Alloys prepares digital home training

Melbourne-based distributor, Alloys International, is taking a second bite at educating resellers on its MediaHub offering for digital smart homes. The new push comes a year after it first proposed taking on the market.

Blaming Windows Vista delays, driver problems and a lack of Version 2 Windows Media Center extenders besides the expensive Xbox 360 games console, MediaHub product development manager, Phil Gibbs, said its previous attempt at education never got off the ground.

"The Vista launch and everything else really screwed us up," he said. "It's just been frustrating because we thought the big guys would have had this all worked out ages ago, but it's only just starting to happen now."

Gibbs also pointed to the less-than-successful launch of Intel's Viiv platform, speculating that the vendor will itself have to relaunch the technology in 2008 to take another shot at the market.

Alloys will launch training days starting in October to get resellers up to speed with selling, installing and supporting the digital smart home concept.

"We chose October because new extenders will be coming at the end of September and it's basically a quiet month in the industry," Gibbs said. "With the industry set to fire up next year, we need to get the training in before Christmas."

Demonstrations will be conducted in a fully automated MediaHub display showroom.

"It's time for the smart home," Gibbs said. "The technology has been out there for a couple of years, but it's been rudimentary. Now that's changed and we're faced with a paradigm shift. If the industry can't get this off the ground now, I wonder if we ever will."