Blogs
New SONOS update
Sonos have released version 10.1 as an update for their range of Sonos Music players and controllers, with some new and exciting features.
My Sonos Now Showing “Recently Played Music”
A very requested feature has finally made it through to the Sonos audio system.
With 10.1, you’ll be able to easily see and replay the music you’ve played using the Sonos app from within My Sonos. See the 40 most recent Albums, Playlists, Stations (but not individual songs) played on Sonos using the app under a new section of My Sonos called Recently Played. This is specific to your Sonos app, and doesn't show you the music started using voice control, AirPlay, or other ways to play on Sonos. Individual entries can be removed from the Recently Played section of My Sonos to assist with curation and all entries can be easily cleared from Settings as well.
To enable and manage, go to Settings > My Sonos Settings. You’ll need to sign in to your account in the Sonos App. This feature requires some activity information to be collected as outlined in an updated Sonos Privacy Statement. Recently Played can be turned off in the same My Sonos Settings.
Another exciting new feature will make it easier for owners of Smart Homes to control their Sonos music systems.
Add the Line-In for any Sonos components with an input (not including TV inputs). Just go to Browse > Line-In and select the three dots beside the Line-In that you want to add to My Sonos. Don’t forget that under Room Settings > Line-In settings you can also set the name of the Line-In for each device. Using unique names allows users and control partners to maintain an alphabetized list of Line-In favorites for use with home automation systems like Control4, Lutron, iPort, etc.
We can’t wait to see these new features on all our Sonos systems here in Thailand.
Prince Harry home to feature Cinema by Thailand based H3 Digital.
Press Release - April 1st 2019
In a surprising move Prince Harry and Meghan Markle , the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have chosen Thai Smart Home company H3 Digital, to design and engineer their home theater in their new home at Frogmore Cottage.
Prince Harry & Meghan Markle
“I wanted only the very best home theater for my new family, Meghan enjoys Film so very much I knew it had to be really quite special. We scoured the world for the right team to build our dream cinema in our new home, and after careful deliberation set our hearts on a Home Theater from H3 Digital. ”
The Duke & Duchess of Sussex will be moving into Frogmore Cottage on the grounds of Windsor Estate, about 30 miles from London, Kensington Palace Harry’s childhood home, where he was raised with William by Princess Diana.
The original Frogmore House was built around 1684 by Charles II's architect Hugh May for his nephew. It stood on the estates of Great and Little Frogmore, which were bought by Henry VIII in the sixteenth century and let to various tenants.
The name derives from the preponderance of frogs which have always lived in this low-lying marshy area. From 1709 to 1738 the house was leased to The Duke of Northumberland and thereafter to a succession of Nobles until Queen Charlotte, needing a country retreat for her and her daughters, bought the lease in 1792.
As part of the process of updating the cottage, Harry and Meghan wanted a special room where they could escape their hectic public lives to enjoy the very latest Movies & TV. Meghan has had TV appearances in Knight Rider, CSI:Miami, CSI:NY, Suits and appeared in a number of Films. It was important for Meghan that their viewing room be “Absolutely Amazing” and somewhere that it would be a pleasure to take both important guests, friends and family.
“We were surprised to be approached by the Duke & Duchess out of the blue, especially as almost all of our home cinemas are installed in Thailand and SE Asia.
They’d obviously been shown some of our previous designs and read the testimonials of our happy customers and were smitten.
Rachel (Meghan) really knew her stuff, she had input on almost every aspect of the design, from the number of Dolby Atmos ceiling speakers she wanted, through to the screen gain on the cinema screen. I was astonished at her technical knowledge, but she’s been in the film industry for a long time and wanted it all to be just perfect.
It’s nice to be getting some international recognition we’ve always known our cinemas were pretty special - In our wildest dreams we never thought we’d be installing for British Royalty.”
The Duke & Duchess new home will be ready for them shortly after the birth of their new baby. They are both really excited to move in and can’t wait to use their new room. Who knows even the Queen might be sitting in one of our reclining home cinema seats one day!
Some of the amazing completed cinemas by H3 Digital in Thailand that were thought to have influenced the Princes choice.
Luxury Home Theater Seating makes a Cinema Special
We are at one of our Home Theater installs today adjusting the seating for the raised platforms at the rear. If you are considering a Home Cinema here in Thailand we can highly recommend getting motorised recliners. They really do help make the room feel special, and they are so comfy.
Our custom made home cinema recliners in the reclined position
Our home cinema seats are available in any leather colour and finish possible, they are hand built here in Thailand with German reclining mechanisms and the plushest leather available.
And here they are in the upright sitting position
We’ve installed our home cinema seating throughout Thailand - They are a big part of what makes our installs so special, If you’d like your very own custom home cinema for your villa or house in Phuket, Chiang Mai, Bangkok or Hua Hin please get in touch at Home Cinema in Thailand or if you’re over in the UK then get in touch with Cinema@Home for Home Cinema in England
IKEA Sonos Speaker for your Smart Home
Mega Home store IKEA is giving multi room audio users a look at the latest designs for their Sonos compatible Symfonisk speaker earlier than expected as reported in . We may very soon be seeing Sonos music systems available in IKEA Thailand.
The companies flagship speaker is powered by Sonos Technology and officially set for unveiling on April 9.
They offered up some sneak peeks at the finished version of the bookshelf speaker to celebrate winning the Red Dot design awards.
The Symfonisk speaker design looks very similar to the prototype IKEA and Sonos unveiled last year in 2018. Although it now has a much more polished appearance than the early version, There is also a ssubtle Sonos/IKEA tag at the top.
The Symfonisk bookshelf speaker resembles the look of a Sonos speaker hinted with IKEA design. It has a boxy, fabric-covered style that blends well with IKEAS wide range of home furnishings.
The smart home device features a standing bookshelf speaker design. You can use the speaker in either a horizontal or vertical configuration, and it looks like its been designed to hang straight onto the wall.
The bookshelf speaker is powered by Sonos technology and will work alongside your existing Sonos music devices or allow you to create a new Sonos audio experience if it’s your first step into the multi room audio ecosystem.
Some things remain unknown at the moment, however, such as the audio quality and the price. IKEA and Sonos both said in a press release on March 14, though, that the new bookshelf speakers will be offered at an affordable price.
"For IKEA, the smart home is not about gadgets, it's about making life at home better with solutions that create a better atmosphere, make you live a more convenient life and make you feel safe," said Björn Block, business leader for IKEA Home Smart at IKEA of Sweden.
"The collaboration with Sonos is a great example of this, offering affordable high-quality sound in combination with a great design piece that we hope will find its way into the many people's homes."
It is not known either if IKEA will offer other Sonos-powered speakers other than Symfonisk at a later date - The Symonfisk is due to ship in August 2019. It’s not known yet whether the speakers will be available in the Bangkok Flagship IKEA stores in Thailand.
HDR for your TV - So what exactly is it?
Lets start with the obvious, TV companies like Samsung, LG and Sony need to sell new TV models each year to keep that part of their business running. You will never hear a store salesperson saying "Oh your TV you bought 2 years ago is still great", there is always a new must-have technology. Much the same as Apple releasing a new phone every year (and slowing down the old ones), their businesses rely on exciting, next big leap technologies. They must entice consumers into wanting to have the amazing home cinema experience these new technologies promise.
So we've had High Definition, which once the dust settled has had probably the greatest impact in viewing quality since the switch from Black and White to Colour TV some 50 years ago. TV resolution had stayed the same for so many years that when the change came about to something much closer to how our eyes make out detail in real life the effect on perceived quality was quite dramatic
Manufacturers are touting HDR as the next big thing in TV
More recently came 4k or Ultra HD, which quadrupled the screen pixels over high Definition, yet felt like only an incremental gain in quality. This is down to biology, our eyes, which perceive detail, can only derive so much detail from an image size. So until you get to very large screen sizes we cant perceive that much of an improvement in quality over High Definition.
A similar thing happened with phones, once it was all the rage to trumpet higher resolutions as the main reason to upgrade, Indeed Retina became an important buzzword for Apple. Mobile phones have progresses and passed the stage whereby bigger increases in resolution now only show a small increase in perceived quality.
So now most Tvs are HD or 4K, there needs to be something new to entice you to buy a new TV set, that's where HDR steps in. But what exactly is it?
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It is a technology that tells your screen with encoded data what the lightest and darkest parts of an image are so that the screen can dim those parts individually and dynamically. Every image has a mix of darker and brighter parts, think of scenes with shadows, in a dark room with a light to one side or sunsets and sunrises. Basically with HDR technology the image contains data that tells your TV to turn down or up the light intensity in those parts of the image (this is not the same as the brightness setting of your TV).
An Identical TV image without (Left) and with (Right) HDR
Previously your TV had to use one overall light intensity for the entire image, so a scene set in the shadows would dim the light intensity of the whole image. Whilst you could then make out more detail in the shadows, any brighter area in the scene would have it's colours and detail muted and washed out.
Now with HDR, your TV can dim the intensity of light in the area of the scene in the shadows seperately (dynamically) from the parts of the scene not in the shadows. This is a much more natural looking image because in real life those seperate parts of our visual image would have different light intensity to our eyes.
HDR images shown on HDR TV's have much better detail in the shadows, much better colours and contrast in images where there are bright colours or bright lighting, the picture will POP more. What does POP Mean? An image that POPS is more striking, prominent and defined than an image that doesn't.
Currently the dust has not settled on exactly how HDR is meant to be implemented in the TV world, there are - much the same way as when HD first came out - competing standards and classifications. There are two competing formats one from Dolby, called Dolbyvision which requires a specially licensed Dolby chip and an open format called HDR 10.
There are a number of technical caveats to get HDR up and running at home and these primarily are that the;
TV must be HDR
Souce must be HDR
HDMI Cable must be at least HDMI 2.0
Please note that here in Thailand not all net services are available through Thai ISPs. TVs are now available and being touted with HDR, Netflix and Amazon prime support HDR on many devices such as Apple TV, Fire Stick, Chromecast Ultra and both the Sony PS4 and Xbox One S gaming consoles support HDR. There are also Blu Ray discs and players that support HDR but I would suggest staying away from disc technology as streaming is likely where the future lies.
So that's what HDR is. Would I buy a TV with HDR? Sure it's a great addition and improves image quality.
Am I about to go and buy a new TV here in Thailand because mine doesn’t have HDR?
No - Not yet, I think there are still a few niggles to work through and in a year or two it will be standard on modern TV's and we will have access to more Thai sources.
Home Cinemas of the Rich & Famous : 50 Cent
50 Cent
50 Cent recently sold his house for a mere $8 million, having originally listed it at an eye watering $18 million back in 2007. He bought the house for $4 million in 2003 and spent around $10 million in renovations and improvements to property's gym, racquetball courts, home cinema room and disco room.
Curtis James Jackson III known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper was born July 6, 1975 he is one of the worlds most successful rappers.
50 Cents very Smart Home Cinema
50 Cent enjoying a movie on his Home Cinema
The cinema features 8 leather motorised home theater recliners, with a love seat combo in the front row (this is two seats that don’t have a divider). The plush walls are soft blue velvet which help with keeping sound reflections and image reflections to a minimum. The middle chair is well worn showing that Curtis obviously enjoys using the room as the opposite picture shows him using his Smart Home automation system to choose from a selection of movies.
Leather Home Cinema Recliners
Training - Smart Homes require good home networks
Wirut our Installation Director recently returned from a weeks intensive training in Advanced Networking up in Bangkok. He attended the CompTIA Network+ course which will help us to install even better residential networks into our customers Smart Homes in Thailand using Ubiquiti Networking equipment to make sure their homes and our clients have the best WIFI and LAN experience possible.
The Network+ course ensures an IT professional has the knowledge and skills to:
Design and implement functional networks
Configure, manage, and maintain essential network devices
Use devices such as switches and routers to segment network traffic and create resilient networks
Identify benefits and drawbacks of existing network configurations
Implement network security, standards, and protocols
Troubleshoot network problems
Support the creation of virtualized networks
CompTIA Network+ Training to help us design, implement and secure Smart Home Networks.
At H3 Digital we ensure that we are kept up to date and invest in Training regularly so that we can continue to provide our customers in Phuket, Chiang Mai, Bangkok and Hua Hin with the very best smart homes, home cinema, audio systems and lighting control in the industry.
Sonos ONE gets an internal redesign
The Sonos ONE speaker which is part of the multi room music system Sonos ecosystem has just had a redesign, externally the speaker stays the same but internally there have been some changes;
new Sonos ONE soon available in Thailand
Bluetooth Low Energy
Faster Processor
More Memory
Now, none of these are going to make the small standalone speaker sound any better, these types of Sonos wireless speakers are best suited to provide audio into children’s bedrooms, small rooms, bathrooms, kitchens or as an everyday speaker that can be moved around the house.
Whilst sound performance will be identical it’s likely that the other changes will make sure that the Sonos One can keep up with it’s snappy UI and streaming throughout your home and other Sonos zones. The last Sonos One was released about a year and a half ago. It’s likely that this is a cost cutting or streamlining manufacturing exercise.
There are some rumours that the extra horsepower under the hood will enable it to support Airplay2 by Apple. Sonos had previously stated that some older speakers "simply don't have the horsepower to support AirPlay 2,"
They are then looking at future proofing the Sonos One a little. No news when the new Sonos One will be available here in Thailand yet.
Apple Hire ex-Microsoft VP to head up Apples Smart Home initiatives.
Apple have just hired former Microsoft VP - Sam Jadallah to help revamp its smart home business, in light of the recent competition in the Smart Home space from Google’s Home and Amazon’s Alexa.
Sam Jadallah spent more than a decade at Microsoft and more recently headed up Smart Home Lock company Otto which shut down just over a year ago. Apple has hired him to lead the home initiatives at Apple, focusing on Homekit, Siri, Homepod and Integrating all the Smart Home components into a more tangible ecosystem.
Sam Jadallah Joins Apples Smarthome division
We don’t see many Homekit enabled Smart Homes here in Thailand, with many users across Thailand thinking that it’s fairly half-hearted attempt at home automation and many saying that it feels tacked on, rather than a comprehensive, solid, home control system from one of the biggest technology manufacturers in the world.
Hiring Jadallah is the latest signal that Apple plans to get serious about its own efforts in the home. Recently, the company acquired a start-up called Pullstring, a start-up that specializes in voice-enabled toys. The purchase could help the smartphone maker become the center of a more connected living room.
Many commentators feel that perhaps Apple has been slow to react or innovate in the smart home space and it has allowed Google but mainly Amazon to get a massive headstart on smart home automation.
Apples Smart Home Kit
Apple, Amazon and Google - All three companies have a combination of hardware and software that controls everything from turning lights on and off using voice or your phone, to playing music and Apple's HomePod represents only a small share of the market, compared to Amazon's Echo and Google Home.