You Already Know How To Use It!

In any sufficiently powerful control system, there is a tension between full control and simplicity of operation. Should you sacrifice some functions to reduce the number of buttons? Do you instead bury functions in hierarchical menus, requiring many presses and navigation – as well as understanding how and where to find them? These are the problems that make touch panel design an art, with every room in every job requiring a custom layout. Worse, that custom work must be laboriously repeated at every panel every time the customer wants even the smallest change. If the original designer and programmer isn’t available, any change may mean starting all over.

CineTouch eliminates this expensive and tedious work by creating user personalization and reconfigurable option buttons in a standardized panel design. Right at the panel, integrators can modify the system and display to suit the wants and needs of each individual named user. Even complex functions can be surfaced to single-button activation with status indication, placing them wherever the user likes. Each user gets to choose how the system will react to them, with many preferences and permissions that affect everything from the complexity of individual control screens to individual favorite channels and dialing behavior. All that personalization is delivered automatically using the exact same main processor code and touch panel projects in every job. All the specifics are rendered from data in a relational database running in non-volatile memory inside the AMX processor – there’s no PC or hard drive to fail. There’s never any programming, just initial configuration in a web-based point-and-click tool, then tweaking the user experience from the panel, even on site after installation or over the Internet.

With CineTouch, you already know how to use it!

Users simply want results, not to “operate equipment”, and the control system stands between the user and satisfaction. So it’s the job of the interface to get out of the way and make access to content and home functions as simple and transparent as possible. Instant gratification just can’t be seven to ten clicks away, and it isn’t made simpler by 3-D buttons shaped like the rotating head of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

On any CineTouch panel, the integrator can just touch-and-hold any of 100 option buttons that supplement control pages to select the functions (and/or status) the customer wants to have at his fingertips. Room monitors, timed events, privacy, webcams, HVAC, lighting scenes, advanced audio and video controls, stock charts, weather, concierge, security alarm functions and monitors, just about anything can be placed on an option button, available at a single touch. Because THE CUSTOMER chooses what is important, there’s never too many buttons, there are only THEIR OWN buttons. Any that aren’t used, aren’t appropriate for the room, or are off limits to the current user simply don’t appear, making the interface still simpler. Similarly, the control pages themselves morph to offer the basic or advanced device control as desired by the current user.

Touch-and-hold to select the sources and source scenes you want available in each room. Choose which you prefer as turn-on scenes, CineTouch learns your preferences and will thereafter start up the room and bring your choice to you with a single touch of the big TV or MUSIC buttons on the panel. If the integrator chooses to enable the customer to do so, he can change his mind anytime and re-set individual functions by himself, and everyone can get their own choices.

Again, just like a car radio, integrators and enabled owners can touch-and-hold any of 36 favorite channel buttons to set it as they wish, illustrated automatically from over 1,000 channel icons built into the panels. Browse the channels available on the current channel map as defined by the selected source right on the panel - there are 10 maps built into the system, including DirecTV, DISH, XM, SIRIUS, and more. Every user can have their own or share favorites, either individually for each content vendor, or one set for all - let CineTouch look up what to dial to get the selected channel on the device that’s current at the moment. Or browse the currently available channels sorted by genre, with each user’s own individual favorite autodialed among the Movies, Sports, Learning, Arts, Music, and other grouped channels.

Of course, appearance still matters. A touch panel design must be appealing, not just functional. CineTouch lets every user decide what looks good to them, and where. Twenty panel themes are built-in and can be called up at a touch to match a mood or décor. Every user can be enabled to select their favorite for each location. Like all the personalization in CineTouch, it all happens with one touch – choose your user name, and you get YOUR system, YOUR way.

That’s why we say, “With CineTouch, You Already Know How To Use It!”