Homedianet

It was a blisteringly hot day when I called at the home of Duncan Cook. I was there to interview him for the Silver IT Club. His company Homedianet is set to take house building by storm and to change the way we think about our homes. He is a man poised at the edge of a business breakthrough.

I arrived a little early and sat in his living room watching his four-year-old son play on the computer his little hand not even covering the mouse. Dialogue boxes started to build up on the screen.

“It’s going to crash,” he said and it did. “I knew it would do that,” he said. His Mum and I looked at each other. He may not have understood how the computer works but he certainly knew how it behaved.

When Duncan arrived we took cold drinks into the garden. He launched into his product range. For the rest of the interview I had to gently keep steering him back to himself.

“It’s you I want to learn about we can get to your products later.” It was a struggle, he is a born businessman entirely focussed and at a turning point in his career.

All the varied parts of his career, even those that at the time he felt were failures or that he hated have contributed to his unique company. Like many businessmen before him he is turning failure into success.

Duncan has had a varied career that began with electrical engineering in the navy followed by working in his fathers building firm in Cornwall.

The experience he gained during this time and while in the navy has become a great asset in his current business.

During the nineties recession there was little to do in the building trade and he took his first IT course at the local college.

But work dried up in Cornwall even for newly qualified IT experts so he moved with his wife to Sussex. There he met the classic conundrum. He couldn’t get IT work because he had no experience and he couldn’t get experience because he had no work.

In desperation he unwillingly became a property negotiator and found to his own surprise that he was very good at it. So good in fact that what was a failing business was turned into a great success.

He moved to Bristol to follow his wife’s promotion and turned again to property negotiation. The property business in Bristol was very different to Sussex and much more cut throat. He found himself forced to work in ways he frankly thought unethical and against the customer’s interests.

In addition the pressure was so excessive that he felt he could no longer do it and left.

Next he worked at the BT call centre help desk. He gained a lot of valuable experience and being an ambitious man gained Microsoft qualifications under his own steam and at his own expense while still working for BT.

From there he worked for various companies and banks designing and implementing networks until he was a senior network engineer.

However, he was not happy with the corporate mentality, he could not fit in to a world that seemed increasingly small-minded.

The crunch came on a “dress down day”. The tea shirt he had dressed down in did not have a collar and he was sent home. He knew at that moment that he could never be a corporate man.

So he set up his IT support company but found the climate very competitive. In this situation a unique selling point is essential. He didn’t have one. Or rather he did, but hadn’t yet realised.

His unique selling point was himself – by now electrical engineer, house builder, and sales negotiator and network engineer. He realised that this added up to a formidable set of skills if he could redirect it.

He did a lot of research. Studied house construction in Europe and the States. He knew about house building wiring and networks. So he took his company in a new direction.

His new company, Homedianet, will network your house. He installs Smart Home Systems Multi room audio/video, lighting control and home automation. He provides security systems and CCTV. He retails and installs products such as Plasma TV’s and Home Cinema to trade and public.

A Homedianet home network is easily adaptable to both the changing ways you use your home and whatever new technology the future brings.

Duncan saw his chance because of the change in customer demands. This has come about mainly due to advances in technology, the increased use of PC's in the home, Internet usage and home entertainment and home automation.

There has been a significant increase in working from home, fuelled by traffic congestion and spiralling house prices. Other factors like childcare costs have encouraged many women to work part time with the facility for employment via the PC. The use of the home as an office has lead to greater flexibility and greater loyalty to the employer, a fact most employers are starting to realize.

Soon all new homes will require cabled networks in order to function efficiently. The use of the PC will change, homeowners will gather information over the Internet, children will use the Internet for school projects, shopping will be done via the Internet, and all home controls will be via the PC or Digital hub.

There are other growing trends too such as Home Automation, Telephone systems, Home Entertainment, Digital TV anywhere, central lighting and heating controls, remote home access and control. These all call for a change in the way homes are wired.

The heart of the system is a central communications cabinet connected to media ports throughout your house using high quality cabling.

At this point Duncan’s wife propped a small white box beside me and demonstrated how easy it is to switch the use of any socket in the house from computer to television and television to baby alarm.

This network then distributes video, audio or data through these sockets so that you can enjoy TV, music, the Internet or other services in any room in your house and change the use at any time you want.

If you want to change the way you use a room or decide that you want to browse the web in bed or watch DVD's in the bathroom then each socket can be quickly and easily re-configured to supply any of the available data streams.

The Homedianet system can also be configured to include CCTV for security or child minding.

Although digital home networks were once 'science fiction', or at least the prerogative of the very wealthy, home networks like Homedianet are rapidly becoming an integral part of top quality housing developments both in the UK and abroad.

A few years ago, the idea of a digital home didn't exist. Most of us had a TV and maybe a VCR, but just think how times have changed. Digital Interactive TV is now enjoyed in 9.5 million homes in the UK and 70,000 new customers sign up for Broadband Internet access every week (source BBC news).

If we look at the typical home, however, the wiring hasn't changed much in the last 40 years; a TV point in the lounge and perhaps the master bedroom, telephone sockets in two or three rooms at most. This simply doesn't reflect the digital revolution that has taken place.

At the forefront of today's home entertainment digital revolution is the Windows XP Media Centre. It's an operating system that comes as a set top box, tower system or a self contained unit that does everything your TV, VCR, DVD player and hi-fi used to do. A direct on-screen interface allows you to pause live TV by recording straight to a hard drive.

The Media Centre will let you browse a web based TV guide, then program to record to hard drive or DVD up to two weeks in advance. It can play your CD collection or a slide show of your favourite digital photographs or home movies.

Connected to your Homedianet home network, the Media Centre will let you enjoy any or all of this entertainment anywhere in your house, all this at the touch of a few buttons on your remote control.

The CAT7 cabling that makes up the infrastructure of your Homedianet installation is capable of carrying a television picture of fantastic quality. So it makes sense to view it on the best equipment around.

This will be the other arm of the business. Duncan’s company provide a complete installation and setup service. Once he had decided on the new direction of his business why not add to it by supplying the worlds best multimedia products. This he does by extensively researching and sourcing the best quality products available.

He recommends either LCD television screens or one of the new generations of High Definition TV’s. LCD’s tend to suit smaller screen sizes up to 37” and Plasmas give you value and quality for sizes 42” and above, with a projector for the ultimate ‘Cinema at home Experience’. There is even a 42" plasma screen that looks exactly like a mirror when it's in standby mode.

A CCTV system can be connected via your Homedianet installation to your Media Centre or PC allowing you to keep an eye on your home from anywhere in the world via the Internet.

So now he is poised to burst into the major market place. In the autumn he will be opening a show home in Bristol fitted out with his cabling and all the best multimedia and automated home products.

I told him I hope the Silver IT Club gets an invitation to the opening day so we can do another feature this time with photographs.

When I left it was still boiling hot. Duncan was off to another business meeting and his little boy had left the computer and was about to go swimming.

You can visit the Homedianet website at http://www.homedianet.com/

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