The Custom install AV industry has both hailed the influx of consumer out-of-the-box ecosystem solutions and afeared them as a sign that the Mayan doomsday is nigh. Driving all of this is the migration, especially of the millennial set, to tablets, smartphones, and laptops as not only an ancillary or second screen but the primary. Recently Tech crunch explored this trend as one of the main motivators for Apple to produce the Mac mini. My response to them is below.
The ‘Second Screen’ is fast becoming the primary screen for viewing most content. If you are under 30, this is an obvious fact. Even Phillip Swan of TVPredictions.com has started to, begrudgingly, come around on this. Swanni has for years decried the move from 60” 7.1 surround sound anchored plasma screens to 9.7 tablets, so much so that I developed the Swanni inverse square law - namely, the more he states no one will watch such small screens, the number of folks doing so doubles.
This is further proof that the iPad is a machine for consumption, not the creation of content (regardless of what the cult of fruit apologist would have you think). I would love an iPad, but I need a machine that allows me to work, not just play. Despite my misgivings, the Surface tablet with its breakaway keyboard may be the answer.
Why is such resistance to what is, at minimum, going to take a large market share by installers and dealerships? Because a universal content viewer is also a universal replacement for the proprietary touchscreens and controllers. The custom AV Industry is overjoyed and hides under the covers, scared. Where once we designed systems and rooms for a shared experience from a central room the shift has been toward distribution of the same content over a network and to different rooms/ locations. This might seem like comparing grains of sand, but the economy of scales is immense.
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