Control4’s HC-200 Controller Under $500

By Geoff Duncan September 5, 2008

Control4

At this week’s CEDIA Expo in Denver, home automation developer Control4 introduced its new HC-200 home automation control unit. What’s surprising about the HC0-200 isn’t so much the wealth of home automation possibilities it offers, but it’s sub-$500 price tag in a field traditionally dominated by expensive hardware controllers.

“We believe the HC-200 sets a new standard of affordability for home automation,” said Control4 CEO Will West, in a statement. “The evolution of our Home Controller line highlights Control4’s commitment to providing flexible alternatives to fit the different needs of homeowners and in the case of the HC-200 will open the door to new customers who are ready for something more capable than a simple universal remote.”

The HC-200 features a Control4 onscreen interface, audio outputs (for streaming sound from a digital music collection to TV, home theater, or AV receiver), Ethernet and ZigBee communications (Wi-Fi available as an option), a USB port for add-on storage or peripherals, audio inputs, and a sleek one-unit rack-mount design. The idea behind the HC-200 is that it can control lights, temperature, security, and multi-room music (even the Rhapsody streaming service) all from a single SR 150 RF remove. The HC-200 offers enough power to handle a compact installation, or act as a secondary controller in a more elaborate home automation setup. And its $499 price tag makes getting into the world of home automation a simpler choice for consumers who have been sitting on the fence.

At CEDIA, Control4 also touted its 7-inch Portable Touch Screen controller, designed to complement its existing 10-inch Portable Touch screen and wall-mounted control units. The Touch Screen provides access to the entire palette of home automation capabilities, including home theater control, multi-room music, environmental control, security systems, lighting, and more. Control4 expects to ship the 7-inch Portable Touch Screen by the end of the year for $1,495.

Editors' Recommendations

NASA’s restored Mission Control lets you relive the historic 1969 moon landing

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."