You may never feel comfortable about slapping a bowl of chips and a couple of beers on this coffee table, but it surely would impress the folks visiting your super yacht, and it's wicked fun. Tucked somewhere in that table is a full on Mac computer that's networked to a full on distributed entertainment system -- curtains, lights, movies, internet, whatever! As usual, the megayacht sections of the The Fort Lauderdale show were awash in wretched excess, but also as usual, the good folks at Palladium Technologies demonstrated how creative, even joyous, cost-no-problem electronics can get...
I finally got the Intellian D4 HD sat TV system I've been testing to misbehave. During Saturday's heavy rains -- when I was trying a lot of wet gizmos on Gizmo -- the D4 had trouble tracking one of the three DirecTV satellites it tries to switch among as you change channels. Whereas the system has previously worked fine with the boat laying at my float, despite the less-than-optimal antenna location, I'm guessing that the problem was signal interference from the water in the atmosphere. Further proof: It only had trouble with 103 (aka Spaceway 1) which not only uses the harder-to-get KA frequency but also has the most distant geosynchronous orbit (at 103W longitude), and hence sits at the lowest elevation with the most atmosphere between it and Camden, Maine. I still had a lot of channels available, though, and aside from the downpour the D4 has been pretty much flawless...
One way to know that you're really getting high definition TV is to stumble onto a closeup of Muammar Gadhafi's face. Holy crap, what has this guy been doing to himself? But aside from that jolt, setting up and using Intellian's D4 HD sat tv system went smooth and easy. I mounted the dome on Gizmo's boat deck, ran one coax cable to the ACU (the small box left) and one to the DirecTV receiver; ran a USB cable from ACU to receiver, and an HDMI cable from receiver to HD TV; and finally powered the former with 12v DC and the latter two with 120v AC. After a few minutes of automatic antenna searching, holy crap I had access to some 587 channels! (Or so the receiver claims; a lot are pay-to-view, and who's going to count anyway?) The amazing thing is that when I switch channels -- especially between Standard and High Def -- the D4 often has to switch satellites and frequencies, but it's hardly noticeable. The pause is about 3-5 seconds in my experience, and that's quite a technological achievement...
Above is the MS-IP500 head unit of the full Fusion Marine Stereo system I’ve been testing in the lab. The sound is impressive, even with tracks as wildly dynamic as Wetnurse’s Life at Stake. (Check’em out; my boy Curran is the drummer!) Overall, I think the MS-IP500 is so innovative that it almost earned one of Sail magazine’s 2009 Freeman K. Pittman Awards…
Comments about the Fusion stereo testing reminded me of Poly-Planar’s somewhat similar MRD-70 audio system. With the addition of RD-44 remote head units (see below), plus amps and speakers, it becomes a multi-zone and multi-source system. That is, different zones can use different sources, which the multi-zone Fusion system can not do. Plus it has intercom functions and wireless remotes, and Poly-Planar recently added an improved iPod interface. But no marine, or even automobile, system I can find has caught up to what some iPods can do…
I’ve had fun down in the shop/lab the past couple of days doing a dummy install of a fairly sophisticated Fusion Marine Stereo system, and in the process learned a lot about all the ways you can rig this gear. Impressive! The shot above, bigger here, suggest one possible layout: the MS-IP500 head unit, dual 7” two-way speakers, and the 10” sub-woofer on the big panel in back could put a lot of audio into a sizeable main salon, while the little panel with wired remote and 4” two-ways might be fine for a cozy stateroom. But to really get a feel for the variables, check out the back side of these panels, shown below. However, please don’t proceed if you’re offended by funky wiring (though good enough for testing). And to get totally in the mood you might fire up the same mellow John Lee Hooker mix that was playing in this scene (though wrongly titled in my MP3 collection, and thus on the iPod Touch that’s inside the head unit).
Yup, at not much bigger than a Halloween goody bucket, the new TracVision M1 means upstart Intellian’s “world’s smallest in-motion marine satellite TV antenna” claim didn’t go unchallenged for very long. As to which one really is the smallest, that seems to depend on how you evaluate weight versus size. The M1, for instance, is only 7.5 pounds and can purportedly install on a conventional VHF antenna mount. The M1 also comes with KVH’s combo 12v controller/Direct TV receiver, which should make for a compact and easy install, but if you want HD channels, Intellian’s i1 let’s you use a Dish or ExpressVu receiver that can. The same goes for King Control’s new model of the VuQube, the fully stabilized 4000, also introduced at this show. Of course none of these sat TV systems have accumulated much user time, and it’s not easy to stay locked on a satellite with a small dish in a bouncing boat.
You may have seen the full page ads in the boat mags; there’s a new player in the marine satellite TV business, Intellian Technologies, and if nothing else they clearly understand that they must make their case well to make a dent. They certainly didn’t mess around at the NMEA Conference; aside from a booth, they set up a suite with many of their initial seven (7!) products running live. That’s company CEO Eric Sung and U.S. Sales Director John Minetola above, shortly after they showed me some goodies…
So what do get when a very successful software developer cuts loose on an Azimut 55? Among many other things, the biggest iPod interface I’ve ever seen. I didn’t quite get all the details but I’m pretty sure that Alexis’s super-fine entertainment system includes a Yamaha home theater system, XM Satellite Audio, KVH stabilized HD TV, a Logitech Harmony 1000, and some gizmo that transmits the tunes over an FM channel to whatever nearby radios want to tune in. But my interest in the yacht was mainly its Simrad GB60 system…
The July issue of Power & Motoryacht is now online, including my write-up of the new Fusion Marine Stereo, which pretty much summarizes earlier Panbo entries on this innovative system. But recently I got to see the shipping version of the MS-IP500 in the flesh, thanks to a visit by Todd Crocker, above. For many years Todd exercised his marine product creativity and high energy at Standard Horizon, then at Uniden (and is still justifiably proud of its snazzy color 625c fixed VHF), but now he’s a Fusion partner and manager of the U.S. division. He delivered a persuasive demo at my kitchen table!
