BTX Blog

Naples, Italy is considered the official home of the modern pizza. In fact, ancient pizza ovens can still be seen today just up the road in the ruins at Pompeii – the word “pizza” dates back to AD 997.

But today, you can still visit the world’s oldest pizzeria, L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele, where they offer just two items – margarita and marinara. Essentially, pizza with or without cheese. That’s it. With or without. And the line is out the door and down the street every minute they are open.

Kinda makes me wonder whether we offer our customers too many options. Any good salesperson knows not to muddy the waters with too many choices.

Good/better/best is sufficiently complex for the average buyer. It gives them a nice view of the top and the bottom and most land in the middle. Once you have established some trust, you can narrow it down to better/best since no one really wants to buy the lowest end. Is it possible that someday we will really just have one option? I either want AV technology in my facility, or I don’t?

Surely we are seeing control systems get simpler and AV gear put more emphasis on integrating with our environment. We’re also seeing more of ourselves reflected in our personal device interfaces... we know what we like in an interface and we don’t need ours to work like anyone else’s.

You can even buy an off-the-shelf interface like Google Home or Amazon Echo and teach it to respond to your personal commands using its open API. Soon there will be no more switchers for Beta vs. VHS vs. DVD vs. PC vs. STB vs. BluRay as everything becomes file-based cloud-delivered media content.

Each user will have their own personal interface that no one else will have to learn, use, or even see. “BYOD” will become “BY”. The whole AV business will be boiled down to two of our five senses and how we stimulate them using technology. Then we will basically be there... “with or without”.

Do I want those two senses stimulated, or would I rather have peace for a while?

...oh yeah, in case you were wondering... the pizza was good, but I kinda missed having some toppings. I guess I’m not quite ready for a “with or without” future. But I like the idea of just getting what I want without having to make a lot of hard choices. I assume our clients want the same thing.