With roughly 60 percent of homes being built these days featuring structured wiring, it appears builders have gotten the message. Structured wiring, whether a standard feature or step-up amenity, is here to stay. Now what? That’s the question Leviton Integrated Networks heard from builders and contractors who have taken the structured wiring plunge and want a clear way to convey its value to homeowners.
Leviton’s answer is LE&AP (Leviton Entertainment & Applications Platform), a centralized platform for sharing digital content throughout the home. LE&AP consists of a digital distribution center, a high-capacity hard drive that’s located inside a Leviton structured wiring can, a broadband router, and digital players that connect to TVs and stereo systems throughout the house. Digital content is streamed to various rooms over the Ethernet cable used in a structured wiring system.
“We’ve gotten feedback from builders and integrators that people want a way to make structured wiring really work for them, and LE&AP gives them a way to do that,” says Jack Merrow, Leviton’s director of marketing and business development. “There’s a lot of digital music out there and a lot of digital photography and digital movies being shot by families. People don’t know what to do with those photos or how to put them in a format that allows them to share.”
In bringing a consumer-level technology product to market, Leviton is trying to distance itself from conventional PCs and the reliability and complexity issues associated with them. “Right now people have to get on the PC to organize and play their music,” Merrow says. “With LE&AP you can control it all from the most common interface in the house: the TV.” The Leviton digital players connect to a TV or audio receiver using standard connectors and act as just another input to the device. When consumers select the input with the LE&AP player, they see a menu of options for viewing videos and pictures and listening to music. From there, they can create photo slideshows and playlists of favorite music.
Merrow maintains that the menus are simple enough for homeowners to learn quickly, but the system does require setup from an integrator for copying content from the family PC to the Leviton server. The integrator will also configure the router for home networking. Leviton has a certification program in place for integrators and is targeting contractors who have the “attributes” to handle a tech-based system. Those contractors are typically already installing Leviton structured wiring and audio systems.
For builders, LE&AP could be a differentiator with a roadmap to the future, Leviton says. Plans are in place to integrate the LE&AP platform with ZWave products to provide TV-based interfaces for home control including lighting, HVAC, and more. That integration is at least a year out, Merrow says, but with structured wiring in place, both new and existing homes are ready for the expansion. Typical cost of the system to the homeowner is between $3,000 and $4,000 installed, with the cost either picked up by the builder as a built-in differentiator along with structured wiring or rolled into the mortgage.
