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 […]

If you haven’t heard of HoloLens you need to see this Microsoft announcement. HoloLens is more than Google Glass in that it presents 3D images overlaid onto your view, but not the total immersion of the Oculus Rift which completely replaces your view with CGI. While both Glass and Rift have been in the public eye under development for […]

It is 2018 and the Intelligent Building has become the norm rather than the exception as it was back in 2015. Now there is a new set of challenges, and one of them is Data Overload from all the sensors we installed everywhere. Computers will do their best to filter the data and share it as needed, […]

In case you have somehow missed it, Integrated Systems Europe begins in Amsterdam on February 10th.  The show is expected to draw a crowd of 50,000 people.  Compare that to the 37,000 that InfoComm attracts in the United States, and you quickly realize that ISE is a HUGE show.  Yet, because it happens on another continent, many […]

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 […]

Having two daughters make their way through the public school system here in North Carolina, it’s dawned on me a number of times — for various reasons like snowstorms, sick days, etc. — that with all the technology in schools today, how did the webcam get overlooked? I think nearly every classroom my daughters have […]

Photo taken by Aleigh Lewis  Kari Rae Seekins is a Los Angeles based, award winning sound designer and composer. Her sound designs and compositions have shown in various museums, festivals and theaters throughout the world including Sundance, Slamdance, Comic Con (San Diego), Fernbank Museum of Natural History, The New Zealand International Film Festival, ZKM Museum of Contempary Art, Jeu De […]

By Marty Schaffel AVI-SPL Over the years, many an employee would walk into my office declaring he has a problem that needs immediate attention. It may have been work related, industry related or personal in nature. In every case, the person would ask me to provide a prompt solution so he could get back to […]

Well, there have been a lot of posts here about the fate of the big-box stores, and what it means to us in the audiovisual industry. I have watched the impending demise of places like Best Buy and Circuit City with a fair degree of indifference. I don’t shop there a lot, because of course […]

Machine to Machine (M2M) refers to technologies that allow both wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same type (Wikipedia definition). In essence, M2M refers to any technology which enables networked devices to exchange information and perform actions without direct manual assistance from human interaction. M2M communications is often used for remote […]

Following a disruptive snow storm in the North East this week, students across the region (especially Long Island and New England) are home sledding, playing video games, drinking hot chocolate and doing everything but thinking about school. Many schools, however, are implementing continuity of learning plans that may require students to “attend class” during snow/ […]

Very few buildings even today are intelligently automated, and the few that do are the large showcase projects. Are you building new office space, or perhaps refreshing a couple floors at a time of your current space? If yes, take two minutes to let me share experiences of 30+ years in automation and I will […]

There is a great movement going on at MIT.  If you are not familiar with the MIT Media Lab and their Tangible Media Group, you may want to take a look at what they are up to.  They made the news a couple months back with their Physical Telepresence project, a shape shifting display painted […]

An interesting thing happened on the way to doing this interview. I have known Alison Maxson, Press and PR Specialist for Barco for quite some time and talked to her a little while back about my proposed Convergent Tech series. In trying to come up with the proper interview subject, topic of conversation and content […]

Did you know every three weeks in the United States, a child dies from a television tipping over? Did you know that every 45 minutes, a child is injured because of a television tipping over? Unfortunately, this is a reality, but one that is completely preventable. Peerless-AV is proud to support National TV Safety Day […]

The lighting industry is of late highly focused on energy efficiency and cost of ownership. However, some long standing research, and some recent work point to a much greater savings in worker efficiency if the type of light and color of light are taken into account along with efficiency. In the ’70s, fast food chains performed market […]

If you’re like me, little things sometimes frustrate you. Maybe the kids left the cap off the soda again and it went flat. Or your spouse put a small scratch in the bumper of your car. Possibly the cat left you a present in a remote corner of a spare bedroom… Then you learn about someone like […]

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, […]

After a successful run with the Disruptive Forces series, I had decided halfway through “The Leaders Speak” series that it was time to bring a close to it at the end of 2014 and create a new project-based series called Convergent Tech. The Convergent Tech Project was something I had begun considering a few months […]

“Have you ever spoken with the common man? It is not edifying.” – Johannes Cabal It’s that quote from a character in a work of fiction that I find running through my head this week as a result of trying to sell some furniture on Kijiji. It’s hard to come together on something when you […]

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 […]

Wikipedia: In 2010, an Australian company called DKTOB pioneered Bluetooth for indoor proximity sensing in its Seeknfind location attendance solution. In 2013, the retail industry saw Beacons and their ability to approximate a customer’s location as an ideal method for drawing attention to targeted products. While passive access control cards can alert the building to your presence, […]

Churches. They’re still not on the front page of many manufacturers and systems integrators based on past experiences with this market segment or perceptions about what church even looks like today. And, still, there it is: The underserved market that’s got money to spend and a need for what you make and sell. 2015 has […]

After a brief period of dormancy, the unified communications (UC) industry took a healthy jump to life last year. What will this year bring for the industry? UC experts are predicting the biggest trends and what they mean for enterprises and institutions looking to expand and improve their collaboration experience in 2015. A recent article […]

A customer with a large aquatic center asked us to look into a better way to manage lighting, and offer a solution for reducing damage from rambunctious children to the existing low voltage light switches. The building already had an existing high end Crestron Lighting Control System, but in this case it was not being […]