What do you see happening over the next 5 to 10 years?
Our business is divided into distributed audio, home theater, subsystem integration and control, and accessories. What's happening is that content is migrating outside the house. When you subscribe to Rhapsody, for instance, you can download the content to a portable device, which you could then connect to our ICS. Or you can access it directly from the ICS and see the data on your wall panel or handheld remote. But you don't own any of the music you play in your system. That will become a lot more popular — where you don't actually own the content but access it over the Internet instead.

More and more A/V systems will talk to or through a computer over the Internet and download or access content on a network and display and move it around the house. Advances will allow amps to become smaller and less heat-producing so they can go in remote rooms instead of central locations, allowing more of that content control to be distributed through Ethernet computer wiring. And speakers will move from the walls to the ceiling — they really already have — so they don't use up any space where you might want to put art.

The quality of in-wall and ceiling speakers will improve dramatically primarily because there's a market for them. At one time, these were thought of as background, but I see them moving more and more towards the foreground in systems.

Almost every new house, at every level, will have distributed A/V. Much like how you can't buy a car without a CD player, in 10 years, you won't be able to buy a house without a built-in audio system.

I'm guessing your home must have audio in every room — even the bathrooms.
Some bathrooms — not all. [laughs]. I have a lot of stuff because I'm the first test case for our new gear. The latest thing I've tried out is our HD Radio card for the ICS. And now I'm getting ready to test a card that will integrate the ICS with current media servers, including one we're going to market.

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