Jeff Goldstein, Head Of Sales for the Custom Installation Channel at Sony, recently sat down with us to talk about multi-use spaces and how integrators can serve homeowners who have spaces that are a little more complex than the typical home theater.
CE Pro: We’ve seen this surge in video over the last couple of years. What is your expectation for how this market is going to progress over the next few years?
Jeff Goldstein: With the advent of better technology solutions for front projectors, where we’ve got laser light sources, and brighter output from projectors, as well as the availability of ultralight large television screens. It’s interesting, we’re at this place where a consumer can have if they like a dedicated home theater space, which is more this appointment-based formal viewing area for the family to get together and watch a movie or watch something in that room, obviously, complemented by all of the appropriate audio and sound treatments and everything else.
But because of laser lights, and sources in projectors, we’re getting brighter image quality overall out of a projector, we can now start to, in addition to having that dedicated home theater space, migrate the kind of shared entertainment experience or the more casual entertainment experience outside of that, you know, formal, ambient light controlled room, to a multipurpose space, like a great room, which is, you know, another place and another sort of way that people get together and enjoy entertainment. You know, more casually less formally.
CE Pro: There is a trend in home theater installations, which stresses the idea of a multi-use or multi-purpose space over the traditional home theater environment. Can you describe what a multi-use space like that actually includes, in terms of the contemporary trend behind them right now, and what kinds of opportunities integrators, therefore, have to help clients?
JF: We’re all very familiar with the term great room, you know, written on plans in, you know, newer homes. Know, that great room is sort of the gathering place, I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to anyone’s house, or every time you’ve gone to everybody’s house, and they’re having a party, or they’re having a dinner party, you know, nine times out of 10, everybody ends up standing in the kitchen, because that’s where the action is at that moment in time. Today, that kitchen is connected to, really the entire entertainment space in the home.
And, again, because we have these new technologies to provide higher brightness in projectors. And these large screens, large screen televisions, that really start to approach the entry point of a home theater screen, we can now provide that same kind of immersive, large-screen viewing experience in rooms with varying degrees of ambient light or ambient light control.
And so taking that experience out of the dedicated theater, and making another place in the home where people can gather together and enjoy entertainment, either as the main focus or as something you know, in the background, because something else is going on in that room, I think is really great. It’s a really great place to be, I can tell you that our integrators are still seeing significant demand for projectors, and for large screen televisions.
You know, even as we’ve come through the pandemic and the surgeon business has, you know, sort of softened a little bit. We’re still seeing very strong demand for these devices as well. Part of integrated home entertainment systems. So I think, you know, we’re still in a really interesting time, in terms of the product development supporting the lifestyle.
CE Pro: What solutions does Sony have which might benefit integrators and their clients in these kinds of spaces?
JF: We have a brand new lineup of front projectors, this year, every single light source in our lineup is laser-based. And so that is giving us better light output at every level of projector that we sell. So there has been an enhancement there, obviously, because the longevity of the laser light source bulbs is kind of a thing of the past for us now. So not what we don’t have to worry about the lifespan of a ball being the limiting factor in the use of a projector. And you know, as we go all the way up to the top of our line, our flagship product, the GTZ 380 is actually a 10,000 and C Lumen projector that just produces amazing image quality using Sony’s processing, and you know, completely re-engineered light path and cooling system to provide just unbelievable image quality in the space that it’s designed that that’s designed around it.
Beyond that, we also to address the sort of higher ambient light space or the more casual, get-together room we’re making ultra-large TVs. So we do sell 100-inch television, which is fantastic picture quality, and really can be used in any type of ambient light situation be in a great room with windows or Dan or things like that. So you know, we have a, you know, a variety of solutions in you know, in our arsenal here to help integrators put together the best possible solution for the customer’s needs and the customers’ environment.
