Impressions from IFA

Impressions from IFA

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Europe’s largest consumer electronics show, IFA, is currently taking place in Berlin. Before the show even began, companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Sony were already making a splash with big announcements. So what are the new and continuing tech trends of the second half of 2017, as we slowly make our way into the holiday season? And what can we expect from our CE devices in the near future? Here are our main takeaways from IFA 2017!

 

The War for Cloud AI Control Heats Up

In what we see as a very Game of Thrones maneuver, Amazon and Microsoft have formed an alliance. Before the show began, it was announced that Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana voice interfaces will soon be able to interact with each other which potentially opens up a powerful combination of Microsoft’s business app integration with Amazon’s rapidly growing Smart Home device integration. This sort of cooperation between competing technologies is huge news, especially in a market that is known for closed ecosystems. This alliance will serve as a blow to Google and Apple, whose Google Assistant and Siri, are still struggling to integrate 3rd party devices.

 

Speaking of Google, back in May, they opened up their AI software development kit (SDK) in the hopes of getting Google Assistant integrated into a plethora of third party smart devices for the home, a move directly in response to the “The Amazon Home Takeover” at CES in January. At IFA, it was announced that Google Assistant will be integrated into new smart speakers, like Sony’s biggest unveil at the show, the Apple HomePod look-alike, LF-S50G (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) and various LG home appliances. Although this is all great news for Google, it’s not hard to notice that Amazon is still way ahead in the race for smart home ownership – which is ironic, since Google paid $3.2B in 2014 to buy IoT pioneer Nest Labs. Is this an indication of Google’s growing disfunction as a company?

 

Wireless Woes

Ever since the iPhone 7 ditched the headphone jack last year, other smartphone manufacturers have begun to follow suit. At IFA this year, wireless headphones were in an abundance. Beyerdynamic has unveiled Aventho Wireless headphones, a beautifully designed wearable, using their super high-end Tesla drivers. The only problem? These ultra lux Hi-Fi quality headphones use APTX HD Bluetooth, a lossy-compression algorithm that is only supported in about 5 Android phones, meaning most of the time you’d be listening to the gurgling mess that is regular Bluetooth SBC. If ever a product deserved lossless HD streaming over WiFi…this just seems like a complete missed opportunity. Sad! And then there are the new Marshall Headphones Bluetooth speakers, which are adding WiFi for multi-room capabilities. (Even Bluetooth speakers are ditching Bluetooth.)

 

Conclusions

IFA 2017 has shown us that the smart home is getting smarter, and cell phones are expanding their wireless capabilities. And thanks to new low-cost, low-powered chipsets, it’s WiFi all the way as far as connectivity. Now all we need is a protocol that runs on standard WiFi, connects multiple brands, is agnostic to the voice AI wars and has the performance to handle streamed media. Hmmm….

Troubleshooting your Whole-Home WiFi Extender or Mesh Network

Troubleshooting your Whole-Home WiFi Extender or Mesh Network

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The top WiFi Router brands have recently introduced Whole-Home, multi-unit mesh network systems (WiFi extenders)  for extending your WiFi coverage across larger buildings. Examples are Eero, Luma, Orbi, Google Wifi and Apple Airport Express. These systems comprise a base-station which is hard-wired to your internet connection, plus one or more extender units that connect wirelessly to the base station and relay the signal further than a single router can reach.

 

Although the latest Whole-Home systems have resolved many of the reliability issues plaguing earlier mesh networks, there is still a “hand-over” process as a device moves out of range of the base station and into range of an extender unit. For a streaming device, this hand over can sometime cause the WiFi connection to be momentarily lost, resulting in a visible or audible drop-out. Also, these systems can be confusing to configure since the base-station and the extenders may all share a single SSID (network name), and sometimes switch automatically between the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band so you often can’t easily tell where your devices are connected, or at what speed.

 

We’ve put together a few tips to help you get the most out of these set ups.

  1. Make sure that your main base-station router (the unit wired to your internet connection or WAN) is in a central location in your home. In any mesh system, you will get the highest WiFi speed when devices can connect to this unit directly, so it makes sense to place it where it provides the strongest signal to as much of your home as possible. 
  2. Make sure that the extender units are placed where they still have a strong signal connection with the base-station – ideally within sight of the main router. Mesh networks are only effective when each unit can share a strong wireless signal, so avoid placing the extender units at the very limit of the base-station’s WiFi range.
    WiFi Extender
  3. Give your extender a different SSID name than your main router, to show you when devices switch between them.
  4. Check to make sure that your wireless network isn’t being interfered or obstructed by a neighbor’s network. One way to remedy this is to change the channel of your access point or router.

 

You can check out some routers that Blackfire Research recommends here.

Apple kills the iPod Nano and Shuffle. So, what’s next?

Apple kills the iPod Nano and Shuffle. So, what’s next?

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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.

Making the Smart Home Smarter

Making the Smart Home Smarter

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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.

The New Harman/Kardon Omni+ Wireless Speakers Featuring Blackfire

The New Harman/Kardon Omni+ Wireless Speakers Featuring Blackfire

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Blackfire Research partner, Harman Kardon, began shipping an updated version of their Omni Wireless Speakers last month, which they are calling The Omni+ Series. Like the first generation, the new Omni+ Series features Blackfire technology, “Wireless HD Audio”, for whole home connectivity. It also features the same lightweight, portable design of the Omni 10 and Omni 20, but now, they’re trading in the glossy exterior for a more sophisticated matte finish (in black and white.) Additionally, Harman Kardon has added another speaker to the series: The Omni 50+, a wireless HD indoor/outdoor speaker with a rechargeable battery (up to 5 hours of playback time), that is also “splash-proof,” so it’s perfect for your next backyard BBQ, no matter the weather.

 

The most exciting update that comes with the Harman/Kardon Omni+ Series is the addition of built-in Spotify Connect, which lets you play your Spotify library through the Omni+ wireless speakers directly from the internet – freeing up your phone to take calls and browse through your apps. If you have one or two of the first generation Omni wireless speakers and want to play music from your Spotify account throughout your home, you can, easily! With the addition of one or more Omni+ wireless speakers to your existing collection, you can re-broadcast Spotify Connect to your Omni speakers. Check out this blog post to learn how!

 

You can learn more about the new Omni+ Series on the Harman/Kardon website!