Crestron Digital Media - Take 2
Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 07:18AM Last year I wrote about the forthcoming Crestron Digital Media System. Two days ago I saw the whole product released and I'm just floored. I knew that Crestron understood the problem...But understanding it and executing on a complete product set aren't the same thing. I think Gefen and others probably understand the problem too but we still haven't seen an HDMI matrix switch product that works from Gefen or anyone else.
There are several key features that just blew me away when I saw it live:
Instant HDMI switching. Not only does it handle the one to many HDMI/HDCP problem, but the delays in source to source switching - delays that everyone encounters using a reciever or any single display switch - are gone. Switching is almost instantaneous. The display doesn't go through another handshake.
Mixed Fiber + Copper. Less than 100' or okay to use a repeater? Use copper. Over 100', use fiber. Mix and match in the same switch. Fiber switches are uncommon enough - I've only seen them in the commercial field. I've never seen a switch box that had a card system that allowed both and handled hdmi/hdcp.
Integrated USB extension. I saw this before but it really got my mind going now when I saw the HDMI input wall plate. With the combination of USB + HDMI in/out we get remote placement of computers + gaming stations without losing flexibility of use or control. A game station can live inside a family room but be used in the playroom too. Or the console can live in a rack and all the controllers plug into a plate inside a family room end table cabinet. Or your laptop plugs into the office but a small keyboard lives in the kitchen and the bedroom allowing you to pick up the display there. And so on.....
Efficiency of install. We make really clean racks - they are works of art and we've won awards for it. But there is a future that doesn't require so much rack trim work - when components plug in with only ethernet and HDMI. In order to do that you have to be able to do control over ethernet, manage stereo feeds over HDMI and be able to have 100% of displays on the system on HDMI. The benefits are enormous. Today a DirecTV DVR has 9 cables, some of them going to the switchers. On the room side, the box has 7 AV cables out. In the digital media system, the DVR has three - power,ethernet, HDMI, the room box has 1 - HDMI. To extend that DVR to the 9th through 16th rooms, we need 6 cables, in the digital media world we'll need one or three depending on the system architecture.