The concept of Smart Buildings is not new. For over two dozen years, the construction design and management industries have been implementing the standards of Building Information Modeling and making each building “smarter” than the next. Gone are the days with manual security systems, manual fire control systems, camera-less buildings or floors and nowadays everything […]

This week, Apple spent 85 percent of its time during its Spring Forward press conference on the Apple Watch and how it works, what it’s priced at and what it actually looks like. And, I will likely pre-order — no, I will pre-order — the Apple Sport Watch on April 10th, the first day they […]

As you may know, we go to every major AV-oreinted trade show each year and shoot thousands of videos – literally thousands. In just the past 5-years, we’ve shot over 21,000 videos of new products launched at shows like InfoComm, DSE, CEDIA and Integrated Systems Europe as well as dozens of regional shows like those […]

The 12th year of the Digital Signage Expo kicks off next week in Las Vegas with over 200 exhibitors and the most education ever offered on digital signage in one place. I was joined on today’s videocast by the president and COO of Exponation (parent company of DSE), Chris Gibbs, who gave me a great overview […]

ISE’s managing director, Mike Blackman, was the happiest person in Amsterdam as the show closed — he declared a show attendance record of over 59,000 attendees. The HomeAV and ProAV mega trade show had over 1,200 exhibitors — nearly 250 new ones — and over 400,000 square feet of exhibition space. This interview with Mike […]

There were many rumors about Sharp’s demise in Europe, but they were wrong. Although the company did have a re-organization, its strong new interactive and 4K product portfolio will help boost it in 2015. Here, Sharp’s director of marketing in Europe, Michael Bailly, talks about the company’s new line and all that is going on […]

In a way, ISE 2015 was an official launch for Oblong Industries as, although they were at InfoComm last June, now they have a shipping product called Mezzanine. Oblong’s Global VP of Sales Mike Brown talked with Gary in this one-on-one interview about the company’s strategy.

Jupiter Systems’ Devon Wright, manager professional services, took time to talk with me about their new CSR-4k wireless collaboration system that debuted here at ISE 2015 and will sell for $6,000. It’s sort of a high-end version of ClickShare but, instead only managing four sources simultaneously and putting up everything in a 2×2 wall configuration, […]

Listen Technologies Vice President of Business Development Cory Schaeffer is clearly excited in this video. Listen has a new, competitively priced ($500 U.S.) IR Transmitter that the company says can cover any receiver in a room, no matter where it is. Aiming it at Williams Sound and Sennheiser, Cory says the new IR Transmitter uses […]

Milestone, the parent company for Chief, Da-Lite and Projecta, had a visual representation of their company’s history in AV and it dates all the way back to 1909. Chief Sr. Marketing & Product Manager EMEA Commercial Robert de Jong, talks with me about their history and future in this one-on-one video interview from ISE 2015.

Medialon’s founder, Alex Carru, is more excited about their new Overture network-based control system than anything they’ve ever done. There’s no question that Overture will have an impact on the control world as Medialon is now where the rest of the control system market wants to be. Here’s a one-on-one interview with Medialon’s Alex Carru.

There’s an InfoComm/ANSI standard known as PISCR that every integrator should be familiar with. Why? The PISCR standard provides metrics for measurement and requirements for minimum contrast ratios for rear and front projection audiovisual projected image systems — but, it’s application based; not projection device based. This standard applies to both permanent and temporary installations, […]

One of the busiest stands at ISE 2014 was NEC — it had one of the top lead totals for the show. I caught up with NEC Display Solutions VP Simon Jackson, who told me how the company’s three focuses at ISE 2015 are LED, LCD and projection — specifically laser phosphor projectors. Check out […]

I stopped by the Sennheiser booth today and spoke to Andy Niemann, director of business communication. His enthusiasm for Mobile Connect — the company’s new app makes live audio streaming, audio description and assistive listening possible everywhere: cinema, theater, signage, etc. via an app on your phone. Different audio content can be provided on four […]

A year ago, Vaddio was pushing the simplicity of their USB-based products and technology. Here at ISE, it’s all about Cat5. Here’s an interview I did today at ISE 2015 with Vaddio’s National Sales Manager Tim Henry who explained what Vaddio is focused on now.

One of the coolest products I’ve seen so far is from Williams Sound — it’s called the Hearing Hotspot. You know when you go to a fitness center and they have those RF receivers so that, while you are exercising, you can listen to the TVs hanging around the gym? Well, imagine if those terrible […]

Today, I had the chance to corner Sony’s Business Head Damien Weissenburger during the busiest trade show day of the year. Sony’s clearly most proud of its laser phosphor projectors and he even claimed close to a 60 percent market share — he’s probably right. As with most display manufacturers on the show floor, 4K […]

We actually attended the ISE 2015 press conference for Origin Acoustics today, and here’s the entire thing via video we shot. It’s a good look at their philosophy to support the AV channel as well as the engineering behind the design of their unique in-wall and in-ceiling speaker line. Watch the whole thing here.

We actually shot video of the entire Microsoft press conference conference today so you can see the way they’re promoting the Surface Hub 84” multi-touch tablet/flat panel display to the ProAV market. It’s an interesting pitch as it’s big-data focused rather than application focused. I suspect that the Microsoft folks didn’t necessarily consider they audience […]

Ever since we broke the story that Microsoft would launch the 84” Surface Hub in their booth at ISE, everyone in the AV market’s been talking about what Microsoft would do with it and what features it would have. Well, now you’ll know as Gary did a one-on-one interview with their Director of Product Marketing […]

SMART kapp was a hit at InfoComm 2014 — not just because it was new, but because it invented a totally new product category for the industry. It has been 20-something years since SMART invented the entire category of what is now known SmartBoards — more broadly known as interactive whiteboards. Well, in 2014, SMART […]

Kramer wants to be known as more than a glue company in the AV market. Started as a video and audio accessory company, the company has now ventured into control, BYOD wireless collaboration and HDBaseT signal distribution. I took the opportunity to speak with Ari Gorlin this morning at ISE about where Kramer is positioned […]

As the show was just opening here on day one at ISE in Amsterdam, I was given a sneak peek at the new AMX gear launched here at ISE and it includes a new Enova, an expanded ENZO product line and a brand-new mic mixer aimed at meeting room installs. AMX’s VP of Product Management […]

Following a video shoot in the Barco stand, I was walking Hall 11 — commonly known as the LED hall – and came across the Peerless-AV booth. I quickly grabbed their European managing director, Gordon Dutch, and asked him to talk to me about their 2015 plans, new products and what he thought of the […]

Analog Way is one of those companies that’s grown a tremendous amount over the past decade, primarily thanks to the live events and staging markets. Their forte has been switching, controlling, manipulating and scaling of video images. I caught up with Analog Way’s CEO Adrien Corso and he told me how they did in 2014, […]

It’s been nearly a year since HARMAN announced the merger of AMX into its family of ProAV brands and, according to Joe Andrulis, VP of global marketing for AMX and Van Williamson, business development manager for HARMAN, the synergy of the two companies made the merger easy. In this video interview, they tell us the […]

Following an exciting keynote by Lars Thomsen, I caught up with ISE Managing Director Mike Blackman and talked about the 2015 show. Not only is it assured to be a record-breaking year for the event — we’ve predicted 58,000, but the world’s largest mega-AV show has more than 1,050 exhibitors, including more than 200 brand […]

I have often written that what HDBaseT is doing now is merely a band-aid to the future of video signal routing and distribution. Why? Well, it’s not network-based. HDBaseT converts video, audio, network, control and power to a signal so that it can be carried over CATx cable over long distances. But, it’s not over […]

Although SMART Technologies invented the interactive whiteboard market, and therefore indirectly invented the interactive display market, companies like InFocus — with Mondopad — and Clary Icon as well as Sharp have developed it into more of a mainstream product category in recent years. So much so that Microsoft has now, well, copied it — but, […]

First off, NO I am not getting paid to write this. I am just a tech-gear junkie and I came across this product today while looking through the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) product announcements. And, the best new product at NAMM is the smallest one launched. Dubbed the Groove by Apogee, it’s a […]

Last week, I received an embargoed press release that the HDBaseT Alliance has submitted its so-called standard to be adopted by IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE adoption is a big deal — not only is the IEEE the world’s largest association of technical professionals with more than 400,000 members in chapters […]

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