Planning for the Future — Or the Next Buyer

“The questions we get a lot are ‘How easy is this to use?’ and ‘How easy is this to change?’ — and that last one from the design-build community especially,” says Arcenal. “That’s why having that hardwired infrastructure is so important.” Think about it the same way you might think about plumbing: It’s vastly easier to change a faucet than to add a faucet, right? The same holds true with technology. “As far as software is concerned, a smart home platform that’s intuitive and reliable is just as vital,” says Arcenal. (And for the record, every Crestron Home® OS update has been completely free of charge.)

“The conversation that happens at the outset of a new build or a renovation is so important,” says Arcenal. Questions such as “What are you doing now? What do you hope to do one day?” can be very revealing. Arcenal provides an example: “Suppose a client says, ‘Well, we love having distributed audio in the bedrooms, living, and dining rooms.’ Great. Do you think you might want that feature in other rooms in the future? And suppose you had to sell the home? Wouldn’t it be a net positive to have that wiring in place for any future expansions?”

That’s also why technologies such as Crestron’s DM NVX® AV-over-IP solutions are gaining so much traction. “It’s very scalable,” says Arcenal. “Adding sources, adding zones — with AV-over-IP, entertainment is just another part of the home network. It’s running over the same kind of cabling that delivers the internet to the home office. We now have ‘edge devices,’ which allow you to bring sources such as your turntable into that home network, too.”

The mindset of the modern buyer when it comes to technology has truly shifted from “nice to have” to “must have,” says Arcenal. “It’s no longer ‘Do we want smart home tech or granite countertops?’ — the answer has become ‘all of the above.’”