Chris Lanier’s Take On The Best Buy Life|ware deal

Chris and I have talked very little over the years, but I certainly respect his opinions on the digital home. It also helps that we think alike when it comes to issues such as media center placement in the digital home. A few of you may noticed that Best Buy struck a deal with Exceptional Innovations to offer a connected home package of sorts. It is a very nice start in the right direction, however, there are not many consumers that are going to accept the $7500 installation it costs to get $7500 worth of hardware installed. Lets face it, hooking up a DVD player to a receiver can be a daunting task to many people. As Chris suggests, making it work, and making it work easily are the keys to success. When a $10 a month cable DVR is the alternative, don't expect many people to switch.

From the article:

At $15,000 the price is less then that of most Crestron, Control4, AMX,
etc setups.  However, anyone going to Best Buy to purchase home
automation products likely doesn't know of these companies or the large(r) price
tags that come with professional installs.  It isn’t cheap to have
a full Crestron setup installed in your home, but how many Best Buy shoppers
even know what Crestron is?

Life|ware is expensive, I don't have exact
prices on me but I'd factor in $3500 for Life|ware installed.  Much of this
price is going to come from the fact that Life|ware needs configuration far from
what the average user is going to be able to do.  It's not consumer friendly
install software, it’s meant to be installed by a certified Life|ware
installer.  Once installed, it's rock solid and in my opinion is simply the best
home automation software that works with Media Center.