Podcast #835: Control4 & Home Automation with Adam Pizzo

03/16/18 • 0 min

HDTV and Home Theater Podcast

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Podcast #835: Interview with Adam Pizzo - Home Integrator

Interview with Adam Pizzo. He is a home integrator specializing in Control4. Adam is based in Toronto and was kind enough to come on the show and talk about what a home integrator can do for your home.

From homes small to large, new and old, Control4 delivers power and performance on one system that coordinates the technology in your house into complete, brilliant experiences—interactions that fit your lifestyle and are easy for your family to enjoy. With one touch, dim the lights, stream high-resolution music, turn up the heat, lock the doors and arm the security system. Check in on cameras or see who’s ringing the doorbell—from wherever you are. It’s a smarter living experience that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.

The Control4® platform is the operating system of your smart home. By connecting to and managing the many devices in your home, this robust and reliable platform enables your favorite products to work together in orchestration, personalized to the way you live.

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Podcast #836: Short Throw Projector

Short Throw Projectors

There was a short throw projector on Woot! this week for $999. Not a bad price at all for the potential to have a 100” television in your family room or home theater. That got us thinking... Why aren’t more people using short throw projectors in their homes? Their price per square inch of screen real estate is by far the most cost effective way to get a huge screen at home, and the install and setup is a snap. So what gives? Why aren’t people using them.

Let us first apologize if some of you reading or listening are using short throw projectors at home. We aren’t saying that you are not a person. We’re simply saying that to date, we haven’t seen a short throw projector in use in any home we’ve ever been to, nor have we had anyone brag to us about how cool their short throw setup is. We’re going to take a look at some pros and cons and see if we can come up with theories on why they haven’t caught on. If you have one, or have had one in the past and decided to ditch it, we’d love to hear your take.

What is it

For those who don’t know, a short throw projector is a home theater projector that, like a standard front projection system, can give you a very large display area in your home, often maxing out at 100” to 120”. The big difference is that they bounce the image off a mirror or two and project that large screen from only a few inches or a couple feet from the screen itself, not from all the way in the back of the room. So you get a huge home cinema by placing the projector on a standard TV stand at the front of your living room, in the same place you might put a center speaker or a soundbar.

*Aside: Remember the old school big screen CRTs that would fold down or you’d pull a box out into the room to beam the image up onto the screen? It’s kinda like that. Only not.

Pros and Cons

The pros are obvious: the cost to purchase a 100” or 120” television is astronomical - unattainable for most of us regular folk. So the only way to get a home theater that size is with a projector. But projectors are difficult to install, often requiring a professional to run cables and power to the back of the room. But with a short throw, there’s not need to run anything to the back of the room. You just set them on your TV cabinet and hook them up like you would any other television. No install cost, low projector cost, instant home theater.

The cons, as you can image, are nearly identical to the cons for typical from projection systems. In both cases, most are 1080p still. While prices for 4k are dropping, the are still at a good premium and selection is limited. Also, both suffer from a lack of overall brightness, making the ability to control ambient light critical, especially for daytime viewing. If you have a bright room with a bunch of windows, most projectors, including short throw projectors, will be frustrating to use during the day.

And projectors require screens. You can’t really just beam the picture onto a wall and expect to be happy with the picture. That means a second product to buy and install, increasing the complexity of the overall system. On top of that, many short throw projectors require a special screen that has been built to match the projector. At least with typical front projection you can buy and install whatever screen you like. Not so with some short throw setups. Probably the only con that short throw projectors don’t share with standard front projectors is that people can walk through the beam and block it from getting to the screen. Unless people routinely walk on your TV cabinet, you won’t have that issue with a short throw.

Options

LG PF1000UW

The short throw projector we saw on Woot! for $999 was the LG PF1000UW Ultra Short Throw Smart LED Projector with webOS 3.0 Smart TV and Magic Remote. The specs sound pretty compelling, even for dedicated home theater use, not just portable or temporary instant home theater for backyards or parties or other events. With webOS 3.0 built in, it’s like buying a Smart TV, just with a bigger screen.

The throw distance is really short; at just 5 inches away you can get 60 inches of home theater, or go to 15 inches back to get images up to 100 inches on screen. And it has a max brightness of 1000 lumen. You get full HD 1080p picture quality. We would have loved 4k, but 1080p is good too. The LED lamp is very efficient and will last up to an estimated 30,000 hours. That means the lamp does not have to be replaced for about 10 years if the projector is used 8 hours every day. And it has 4-corner keystone technology that allows for adjustment of each of the four corners of the image for ideal projection image alignment.

LG PF1000UW: $1399 MSRP

LG also makes the