Smart home entertainment can basically be split into the following categories:
Most people these days have either a hi-fi system or some kind of wireless speaker system in their home. The three big challenges with home music listening are:
Audio quality is quite subjective, especially since people's hearing varies a lot. There are also many aspects of listening that can impact on the resulting audio quality. Assuming an excellent audio source (i.e. not something compressed and streamed), then the device that outputs the audio and it's connection to an amplifier and speakers will all have a big impact on the resulting sounds.
The listening environment will also have a big impact on the resulting audio. The size and shape of the room may dictate the size and number of speakers, along with where they are located. The materials forming the room and within the room will also affect the resulting audio quality. Few home environments are ideally suited to top quality audio and no vehicle is well suited.
All this said, it is possible to get an good music playback in a typical home, assuming you choose the right equipment and install it well and in the right location.
Not everyone is obsessed by audio quality! We are quite happy to play compressed MP3 files (256 to 320Kbps) or locally cached Spotify music in our vehicles, played from a smartphone. It's convenient and good enough for us but, it very much depends on the quality of the audio system installed in each vehicle. If this is not up to the job, then nothing is going sound good when played through it.
The user experience when listening to music, is very much down to the source and the device on which it is being listened. A great user experience is about making it simple to find the right music, play it in the right order and in retaining easy control of the playback in terms of play/pausing and volume. A big part of this is a user interface with low latency.
Distributing audio well around a home is one of the more challenging aspects of music playback in the smart home. Specifically, having control and synchronising music playback in several rooms is hard to do well. It is one of the areas where companies like Sonos do well.
Despite what the main vendors in this space will tell you, audio distribution and synchronisation is not something everyone wants to do in their home and we rarely feel the need to do this ourselves. It is often better to focus on audio quality and a great user experience, rather than restrict yourself to options that excel at distribution and synchronisation. This will certainly save you a lot of money as the best products in this space command a premium price.
When it comes to screens, there are quite a few options these days. The main choice though is between:
Many of the streaming service (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, etc.) stream '4K HDR' but what you have to realise is that this is compressed, to use less bandwidth over your Internet connection. This compression results in an inferior visual and audio experience, when compared to a local video/audio source such as Ultra HD Blu-ray.
All of the 'high end' smart home installers make a big play on video distribution and HDMI matrix switching around your home because this is complex, expensive and where they make most of their money. Unless you really have a need to have the same piece of locally hosted or streamed content playing on many displays displays and synchronised, we would not do it.
Most modern 4K/UHD TVs come with many apps to stream video from Netflix, Prime, HBO, YouTube, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, etc. Combined with a terrestrial or satellite aerial feed, you don't really need much else most of the time. Streaming content from a NAS is also quite easy and you can also plug a hard disk into many TVs and play content off them.
I'm not sure how well this will work. It makes sense if you have an expensive Sky system with recording capability but there are things that just work better locally. I think it will cost you much more money too, as the majority of the content boxes are quite cheap.Devices like the Apple TV box are also very small and can be easily hidden close to each screen. They are also very cheap and the latest version is 4K capable. It just doesn't make sense to remotely switch HDMI from a device like this in a central location, especially when it is most easily controlled using a smartphone.
A 4K Blu-ray player is another good example where you don't really want it remote from the display. They require a very good quality HDMI cable and ideally a short one to get the best video quality from a device like this. These are also quite cheap to buy compared to what you would need to do to distribute the output from one device around your home.
We I would think long and hard about video distribution from a central point and wouldn't do it in our next home.
There are many 'pseudo surround' systems available on the market and the most popular format of these is the 'sound bar' format, simply because of it's low profile and ease of installation. None of these are a real match for a proper multi-speaker installation though.
Dolby Atmos - "sound moves around you in three-dimensional space, so you feel like you are inside the action." What Dolby Atmos adds over a traditional 2D surround system is an overhead dimension, which can better represent the height of sounds and can realistically depict objects moving overhead.
The lower price of dynamic TV lighting systems such as Philips Ambilight has made dynamic TV lighting more popular. These essentially add an LED array around the television which projects colour onto the wall behind a TV, to 'extend' the impact of the picture. Some of them can also link with other 'smart' lighting in a room.
Whilst some people like these systems and think they improve the movie experience by making it more immersive, not everyone is a fan. Many people find them distracting from the actual content on the screen.
Note that these types of systems are not used in cinemas because you are sat in front of a much larger screen. These types of lighting systems are used to overcome the inherent limitations of a small screen. Actually buying a larger screen is often a better solution but this may not always be possible because of the physical limitations of the room.
In 2019, Philips launched the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box which works with a Philips Hue hub to sync smart lights to the content on your TV screen. It provides four HDMI ports to allow allow you to connect any media device with HDMI output.
