put this little Sonos button which if we press that it pulls us right into the Sonos app and it's nice because it's very intuitive very easy to use and this is where you would get all of that additional detail that you're talking about specific playlists music stored physically on a device right on the network that's what I do I download all my music I like to keep it with me so nurse does for our music what's still missing for our video it brings all of our media and streaming services into one intuitive and seamless interface partly thanks to its open API that's a big reason why we chose it over other sound systems it even has solid Alexa support so using voice control feels like a complete experience and it allows us to play different media in different rooms all at the same time including outside here in our outdoor patio zone we have music only so there's no AV out here to worry about but this is probably gonna be the area where people entertain a lot okay so we did a real nice outdoor audio system here full range speakers I think you're really gonna like it all right play some of that royalty-free music sounds good right that sounds amazing yeah so it's all full range so you're getting a lot of bass whereas normally you would not get this much bass look I know it's hard to get a sense of this from just watching the video but having this bass sensation indoors is something I'm used to having it outdoors in a garden is a totally new experience that full range bass is thanks to this weird mushroom shaped device sticking out of the landscape it's just the tip of what's known as a subterranean subwoofer so this subwoofer is buried underground so pre-construction when we're still working on the place we dug a real deep hole a three feet wide 3 PP in order to cover a decent amount of space and really feel the bass outside you'll need a pretty large speaker keeping the bulk of this buried underground hides what could be an eyesore cables run daisy-chained underground to additional speakers placed in the landscape and positioning those speakers is an art unto itself facing towards the house to create the optimal experience for us and for our neighbors we don't need as many speakers and we're able to contain the sound better in the yard you're creating a zone of audio this little patio and the further out that you get you just hear the volume level drop can you give me a demo yeah yeah I'll show you let's try it out this is kind of like where our line is yeah yeah and it's all facing this way oh yeah it actually does get noticeably quieter it's like you know leaving a dance club or whatever you still hear it yeah you've walked out you've left the room and it's not in your face and it's not jamming out on you now to be clear this definitely isn't any kind of soundproofing and when we were blasting music I'm sure some of our neighbors weren't super pleased but for me these speakers felt like a great example of Technology working at its best they actually feel a little like magic blending into the landscape while creating real sonic power beneath our feet and while the iPad control feels less optimal for our visual setup using it to play audio with just the sound of my voice feels effortless which is what home entertainment is at its best effortless the ideal entertainment experience of the present and the future is one where the apparatus truly falls away the tech is intuitive and streamlined headache and hassle free all that's left to focus on is the experience itself the perfect end to a long day thank you so much for watching now while I'm living the dream here in this home of the future how are you bringing the future into your home let us know in the comments below and we'll see you next week with a brand new episode