Onkyo Announces the CS-N575 Hi-Fi System Featuring Blackfire
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With the announcement in late July that Apple is officially retiring the iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle (the last of the pre iPhone iPods) we can safely say that “video killed the radio star” or rather, the rise of online/app-based streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music, have essentially wiped out the need for music file downloading on portable devices (and the products that were designed for that sole purpose.) When the iPod debuted in 2001, Steve Jobs promised 1,000 songs in your pocket. Today, through streaming, you can play almost any song in existence, instantaneously and fairly cheaply, without bogging down your smartphone or tablet’s storage. Thus, it’s not surprising that Apple is finally saying goodbye to the standalone MP3 player (although it does pierce a knife right into the heart of my childhood.)
With online/app-based streaming swiftly becoming the norm, home A/V and speaker manufacturers are adapting as well by offering products with built-in streaming services like Spotify Connect and Chromecast built-in, allowing music lovers to stream their music wirelessly from their phone or tablet to their speakers. But this shift comes at a price because they are exposing major flaws, not just in their products, but in the wireless protocols their products are built on.
Conventional Wi-Fi runs on TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) which was designed in the 1960’s for transferring files down wired Ethernet lines, not streaming real-time, wireless, audio. Unfortunately, most products out today that boast wireless streaming capabilities still use these outdated protocols and therefore, can’t properly support wireless streaming.
This has posed a huge problem for manufacturers who want to stay on trend, but are unwilling to invest in new, wireless infrastructures. As we’ve seen with Apple’s retirement of standalone MP3 players, products that support app-based streaming are the future. And yet, manufacturers continue to release products that are fundamentally unable to support the future of wireless home entertainment.
So what can be done? Well, Blackfire Research has an answer for that.
It’s called the Blackfire Realtime Entertainment Distribution (RED) framework, and it’s the industry’s only wireless and entertainment-centric infrastructure software framework built from the ground up to both overcome the limitations of Wi-Fi and meet the needs of wireless, entertainment-related apps and products. Top global audio brands, such as Harman Kardon, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Integra have already licensed the Blackfire RED framework, and are currently shipping products that leverage its capabilities: reliable multi-room, multi-channel, low latency, wireless audio and video over Wi-Fi. With the Blackfire RED framework in products such as home A/V systems, wireless speakers, smartphones, and TVs, home owners can finally become Smart Home owners – enjoying all of their digital streaming services wirelessly, synchronously and seamlessly throughout the home.
With the original iPod, you could carry 1,000 songs in your pocket. Today, the Spotify song collection alone boasts over 30 million. We’ve been adding more and more music into our pockets, but after all this time, we’re still trying to figure out how best to get it out.
Southern California sisters, Este, Danielle and Alana Haim who make up the soft rock group, Haim, are back with their sophomore album, “Something to Tell You.” Haim, the breakout band of 2013, who charmed listeners with their laidback, quirky, SoCal style, caught the eye – or rather – ears, of The Godmother of Rock and Roll, Stevie Nicks, as well as pop music mogul, Taylor Swift (who they opened for on select stops of her mega-successful 1989 World Tour). The sisters grew up playing a diverse collection of instruments, and their musical proficiency is always on full display (check out a fantastic, live version of “Right Now” below to see how seamlessly they can switch instruments in a single song). Haim sounds unlike any other band out there, and “Something to Tell You” is a solid addition to the band’s growing opus. Highlights include playful opener “Want You Back;” the soulful “Nothing’s Wrong;” the bouncy “Little of Your Love;” and the stark, powerful track “Right Now.” In their short time in the spotlight, Haim has gathered somewhat of a cult following, and fans of their first album, “Days Are Gone,” will not be disappointed in the follow-up (or the return of Este’s beloved “bass face.”) Check out Haim’s website here: http://haimtheband.com/
Brought to you by Blackfire Research….On this day in 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in upstate New York was scheduled to come to a close. However, due to delays caused by severe weather, the musical acts were forced to halt. (Images of Free Love activists dancing, running, tumbling and sliding in muddy fields due to the heavy rain has become synonymous with the festival.) Jimi Hendrix, who was supposed to close the festival on Sunday night, didn’t begin his set until the following morning at 8:30am. The audience of around 400,000 at the height of the festival dwindled to about only 30,000 by the time Hendrix took the stage Monday. In total, 32 acts performed throughout the weekend, including The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, The Who and Jefferson Airplane. To this day, the legacy of Woodstock lives on, widely viewed as a defining moment for popular music, and the culminating event that defined the counterculture generation.
In his entertaining recent editorial, CNBC Technology Product Editor, Todd Haselton, experienced, firsthand, the frustration that many smart home enthusiasts have endured for a long time: smart home products that don’t work with one another. Typically, manufacturers don’t want their customers to “mix and match” products, but rather, they “encourage” them to stay loyal to their brand by deliberately limiting compatibility with competitors. But what manufacturers don’t realize is that these “technology islands” are actually discouraging potential users from buying any smart home products at all. Aside from the more geeky early adopters (ok, my hand’s up), smart home gadget users don’t want to invest in a brand and have that brand become obsolete within the next few years (i.e. “choose wrong”) so many people just aren’t choosing at all. As Haselton points out: “How do you choose which one to go with? It’s almost like the VHS vs. Betamax wars.”
A simple solution to this problem, as Haselton notes, is “one single standard that works for everything.” At Blackfire Research, we’ve done just that. A few years back, Blackfire Research founder and CEO, Ravi Rajapakse, became frustrated – much like Haselton himself and countless other smart home gadget lovers – when he realized that there was no seamless way to transfer and share entertainment media throughout his own home. What was once a personal project to create a multi-room entertainment system soon became ten years of research into a revolutionary new protocol, which we call The Blackfire Realtime Entertainment Distribution (RED) framework. The Blackfire RED framework can stream both HD 5.1 audio and 4K video, simultaneously, across multiple devices – all over the standard WiFi you already have. As well as connecting light bulbs, thermostats and door locks, Blackfire also works as a bridge between your smart home and your entertainment systems – with precise synchronization, low latency for lip sync, and overall reliability. Because ultimately, that is what smart home owners want – to mix and match devices while having their music and movies available to them anywhere in the home.
Oh yeah, did we mention that Blackfire enabled products are compatible with each other, even across brands? Just look for our logo on select Harman/Kardon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Integra, and HTC devices. It’s just one of the many ways Blackfire Research is making the smart home a whole lot smarter.