CE Pro Podcast

Veteran CE pros may remember Blake Vackar from his first stint on the sales side of leading screen and shades manufacturer Screen Innovations. Well, after a brief detour, Vackar is back at SI at Brand Ambassador and Screen Evangelist and ready to meet with integrators to evangelize the opportunities in those categories. 

What does all that entail? The big takeaway for integrators is that big screens and functional shades make a compelling combination to sell – that said, we’ll let Vackar tell you more in this week’s CE Pro Podcast episode discussion.

From 2009 to 2020, Vackar was director and VP of sales at Screen Innovations, before going to Meyer Sound where he was residential sales manager until making the move back to SI.

This week we have back one of our favorite guests here on the CE Pro Podcast, UK-based Together For Cinema founder and industry do-gooder Ian Morrish. 

This time around, Morrish updates us on Together For Cinema’s 2023 children’s hospice home theater projects, donations and sponsors, as well as the group’s new status as a Community Interest Company, and another big fundraiser event happening in July, in the latest podcast episode.

The organization, which Morrish established back in 2009, has been pulling off multiple children’s hospice home theater projects across the UK particularly ramping up in the past few years. This year is no different, as the first half of 2023 has been exceedingly busy for Together For Cinema.

With a portfolio of some of the most revered brands in home audio, few manufacturers can match the allure of Harman Luxury Audio.

Jim Garrett, senior director, product strategy and planning for Harman Luxury Audio, is a long-time home audio market veteran and enthusiast. Harman’s stable of brands includes Mark Levinson, JBL, JBL Synthesis, Arcam, Lexicon, and Revel, and in the latest CE Pro Podcast, Garrett explains how the company has evolved to meet the diverse needs of consumers enjoying everything from immersive audio to personal audio.

The last time we talked to DoorBird, the IP doorstation specialist had recently expanded its North American offices from San Francisco to add an East Coast base in Jacksonville, Fla., where Justin Clark heads up sales for the Americas, Australia & New Zealand, and assists dealers in various ways. 

He rejoins the podcast with even more to discuss this time around. During this week’s CE Pro Podcast episode, Clark updates the custom integration channel by discussing DoorBird’s presence at this year’s International Builders’ Show and ISC West events; how last year’s acquisition by security giant ASSA ABLOY is impacting R&D; the growing multidwelling/multifamily unit (MDU) market potential; CEDIA Expo plans; and much more. 

To paraphrase the classic rock band Styx, “these are the best of times” when it comes to home video entertainment. That sentiment is shared by CE Pro’s expert panel of “Video Guys” when they discussed spring 2023 trends on the latest CE Pro Podcast.

According to our regular “Video Guys” in their most recent conversation with CE Pro Senior Editor Bob Archer, home video continues to experience a golden age of technologies – conveniently timed with what many consider to be a golden age of prestige TV content being produced by all of the myriad services.

In this week’s CE Pro Podcast episode, Joel Silver, CEO and lead developer for the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF), Robert Zohn, president and founder of Value Electronics, and Jason Dustal of Murideo offer insights into the latest trends to chat about why the latest displays, resolution, HDR tech and more are putting integrators in great position to indeed deliver “the best of times” to videophile and home theater customers.

The shortage of labor is not unique to the custom installation market, but it has been an ongoing struggle for many years. CEDIA is tackling the issue head on in several ways. First, the association unveiled its Next Gen Smart Home Career Toolkit to help integrators connect with the next generation of employees. Also, CEDIA unveiled its slate of 80 sessions for CEDIA Expo 2023 education this fall in Denver. 

Mandy Beckner, vice president of education and training at CEDIA, reviewed both the initiatives talking with CE Pro editor Jason Knott in this podcast episode.

With 2023 already flying by, CE Pro took the opportunity to ask its resident “Audio Guys” what trends they see in the market as we close out the first quarter, in the latest episode of the CE Pro Podcast.

Paul Bochner, owner and president of Electronics Concepts and Professional Audio Consultants, in Rochelle Park, N.J., and Steve Silberman, business development, audio for Savant, agree that to a certain level homeowners tastes have evolved over the past few years. Bochner says his clients have become increasingly focused on how their electronics complement their daily lives.

 Recent research shows that landscape lighting is among the most in-demand outdoor technologies by homeowners, designers and realtors, but there’s much more to the exterior than just “landscaping” as potential integration spots.
Outdoor lighting and audio specialist Coastal Source gives installers solutions to cover all areas of the exterior, and technical sales specialist Shay Brummer returns to the CE Pro Podcast to discuss that, as well as what the company showed during the recent HTSA Lightapalooza event. 

 “We are on a 1,000-mile journey, and we're only about 500 miles into it,” says John Heyman, CEO of Snap One, in reference to the ambitious plans the company has ahead.

That journey has taken the Charlotte, N.C.-based company from its humble beginnings in 2000 from founder Jay Faison to become the bellwether company in the smart home industry.  Snap One holds several unique positions in the market as:

• The leading brand specified and installed by custom integrators in more than 20 categories of equipment
• Both a manufacturer and a distributor
• One of the few pure-play publicly owned companies in the custom integration industry.

Heyman, along with Chief Product Office GPaul Hess, spoke with CE Pro about what the past year has been like, offered their outlook for 2023 and beyond, and provided a few glimpses of what might lie ahead in terms of a product roadmap and how they plan to help integrators thrive, operate more efficiently (especially in regards to service), and eventually build recurring monthly revenue (RMR).

The big ISC West security tradeshow in Las Vegas is around the corner, and we have one of the leading video surveillance providers on this week’s CE Pro Podcast to walk us through technologies, applications, trends and more. Fredrik Nilsson, VP of the Americas at Axis Communications, joined me for a conversation last summer that is still very relevant today for custom integrators in the security market.

Axis is based in southern Sweden, where Nilsson hails from originally, though for two decades he’s called the Boston area home, near the company’s North American HQ in Chelmsford, Mass.

The company was founded 40 years ago, back in 1984, and by 1996 had invented the IP network camera, originally more for web monitoring use, Nilsson says. It began seeing more security usage for the technology and now 25+ years later Axis is a global leader in both IP network cameras and overall video surveillance cameras for security.