Wireless Moves in, But Wired Still Prevails

One of the questions that custom dealers can expect to hear from clients these days is: "Will it be wireless?" In fact, the entire category of wireless hardware for everything from control to A/V distribution has exploded. Options exist now that were only wishful thinking five years ago. But is the prevalence of wireless the death knell of hard wiring installations?

While the only constant in this business is change, the growth of one category doesn't automatically presage the extinction of another. In talking to both dealers and vendors, a very clear consensus quickly emerged. While wireless is a big help to the custom channel, hard-wired installations are not even close to being finished. In fact, as we'll see, wired technology continues to evolve almost as rapidly as wireless.

Beyond that, however, there's more to completing a successful project, whether wired or wireless, than just the technology. As the saying goes, it's not the tools; it's how you use them. With that in mind, as we surveyed the opinions of industry veterans on both the dealer and vendor side, they also shared their expertise and experiences on how to best apply both categories of technology in order to deliver faultless installations. In the vendors' cases, we also learn of some exciting new products to make installers lives easier.

Hardwired When & Why

How do integrators feel about both wired and wireless technologies, and what are they doing in the field? Ken Borg, Owner of Toronto, ON's Borg Custom Audio and Video Ltd., remains sold on the importance of wiring as the backbone of custom A/V systems.

"The only wireless work I've done at all was Apple TV," he explains. "And really, that part was just its connection to the network."

Des Young, General Manager of Barrie, ON's BravoComm, also voices his support for wired over wireless. For him, it boils down to being "faster with more bandwidth and cheaper reliability for all systems wherever possible. Wireless is just too flaky when it comes to speed," he opines. Young sees the need for a high bandwidth, structured wiring backbone becoming even more important as networked entertainment grows. "Clients need to consider that when downloading large video files. Waiting to watch something while it buffers is no fun!"

Another seasoned integrator who shares this view is John Stumpf, Sales Manager for Fergus, ON's Station Earth. Stumpf asserts that it's simply solid design work to wire everything that can be wired; and he doesn't see that likely to change any time soon.

John Stumpf, Sales Manager, Station Earth, Fergus, ON: "We don't touch [wireless music distribution systems] with a ten-foot pole. All those wireless music systems work okay, but they're really the focus of big box stores selling to do-it-yourself types."

"Some ancillary devices can be wireless," he elaborates, "such as iPads and other control devices like remotes. But for maximum performance, the majority of the installation has to be wired."

Evan Moorhouse, President of Richmond, ON's Moorhouse Cabling and Custom Installations, has been in the custom A/V business for almost as long as it's been a business. He takes pains to differentiate wired and wireless systems, and to categorize them into the purposes where he feels they belong. "What I hear from clients is that they all have wireless in their homes for Internet: to check e-mail and surf the Web." And he thinks this is entirely appropriate. But when it comes to distributing media, "I use structured wiring," he says.

Veteran A/V professional Mike Ohman, Owner of Kelowna, BC's Beyond Audio, cuts right to the chase about the critical nature of a system backbone of structured wiring. "It's one thing to have your cell phone drop a call," he says. "It's another to have the video cut out when you're watching the big game." Ohman asserts that if a client wants a full suite of A/V around the house, wireless isn't an option. Maybe for do-it-yourself (DIY) types with time to kill, he concedes, adding: "When you spend less, your expectations are lower. But an informed choice means deciding based on the cost of what you want to accomplish." He also points out that so far, he has yet to see a wireless media system that really delivers what he's looking for: reliability. "We're seeing more wireless talk from the vendors than anywhere else. They're trying to talk about wireless solutions, but, in talking to customers, we realize that they won't do what the customers want."

Interestingly, the consensus amongst custom channel vendors echoes the views of integrators. It's not unknown for the two camps to disagree on just about everything, so this is notable. Crestron's Communications Director Jeff Singer underscores the best practices his company shares with its dealers. It's Crestron's official position that when transmitting audio and video, wired is always preferred, although they understand that it's not always practical or possible. "As far as control and communication, there is no ‘best' or ‘correct.'" Singer explains. "It's all about the application and what the client wants to do." Singer points out that dealers projects often have a combination of wired and wireless within the same system. As a matter of fact, Crestron has several different wireless platforms. "We have standardized on three different wireless platforms to cover a variety of applications. Long-range two-way RF, mesh network technology, and our enhanced WiFi. Each gives you a different data rate, range and functionality depending on the environment and client expectations."

Singer says Crestron's wireless systems are very fast, secure and reliable. The technology has really come a long way in the last few years. I wouldn't hesitate to use wireless wherever necessary." Singer tempers that opinion by noting that it will always be necessary to pull wire, but today, integrators have many more options and opportunities that they didn't have in the past.

Brent McCall is the Resident Engineer for cable and accessory maker Ethereal (distributed in Canada by MKHB Enterprises; www.mkhb.ca), and his enthusiasm for emerging signal technologies bubbles over when asked about where the industry is heading. "The reality is that any 1080p HD content, particularly 3D, must be hardwired, either by fibre or copper." The current standards for wireless HD, he indicates, only support 700Mhz, which won't support 3D without motion blur.

While McCall acknowledges that wireless is a necessity in places where wire can't be run, such as historic buildings, he still asserts that for HQ video, 3D and, in his opinion, any screen size 50-inches or bigger, the video has to travel over the wire.

Integrators won't be surprised to learn that cable vendor Monster (handled in Canada by ReSource Group Canada; www.resourcegroupcanada.com) remains very pro-wire, although its mandate as a systems provider has necessitated the expansion into offering wireless products as well. Vern Smith, Monster's Director of Product Development emphasizes that previous point, noting that "Our mission is to provide solutions that work for our dealers and their customers." On the topic of structured wiring, he explains: "Today, there is no substitute for wire when the highest level of performance is required." Performance, of course, means not only audio and video quality, but reliability as well.

But nothing is perfect, and despite the fan club for wiring, there are still issues that need to be addressed. Kirk Kohn, Senior Sales and Training Specialist for Staub Electronics, which distributes, among others products, SnapAV, points that out in defence of wireless.

"Not to say that wired products don't have their own set of problems," he says, but cautions that "running wires in a retro installation can be next to impossible. Damage to the wire can occur from pulling the cable too hard, breaking the wire inside. Cat5e has tensile strength of around 12lbs. If the project has allowed you to pre-wire, you could have cables that have been cut, screwed into, or even removed from other trades." On the positive side Kohn notes that wired can pass much more information than a wireless system, and is not as subject to interference from outside sources.

"Until wireless products can deliver the baud rate that wired products can," he concludes, "there will be a need for both. It will depend on the application of the system at hand."

Moorhouse agrees, and is adamant on the superiority of wiring when it comes to getting media around the house. "Any time you use wireless for media, you get problems," he says bluntly. "Speed, buffering, reliability, bandwidth issues: those all come into play." He adds that the time spent troubleshooting wireless jobs after the fact would have been better spent up front running lines in the house in the first place.

Evan Moorhouse, President, Moorhouse Cabling and Custom Installations, Richmond, ON says that while wireless might not be ideal for every application, it has proved great for lighting control. "Having run a lot of lines for lighting control in the past, the newer ZigBee platform is incredible for this application. With fewer wires, there's a ton less installation work. Plus, there's no headaches, and the stuff actually works."

Installation Standards for Wire

When it comes to wiring standards, Station Earth is on the same page as other progressive, high end integrators. "We run Cat6 everywhere," Stumpf explains. "If we have an area where we know there won't be anything but a telephone, and we happen to have a spool of Cat5e on hand, we'll use it there. But otherwise, it's Cat6 through and through." The other exception to the Cat6 rule for Station Earth is fibre. Stumpf says that the company doesn't typically use fibre in clients' main residences, citing the current cost. But they do make regular use of it to link the main home to outbuildings such as garages and guest houses: anywhere that they need to connect to a building where the wire run is going to be 1,500-2,000 feet or more away.

The mandate of running lines is especially clear when an integrator looks hard at what's coming up on the industry's horizon. "Looking ahead," posits Moorhouse, "a flat panel is no longer just a flat panel: it's a multimedia display device." With TVs that now feature Web functionality, Moorhouse strongly recommends wiring Ethernet to TV locations in new projects.

Moorhouse asserts that integrators need to educate their clients, and gently move them away from the preconceptions that they have when they first walk in the showroom.

"Clients expect that wireless can do everything," he explains, "and the reality is that it just doesn't work that way. I cringe at the idea of trying to run media all around the house to multiple locations via wireless."

For future proofing, Ethereal's McCall has two pieces of advice: conduit (or "Smurf Tube," as he likes to call it), or three lines of Cat6 to every location in the house, or both. He suggests that three lines of Cat6 between source and display locations will provide tremendous capabilities, now and later on. Having said that, he reminds dealers that attention to detail is critical, including handing lines correctly to avoid damaging the conductors, as well as terminating the lines to their connectors with 100% accuracy. Anything less than 100% can lead to hours on the jobsite trying to find a fault in a single pair of conductors.

Related to the last point, and central to the use of Cat6 cables, are baluns: the boxes that translate the signals to be sent down the network and re-translated at the display end. McCall hints that Ethereal is currently in the process of moving its product line from 1080p baluns to ones that can support full 3D. On the topic of best practices, McCall quips "dealers who pay attention in class love baluns." However, he's seen dealers who just can't make them work, and spend some of his workday refreshing dealers on best practices. What's the root cause of dealers getting grief from baluns? "Bad terminations," says McCall.

Wireless When & Why

While folks like Moorhouse agree that wireless still needs to play catch up to wired, he isn't dead set against it. He points out what a boon wireless lighting control has become, and is an avid promoter of ZigBee for lighting control. "Having run a lot of lines for lighting control in the past, the newer ZigBee platform is incredible for this application. With fewer wires, there's a ton less installation work. Plus, there's no headaches, and the stuff actually works." For Moorhouse, that adds up to a big win for wireless, albeit for just this particular application.

Tony DiChiro, Monster's Director of New Technologies, draws attention to the direction the company has taken with wireless. "Right now we're pushing the envelope of what's possible for wireless in AV, control, security and telecom." When it comes to wireless applications, DiChiro explains that systems can be classed in a couple of different ways: single room and multi-room, and high resolution and low resolution. Naturally, Monster offers systems for all. In room, it's easier to deliver a high-resolution performance. "Our Digital Express HD is a 60Ghz solution that gives 1080p and latency of less than one millisecond," he states.

Despite his previously mentioned pro-wire bias, McCall stresses that he is "absolutely a huge fan of wireless" as it relates to problem-solving for retrofit installations. From personal experience, he cites older urban areas, such as in Texas, New Orleans, and parts of Los Angeles, where earlier construction methods make retrofit wiring impossible.

Brian Surrett, Eastern and Northern Ontario Sales Representative for Ultralink, Sharp, and Erikson Consumer, offers some tips on how integrators can best make use of wireless products. He maintains that every product needs to be matched with the system for which it's best suited. With wireless, he suggests looking for products that use the strongest signals and the biggest bandwidth, to better get the job done. "Soundcast, for example, uses frequency hopping spread spectrum at 2.4Ghz to get wireless audio outside," he explains of the line distributed by Erikson. "900Mhz product that can be bought off the shelf are more budget-oriented, and as a result, don't perform as well."

Echoing the sentiments of other industry experts, he agrees that wireless remains the choice for reaching areas where wires aren't possible. But, he allows, "wired is still best. If you can get the wire in, then run the wire." On the other hand, wireless lets integrators get out into the backyard without drilling through outside walls and compromising vapour barriers.

Just before speaking with Marketnews, Mark MacDonald of rep agency M3 in Anmore, BC, had just had a long conversation with Ralph E. Parrett, Director of Quality and Technical Services for Liberty Wire & Cable, a line which MacDonald represents. According to MacDonald, Parrett made the point that while wireless will get stronger, in terms of not only range, and performance, but also market share, those systems will always be problematic with regard to security. "Wealthy clients doing A/V distribution will still have security concerns over wireless," relates MacDonald, stating that the likelihood of a system being compromised over copper is dramatically less than over wireless.

Performance is the other drum that gets beaten when comparing wired to wireless, and it's unavoidable. MacDonald stresses that data rates over Cat6 are notably faster to a human observer than a wireless setup. On top of that, he repeats what others have said: that as wireless grows, the demand on the airwaves increases, slowing down the amount of traffic that any one home's systems can receive. He uses Philips Pronto's two-way RS232 protocols as an example of the need to keep wireless traffic streamlined.

Mark MacDonald, Independent Sales Rep, M3, Anmore, BC, says that for wireless installations to be successful, integrators need to consider things like the need for placing multiple wireless access points around the house, security concerns, and streamlining traffic as demand for the airwaves grows.

Wireless Standards for Installation

When it comes to important considerations for utilizing wireless, Moorhouse insists on enterprise-level wireless routers. "With the load that the network will be under, cheaper big-box store routers won't work. An integrator can't always work with what's already in the house." Moorhouse always gives a heads up to his clients that they will need to invest in a better unit, either by themselves, or supplied by his company. "Quite often, clients who own their own companies understand that need, based on their own IT experiences at work. So it's not as hard to sell them on more solid network hardware as you might think."

With that in mind, McCall, who is a go-to guy for almost everything installation-related for Ethereal's dealers, has some serious advice for integrators when it comes to applying wireless to their projects: know your wireless types, because they each have their applications, and shouldn't be mixed up. He explains that 5Ghz wireless is pretty close to residential standards, but it's a penetrating frequency. The other main type, 60Ghz, is a bouncing frequency. It won't penetrate walls, and uses reflectivity in a room to get a better spread. The latter offers resistance to cell phones and such, but needs line of sight to work.

"I probably end up assisting two or three wireless installations a month," he says, "where a dealer has an issue." Pivotal to making wireless work well is the need to understand the importance of device locations and placements. Radio waves can be blocked by dense metal and electronics, such as a flat panel. "Most wireless receivers don't have to be line of site," says McCall, but you can't wedge one into the bracket between a flat panel and the wall and get a good connection." Another common no-no is placing one inside a metal rack, since all that metal acts as an antenna for interfering RF frequencies. On top of a rack is a better option, he advises.

McCall stresses that integrators need to be able to set up wireless systems without massive automation, which is why Ethereal's wireless hardware features easy controls, and auto frequency selections. He brags that at CES this year, "we were set up in the same hall with all the automation vendors. You can imagine how crowded the airwaves were. It only took three minutes to find a frequency, then we had no problems for the entire show."

With regard to in-field testing, McCall says Ethereal's new HDMI DAD, or Digital Diagnostic Device, was developed to confirm HDMI connections in the field. Instead of just testing connectivity, the HDMI DAD also looks at each signal in the HDMI cable and tests for correctness, including rise times and packet accuracy. "Each signal is a relay of data, coming as voltage on/voltage off," he explains. If the voltage takes too long to transition, then the source and the display don't sync." In those cases, the HDMI DAD strips capacitance off the bus to return the rise time to 275 nanoseconds.

MacDonald notes that when it comes to big installations, "wireless systems have hurdles to overcome: there needs to be multiple wireless access points around the house, so multiple Prontos can run, but encryption becomes an issue. WPA means lengthy reconnection times." He advises dealers that if their clients want instantaneous gratification, they're restricted based on designing a robust wireless network, and not just doing it half-baked.

When dealing with wireless, BravoComm's Young has one rule: security! "We recently moved offices and had a lull waiting for Internet services," he explains. "I did a quick scan, and the huge industrial automation company across the street had an unsecured WAP! Guess who should have known better but had bandwidth to spare while we waited?"

Des Young, General Manager, BravoComm, Barrie, ON, says that as data consumption grows and people require high bandwidth, structured wiring will continue to be an important part of installations. "Clients need to consider that when downloading large video files," he says. "Waiting to watch something while it buffers is no fun!"