1.7

Does anyone know when 1.7 will be relaased ? and what will be the new added features ?

Thanks

Does anyone know when 1.7 will be relaased ? and what will be the new added features ?

Thanks

Probably near the end of November.

Features are not discussed due to obvious reasons.

I hear that C4 may be trying to prevent people from getting items they buy of Ebay/3rd party etc added to their systems, albeit not in 1.7.

Hope that isnt true, basically makes all of your equipment worthless if you decide to switch. That wont be good for business.

I hear that C4 may be trying to prevent people from getting items they buy of Ebay/3rd party etc added to their systems, albeit not in 1.7.

Hope that isnt true, basically makes all of your equipment worthless if you decide to switch. That wont be good for business.

Curious, You feel it would not be good for Their business or Your business and reasons why?

Control4 is *already* in the position of not allowing end users to add items to their system, that's what ComposerPro is for. Home owners should be using Composer HE, which allows you to do programming on the system, but installing it is a *dealer's* job, and always has been.

RyanE

I hear that C4 may be trying to prevent people from getting items they buy of Ebay/3rd party etc added to their systems' date=' albeit not in 1.7.

Hope that isnt true, basically makes all of your equipment worthless if you decide to switch. That wont be good for business.[/quote']

Curious, You feel it would not be good for Their business or Your business and reasons why?

If he decides to sell his house there will be no market for his C4 equipment.

If I thought I would have to throw out my gear if I sold my house I wouldn't buy C4 in the first place.

I hear that C4 may be trying to prevent people from getting items they buy of Ebay/3rd party etc added to their systems, albeit not in 1.7.

Hope that isnt true, basically makes all of your equipment worthless if you decide to switch. That wont be good for business.

Curious, You feel it would not be good for Their business or Your business and reasons why?

If he decides to sell his house there will be no market for his C4 equipment.

Why would there be no market for the C4 equipment? Why not sell with the home? This would only enhance the value.

If I thought I would have to throw out my gear if I sold my house I wouldn't buy C4 in the first place.

I don't quite understand. Why do you feel you have to throw your C4 equipment away?

Please elaborate.

I think the question being raised here is whether, as the original poster seems to be indicating, C4 is doing something to eliminate the after market for used equipment. Today, if I upgrade from an original HTC to an HC-300 and have no use for the original HTC, I can ebay it, and someone else can make use of it. Absolutely, this requires a dealer in the identify and bind the HTC for the guy who buys it, but it's a supported activity. I agree with some of the other posters. If I didn't believe there was an after market for C4 I wouldn't purchase it, any more than I'd buy a new car that I didn't think I could sell used, when I decided it was time for something else.

I think the concern here is whether something is occurring that will prevent this from happening.

Not only do I not think anything is happening that WOULD prevent someone selling used equipment, I don't think anything COULD happen to prevent it.

What you'd be talking about is something akin to Microsoft's software activation, wherein a piece of equipment would be activated to a particular project or a particular user. I'm not aware of any such model ANYWHERE in the consumer electronics industry, nor any business reason what C4 or anyone else would want to do that.

In the software business, activation makes sense because it prevents the business risk of someone installing the software then giving it to someone else to install. As far as I can tell there's very little risk to C4 of me letting someone else use my lightswitch at the same time I am :-)

I think this may simply have been a reference to the Composer Pro versus Composer HE, and as I've posted many times before (I'm a user, not a dealer) I've always been incredibly impressed with how much control Composer HE gives me over my system. Compared to all the other options I looked at, C4 allows for FAR more customization by the end user -- a must for a DIY geek like me. :D

basically, measures will be taken to make sure that end user do not have composer PRO. Nothing will happen to used equipment or the market for it. But I think steps will be taken to make sure pro doesn't get into anyone other than a dealers hands.

I think my question was Does anyone know when 1.7 will be relaased ? and what will be the new added features ?

I still did not get the right answer

actually k&j answered your question. At least as best as you'll get without being a dealer.

I'm pretty sure your question was answered in the second post. Targeting the end of November and features not yet announced, other than you have to have it for the new iPod dock.

The control4 ipod dock will not be released with the first go around of 1.7 just FYI

OH WTH! :o

The control4 ipod dock will not be released with the first go around of 1.7 just FYI

That fits in line with the word that we are hearing about it's release later this month, and the dock not shipping until December sometime.

Does the polling issue get fixed in 1.7??? It's driving me NUTS....

Thanks!

Sorry for the delayed response, I dont check in daily.

Yes, I was referring to the fact that if I wanted to get rid of my old gear and that ability was eliminated by C4 then I would not likely purchase it, and I think in general that would be detrimental to the business. Some consumers may not be educated enough to find this information out beforehand, but many spending this much generally do at least a bit of research and find out information from the competition. The posters before me explained this perfectly.

The other problem with this system is that if a user continually buys items from Ebay since the price is <50% of dealer price, then they will alienate their dealers and create animosity. The dealers will likely then either charge increased fees for simple addition of hardware or will just do poor quality work and eventually irritate the consumer. Unhappy consumers will be bad for business.

I dont really understand the reasoning behind forcing the end users to use the dealers to add single pieces of equipment and do their own research & coding. By eliminating their user base from the development pool they are hurting themselves. The small proportion of users that will do all of this on their own to avoid dealer costs would be minimal relative to the amount those same people could contribute to the community. I see it sort of like open source software... if you let people have the freedom to experiment and develop on their own the end product can in many cases end up much better than what the developer created originally. XBMC and Firefox apps are good examples.

As far as Im concerned, as long as I can buy/sell equipment on Ebay and shop around for a dealer that can log in online and add the equipment to my system for a reasonable price, Im happy. If I get tied to only using my local dealer and am unhappy with them, thats when it is a problem.

Control4 do not limit the sale of 2nd hand gear. The issue is with dealers who sell new gear online without programming. Due to the exchange rates, import taxes & distributor costs this effects the international market dramatically. Not only that dealers make up for lost revenue in programming time by their profit margins in the product. At the end of the day everyones got the make a living and if you take that away then your dealer and distributor will go out of business.

Most end users do not have the knowledge and skill level required to integrate a Control4 system. Control4 requires its dealers to attend a tech 1 training course which teaches the dealer the basics of Control4 programming.

I personally am a strong believer in open source however i can understand from a business perspective to why Control4 has limited its programming to a dealerbase.

You have to put yourself in Control4's shoes. Do you want every joe to program the system? Wouldn't people give up and complain about how bad a system control4 is just because they couldn't get the programming right?

Also in regards to the open source applications though you may tollerate the bugs, issues and crashes tha may arise not all consumers will. If that were the case commercially available products would cease to exist. People pay for reliability and peace of mind.

Alan, I agree with everything you said, I just think the two situations (servicing users that want reliability/peace of mind and letting superusers do independent mods) can coexist as well.

I think thats where Composer Home Edition comes in. The users who want to do their own programming has the limited abilty to do that without the headaches of breaking their system.

Anyway i know i'm not going to sway you so lets stop here before it gets into a heated discussion.

I think thats where Composer Home Edition comes in. The users who want to do their own programming has the limited abilty to do that without the headaches of breaking their system.

Anyway i know i'm not going to sway you so lets stop here before it gets into a heated discussion.

This gentleman would like someone else to spend the $$ for R&D then more $$ to put the product out, then even more $$ to have training facilities to have Trained Dealers to sell and service the product only to demand the right to have the same software that the dealer has to pay for and maintain. All this just so he can declare himself a "super user", because he purchased just the equipment?

Open a showroom, receive the certifications, spend your own $$. This is simply outrageous that some like this actually thinks he can justify himself because he purchased the equipment and someone was blatantly stupid enough to give him Pro.

The time is short for this type as you know Alan. By the way keep up the good work and Thank You!

honestly I was in the same boat for a while. I worked with a dealer and then was let go, I had the same training and certification as dealers, but since I was not a "dealer" anymore, I didn't have access to composer anymore. To get the same access as a dealer, I had to, well, become a dealer....If that's what you want, that's what you have to do. Go work for a good dealer, it's great education.

As expected, the response is defensive, not constructive. If the difference between Pro & HE is simply the ability to add equipment to the system, why bother forcing the end user to go to a dealer just to add a new receiver, or a new cable box, etc? If the goal is to keep people tied to dealers (some of which commit highway robbery, see the other post for the guy that charged a client $95/hr for 24 hrs of "programming" while he was himself learning how to program on the phone with Control4 support) then why bother offering HE at all? I simply do not understand why you have to call someone just to add an item to the system. Even if that was limited to Control4 items it would be better, but to make it such that you have to call the dealer to add any single piece of equipment (change TVs, etc) seems like more of an irritation than anything.

As i said. Lets try not to turn this into a heated discussion. Control4 has made its decision on the matter so regardless of people's opinion on it nothings going to change.

Rather then talk about that how bout i give you guys a sneak peak at 1.7

http://www.c-t.com.au/xbmc-c4/xbmc-c4-integration.mp4