nl-newbie Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Hello guys,We're looking at the control4 solution/products to use as a 'lower priced' control solution in our projects.We've done 10 years of crestron-projects with succes and rarely problems with crestron.Looking at Control4 I wonder some things:1. Pricing especially of the wireless touchscreens compared to crestron is very competitive, intercom voip-application is not available by control 4?2. range of touchscreens inwall and wireless is not very big, but the 'most wanted' sizes are there.3. MP3/cd server is not pretty fancy implemented in the lay-out or did I miss something4. Working with dvd-servers like Kaleidescape, Escient Vision and what will become available is not implemented in the control4 system. Not a fancy lay-out with some work done by the control4 guys. (looks to me that we've to program the interfacing and 2-way ipcontrol by ourseleves)5. stability of the system. This iformation is only available at control4 dealers with years of experience, so waiting to hear from you.6. How big is control4 regarding R&D and what to expect regarding new products and how fast the're introduced after 'thinking about them'?As I look at the amount of Control4 dealers and the product range in europe while it's 3-4 years ago the concept was launched at the CEDIA USA?Waiting to hear some response.John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henniae Posted February 12, 2009 Share Posted February 12, 2009 Wow, that's a lot of questions! This is more of a public forum representing the Control 4 user community. Perhaps the best place to have your inquiry answered would be to contact Control 4 directly about becoming a dealer. Here are some links to the Control 4 corporate website that lists all the relevant contact information.http://www.control4.com/company/contact.htmhttp://www.control4.com/company/info-request.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nl-newbie Posted February 12, 2009 Author Share Posted February 12, 2009 Alan,Know the way to become a dealer, but thank you.The reason I post my questions on this forum is because you guys (control4 dealers) know what you're talking about.The only way to know a control system is to work with it and experience the problems(and solve them)So waiting to hear from you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
query Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 Isn't it pretty simple? Control 4 is less expensive and less elegant. It will probably always be so. It has or may develop a few product partnerships or capabilities that Crestron does not have, but generally Crestron will always have more range to customize. On the other hand, I never would have bought Crestron and did buy Control 4 due to price point. The more interesting value comparison relates to the subset of potential buyers who just want the sub set of control 4 capabilities that also appear in Adagio, the downscale Crestron product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 Hello guys,We're looking at the control4 solution/products to use as a 'lower priced' control solution in our projects. We've done 10 years of crestron-projects with succes and rarely problems with crestron.That's good to hear. There are a lot of Control4 dealers who also install Crestron, and find Control4 a great alternative for some of their projects. Control4 was designed to be an automation system that you can install in homes from a single-room home theater to a full-fledged whole home automation installation.My disclaimer is that I don't know all that much about Crestron other than what I've heard from Control4 dealers, and what I've seen at shows.1. Pricing especially of the wireless touchscreens compared to crestron is very competitive, intercom voip-application is not available by control 4?No, Control4's touchscreens (wireless and wired) are designed to only control the system, and currently don't support voip or intercom functionality. Probably the biggest difference that a Crestron dealer will notice with the Control4 touchscreens and the Crestron touchscreens is that Control4's UI is a 'canned ui'. That is, the interface presented to the user is 'the Control4 interface'. As a dealer, this is both a benefit, and a drawback. The drawback is that you do not have control over how the interface looks. You can't put the movie star's car on the interface. It is what it is. The benefit to the interface is that you don't have to design the touchpanel interface, and you don't have to do any dedicated programming to make the touchpanels do what they should do. All media management, etc. 'just works' on the touchpanels.2. range of touchscreens inwall and wireless is not very big, but the 'most wanted' sizes are there.Yes, there are only a few models of touchscreens, the mini-touch (3.5" screen), the 7" in-wall, the 7" tabletop, the 7" wi-fi (released soon), the 10.5" in-wall and wi-fi.3. MP3/cd server is not pretty fancy implemented in the lay-out or did I miss somethingThe music functionality is straightforward and easy to use, but could probably use some work, to bring closer to something like the Sonos.The thing to remember is that the music functionality is 'free' with the Control4 system. The end user does not need to purchase a separate music system. Every controller has the ability to stream music, and you can have audio endpoints that are either 'traditional' multi-room audio, or 'networked' multi-room audio. The architecture is very flexible.Control4 also has had a history of releasing software updates to products that have improved the functionality of the already-shipping product. For example, functionality to be able to view IP Camera feeds on touchpanels was released for all available touchpanels, and was simply a software upgrade. I suspect there will be a 'touch-up' of the music functionality at some point in the future.4. Working with dvd-servers like Kaleidescape, Escient Vision and what will become available is not implemented in the control4 system. Not a fancy lay-out with some work done by the control4 guys. (looks to me that we've to program the interfacing and 2-way ipcontrol by ourseleves)Currently, Control4 can interface to and control many different DVD servers, there are already drivers for both Kaleidescape and there is a two-way IP driver for the Vision system, that works fine. It currently controls the Vision (or Kaleidescape)'s UI directly, and operates just fine as a source in the Control4 system.You can also use 'video players' and store the video information on the network, using Control4's UI to search for movies, although this is still fairly new and will certainly undergo more development in the future.5. stability of the system. This iformation is only available at control4 dealers with years of experience, so waiting to hear from you.There aren't that many dealers on the 'external' forums, most of them hang out on the 'Official Control4 Dealer Forums'. I will say that my Control4 system has never hung, and that it's very unusual for a Control4 system to have stability issues if it's setup with high-quality networking gear, is installed on a reliable UPS, etc. This is similar to Crestron and others who require high-end quality networking to achieve a high-quality result. The hardware itself all comes with a 2-year warranty, and is good quality.6. How big is control4 regarding R&D and what to expect regarding new products and how fast the're introduced after 'thinking about them'?I can't really address directly how big Control4 R&D is (although it's big enough), but Control4 has certainly introduced a lot of products in the 3 1/2 years that they've been shipping product. The company is very 'fast on their feet', and some products (I won't go into details) have been on the market within a few months of when they were first 'thought of', although, typically the development cycle on a product is quite a bit longer than that.As I look at the amount of Control4 dealers and the product range in europe while it's 3-4 years ago the concept was launched at the CEDIA USA?I don't understand this as a question. Yes, Control4 released it's first products in the USA 3 1/2 years ago, June 2005. Control4 recently opened an office in the UK, which handles Control4 EMEA.Your best source for this sort of information would probably be for you to contact Control4 EMEA, and find out who your area representative is, and discuss it with them. As I said before, most Control4 dealers (excepting a few great examples) don't frequent the external forums such as this, more end users frequent this forum. Your Control4 rep could probably put you in touch with some Control4 dealers who could better compare Crestron with Control4 for you.RyanEEdited to clarify one of the Control4 EMEA statements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wappinghigh Posted February 15, 2009 Share Posted February 15, 2009 Wow. What a fantastic, honest and frank reply Ryan...You give any future purchaser great confidence in C4!But you touched on THE major weakness of C4's product IMHO vs the opposition one (and others) mentioned...and I'm sure the C4 crowd realizes this: C4's "canned UI" as you put it....So why doesn't C4 do something about this?!! I mean how difficult would it be for C4 programmers to add just a little bit of flexibility here? Even something really simple ( like the ability to change the actual label names or remove the labels off the main GUI) would be a HUGE functional benefit.For example, Pushing the "TV" button has universal meaning...but "Comfort"??? What if you don't have HVAC control? Or want to change this label to "Heat/Cool". The word "Video" is now an outdated one...why can't a user change this to say "Movies"?And what if English isn't your primary language.... Isn't it a no brainer for C4 to add this sort of editing functionality to make C4's product appeal in non English speaking countries.....? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted February 15, 2009 Share Posted February 15, 2009 I would think that the ui's language is different for the necessary European countries they sell to.The ui might someday be updated to the flash one seen in hospitality but no word on when or if it's certain. I think a consistent ui is nice in that you could work any c4 system if you've worked one.For what it's worth there have been a couple people with time and patience who have modified the skin but it's not easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted February 15, 2009 Share Posted February 15, 2009 I certainly agree that a refresh of Control4's UI would be nice, and obviously, Control4 continues to update the product line, including the Navigator UI.While we don't pre-announce new products and/or updates such as this, rest assured that Control4 will continue to improve the product line, and things that you've discussed are certainly things that Control4 will likely address at some point in the future.You must remember that in a new company, implementing the new technology, and getting something non-vaporware 'out the door' has to be first priority, over other concerns.I don't think Control4 will move too far from the 'canned UI', mainly because from an installer's perspective, having the UI auto-generated is a great timesaver, and is one of the reasons a Control4 installation is a day or two for a small system, instead of a week or two (and the savings on a large system is even greater). That said, I would imagine that things similar to what you've mentioned are certainly still within that framework (renaming labels, custom images, etc.)Thanks for your interest and comments.RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mav-Jason Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Thanks for the hint in the right direction without totally letting the cat out of the bag. I've thought it to be inevitable to have some control over the GUI. (just... when?)Ever seen an RTI GUI built? Pretty cool... you start with a blank white screen, then import a background, choose colors, button shapes, button names, button placement, etc. And it's EASY... drag and drop basically, no hard coding. I'd love to see something like that with C4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Mav-Jason,If Control4 were to do that, you would then have to program what *every* keypress did for *every* device, which pretty much negates any benefit of doing Control4 touchscreen setup over the other guys.RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mav-Jason Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 I see your point, but are you talking about a hardware limitation or just programming? I think some may be MORE than willing to pay for the extra programming in order to customize a layout. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 I just want to be able to customize a theme. There used to be a post or two with some info and how it was done but I cant find anything on it now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Unfortunately, with the current Navigator interface, it's not terribly well supported, and you *can* break stuff trying to 'skin' the current interface.RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Put in a good word for it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wappinghigh Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 I know rumors are rumors and forum sites like this hate rumors.....but a dealer I spoke to mentioned to me that C4 are looking at adding the GUI flexibilty seen in their "Suite Systems"..into the "Home" Navigator GUI..perhaps at the next major software upgrade...Also that they are looking at a "desktop controller" for PC and Mac...Could these developments be true?NOW we are talking......!:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 I know rumors are rumors and forum sites like this hate rumors.....but a dealer I spoke to mentioned to me that C4 are looking at adding the GUI flexibilty seen in their "Suite Systems"..into the "Home" Navigator GUI..perhaps at the next major software upgrade...Also that they are looking at a "desktop controller" for PC and Mac...Could these developments be true?NOW we are talking......!:)Yes, it's the new flash based GUI that's used in hospitality. There's a good chance that it will be brought over to residential. Maybe. It's not announced yet, no one will say anything until it's ready, and know one knows for sure if or when. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin L Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 i can say say you wont see the flash interface in the next software update but after that you never know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 I have to say, I saw appletv in action for the first time at my uncle-in-law's house last night, and browsing music with that interface is pretty sweet... leaves a little to be desired when browsing music by cover art on my HC300 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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