D-Tools Podcast #19: ‘What’s the Buzz’ about… Future Ready Solutions

Eric Bodley, president of distributor Future Ready Solutions, is an icon in the custom electronics industry. He was among the founding members of CEDIA and one of its original board members. He had a long tenure as an integrator originally with Sound Advice and later with his own integration company.

Later, he migrated to work at Monster Cable and eventually formed Future Ready Solutions in 2014 as a focused distributor of connectivity solutions for the industry, carrying a focused selection of Category cable, power cable, HDMI cable, audio wire, fiber, and more. Because Future Ready Solutions concentrates solely on signal path connections, it has become a go-to distributor for integrators not just for product but also for design advice and elevating the quality of installations.

Bodley joined the D-Tools “What’s the Buzz” podcast to discuss his long industry history and why integrators need to stay focused on improving the quality of their connectivity solutions between devices. He also addressed key issues of consideration such as latency, data transfer, and error rates in selecting the right type of signal connectivity.

“If you’re dealing where you are wiring a lot of homes, if you’re working with a builder, you are going to need a supply of product. Unfortunately, if it’s Cat 6, it’s Cat 6, it’s Cat 6… not true. It’s like saying a car is a car is a car. There are different qualities, and there are different pricing. And good enough shouldn’t be good enough.”

“If you’re dealing where you are wiring a lot of homes, if you’re working with a builder, you are going to need a supply of product. And good enough shouldn’t be good enough.” — Eric Bodley, Future Ready Solutions

That effort to elevate integrators’ standards is how Bodley came up with the name Future Ready Solutions. He didn’t want dealers to “future proof” their installations, but to make their solutions “future ready” for the inevitable increased load of digital transmission needs in the home.

With the advent of wireless, Bodley doesn’t think that should diminish the amount of wire integrators put in homes. He notes that even a wireless access point needs to be hardwired.

“Wi-Fi was never designed to carry the trunkline of data,” he says. “It was originally designed so we didn’t have to have a long wire hanging off our iPhone as we walked around our house.”

Fiber in the Home Becoming More Important

Bodley recognizes that there is a definite trend away from massive HDMI distribution systems inside of homes, especially since whenever a new version of HDMI comes out, there is the potential for that solution to become obsolete. Instead, AV-over-IP solutions have taken over using Category cable or fiber.

Future Ready Solutions has even unveiled a fiber demarc kit for dealers to easily connect from the fiber service provider’s demarcation point to the home. The kit is an outdoor box with 150 feet of pre-terminated fiber in it. The technician simply unspools what is needed and runs it to the device location to connect to a wallplate that comes with the kit.

“You are in and out of the house in no time,” he remarks, noting that many manufacturers of wireless access points are now including a fiber slot in their devices. This innovation is supporting the running of fiber inside the walls of the home versus more bulky cables.

During the discussion, Bodley touted the new Interconnect Diagrams feature recently released for D-Tools Cloud. He sees that ability to map out signal path connections in the software as an effective means for integrators to design systems and for technicians in the field to be able to perform their installations more quickly and accurately.