Free digital TV to change face of home automation.

TVNZ's recent announcement that it will offer a free-to-air digital service from March next year will have far reaching consequences on home automation and how new houses are wired.

Gone are the days when you had to decide where the TV, computer and phone jack-points would go as the house was being built. This makes it a major hassle when the owner moves in and decides to place the TV/phone/computer somewhere else.

Now, one wiring box will be able to do the job of three.

Gone, too, will be the need for TV aerials. Theyll be replaced by discreet satellite dishes which will improve suburban skylines.

Hills Signal Master is one company which has been closely monitoring these developments. Not only has it produced a flyer explaining how digital TV will work, it is already marketing the products necessary to ensure houses have the greatest flexibility possible.

A year ago, the company began marketing the Hills Home Hub, a product which delivers and distributes data, phone, video, audio and TV signals from a centrally located enclosure, to wall outlets in any room in the house.

Cabling planned with wiring

Usually, the enclosure is housed in the garage or utility room and the structured cabling is planned at the same time as the electrical wiring.

It has many benefits: kids can be kept an eye on no matter where in the house they or their parents are, security gates can be opened remotely, internet access is available to any computer via a centralised server modem, and music can be played in all or just some rooms at the flick of a switch.

One more advantage  all video and DVD equipment can be kept in one location but operated from anywhere in the house.

But the disadvantage is that decisions on which rooms will have data, phone, video, audio and TV data access had to be made at the time the system was installed. Until now.

Hills is launching AVi-LynX, which is designed to distribute high quality video and audio from multiple sources using CAT5e cable, to multiple viewing and licensing locations.

Using a dedicated AVi-LynX IR remote control, the user is able to independently select any AV source from any connected viewing location. The system can be set on a room priority basis or alternatively set to walkabout mode with no priority control. This means householders can change pay TV channels or pause the DVD from any room in the house.

Unique parental control functions

Unique to AVi-LynX are three parental control functions.

Me View allows the viewer to lock out a source device to all other viewing ports other than that being controlled by the viewer. No other viewing station is then able to view or control the locked source until control is returned to that location.

Peak a View allows the viewer to temporarily monitor what is being viewed at another viewing station connected to the system.

And, No View allows the viewer to inhibit all output to a selected viewing station connected to the system.

These three features allow parents to monitor what their children are watching.

Heart of the system

The server is the heart of the system with all source and room kits being routed to and from this unit. The server can be supplied as a 4-source/4-room unit, 4-source/8-room unit or an 8-source/12-room unit.

The server routes a selected source output to the viewing station along with the controlling IR commands. Since source selection is totally independent for each viewing location, it enables multiple sources of like equipment to be viewed and controlled independently.

The viewing station kit comprises the composite video/audio decoder, with an IR detector module and the AVi-LynX IR remote control. AV signal is routed via the server matrix and fed to the decoder via a standard RJ45 connection. The decoder then converts the signal back to its original video and stereo composition and is fed to the viewing port via a RCA connector.

The IR detector is discreetly mounted on or near the viewing or listening station and receives the IR commands from the AVi-LynX remote control, feeding them to the server via the CAT5e cable.

Outside the home, AVi-LynX has other practical applications for use in the retail, business and security sectors. In security, AVi-LynX has been used to connect CCTV cameras and act as the distribution unit for those systems.

In retail, AVi-LynX has been used to distribute point of sale promotional DVDs around the store and in the business environment. AVi-LynX can also be used to supply live feeds to company offices from a centraldistribution point.