Crew Call By Joel Rollins
What’s wrong with the AV Rental and Staging Industry? Around twenty years ago, I fell in love with an industry. Yes, believe it or not, I mean this one – Audio Visual rental and staging. I’d been an amateur photographer and electronics nut all through school, and was working as a hotel Banquet Manager when I met the people who provided AV rental to our hotel. I was blown away that people actually GOT PAID to do this – and was working for them less than a year later. I’ve never looked back. I’ve devoted most of the last twenty years to learning more about it, and to helping others learn more about it. So I feel qualified to say this. As an industry goes, we’re pretty screwed up. I think this for a number of reasons, but the primary two are: 1. We base our business and pricing on costs that are almost irrelevant to our bottom line 2. By doing so, we continually cause clients to evaluate our services based on false criteria. Every year, I marvel at how capable the gear is getting, and how much it’s come down in price. More and more of my colleagues complain about how hard it’s getting to make a profit in the staging industry, and I wonder if they see the trap. We have a business whose traditional revenue stream is based on renting equipment, usually using some kind of formula based on a percentage of the gear’s purchase price. But with the price of gear coming down, so are rental prices. The trap is that while gear prices are going down, people prices are going up, and we need to re-focus on charging for services. As we often say, a show is not the sum of its hardware. So why do we price it that way? This is very much like a dentist basing his service fees on a multiple of the price of his drill bits. I’ll be tackling this one later, so I’d appreciate anybody’s thoughts – but it may take the retirement of those of us who first established these pricing systems to be able to make the change. Even more importantly, our actions speak louder than our words. While we’re constantly trying to tell clients that our shows are about more than gear, most of us continue to send out quotes that look like hardware shopping lists. In fact, in teaching sales classes, I find that new salespeople like to make long lists, showing all cables and adapters, so the client will feel like they’re getting a lot. In fact, we’re teaching clients to evaluate AV proposals like they’re pricing components. This has led to a general attitude among inexperienced clients that AV companies are the same because they send similar lists out as quotes. In its extreme, this has led to things like one of my biggest corporate clients taking online bids for AV rentals, by part, with no dates or places indicated – just fill out this bid form and the bidder with the lowest aggregate price on hardware becomes our new AV company. As a wise man (Pogo) once said: “We have met the enemy, and they is us.” Sure, there are notable exceptions in the industry. I’ve always prided myself that we give great proposal. I go out of my way to do descriptive proposals, drawings, renderings, and descriptions of the client experience. People often call to talk about what a great proposal it is, and then to ask where the hardware quote is so they can compare it to the other six they got. Sigh. So we all give in to the fact that other people price that way, and the cycle continues. As I said earlier, it may be just due to the fact that some of the people who helped start this fledgling industry are still in positions of influence, and are too lazy to change. So I’m asking those of you who are young and eager to change this for us. Step up, and let’s start basing our charges, and our bragging, on something that really matters. The experience, talents, and enthusiasm of our people. Because I don’t want to retire just yet. JRR
Thanks to our sponsor, Da-Lite Screen Company
New Seamless 184” HDTV Format Screen From Da-Lite For more information, go to http://www.da-lite.com/whats_hot/index.php?wID=153 The increase in availability of seamless HDTV screen sizes is a good one – as the simultaneous increase in the contrast and brightness of the available projectors in this segment of the market tends to emphasize screen flaws. In many ways, the projectors seemed to leap ahead of screen development for a little while, and it’s good to see the screen manufacturers coming to market with equivalent products, IMHO – JRR
FogScreen Now Available to U.S. Market Via American Exhibition Services The FogScreen One projection screen (one meter) and FogScreen Inia projection screen (two meter) will be available for AES's associations and management groups. While both can be used as standalone units, the one-meter-wide device is designed to seamlessly link with other one-meter devices to make a larger image. For more information, go to http://www.fogscreen.com/en/ I’ve tracked FogScreen for a little while – it’s a truly unique product, unfortunately only useful for truly unique situations. I can think of a number of amusement locations that could make use of the look, and a number of high-end corporate shows that would employ it for novelty value. But the opening of their website – “We’re the company that changed projection technology forever – no more fixed screens” is just a tad optimistic <grin>.-JRR
AMX, Medialon Partner on Show Control Medialon provides software-based control systems to museums, theme parks and entertainment venues. The Manager Software allows you to program and synchronize an unlimited number of devices, including audio, video, lighting, image processors and special effects. The new AMX-Medialon interface allows facility and/or event staff to centrally control individual devices via the AMX Control System, and/or initiate show control sequences using Medialon’s Manager Software. The combination streamlines the number of interfaces required to operate these two different systems, especially for cruise ships, theme parks, casinos and museums that often require two control systems – one for sequenced events during a show, the other for real-time control. For more information, go to http://www.amx.com/newsroom/pressrelease-file.asp?release=2007.11.16 NICE to see AMX tackle this one. For several years I’ve been urging the mainstream control manufacturers to weigh in on the show control market, and their usual “Oh, lots of people use our products for show control” hasn’t been a good response. Show Control requires a different interface (and a different thought process) than room control. Nice to see the need recognized. I hope others follow suit and create the show-control products next year’s shows will need. – JRR DP Introduces Its Brightest Projector The LIGHTNING HD-3D can display active 3D content at up to 2048 x 1080 resolution and 120 frames per second through twin-dual DVI inputs. The company says that by enabling active 3D via DVI, rather than via analog inputs, the LIGHTNING HD-3D series remains the only projectors in their class capable of end-to-end digital 3D display. The same twin-dual DVI inputs can also accept sources with up to 12 bits per color (R, G & B). These 12-bit sources are pixel mapped to the DMD’s via de-gamma processing with an output grey scale resolution of 16 bits per color. When used with high color-depth sources, DP says the LIGHTNING 45HD-3D is capable of producing a total on-screen pallet of more than 280 trillion colors at any resolution up to 2K. DP also introduced a similar model, the LIGHTNING 38HD-3D at 22,000 lumens. For more information, go to http://www.digitalprojection.com/ I’m fascinated by somebody introducing the world’s brightest projector every month. Was there enough time to sell any of the 25k units? -JRR
You Can Turn These Christie Projectors on Their Sides! “Recent tests confirm safe and reliable performance in this orientation.” This does not apply to Roadster X or S series 3-chip DLP projectors and nor does it apply to Christie DW, DS+ and HD series 3-chip DLP projectors. Portrait mode for those projectors requires the use of mirrors. For more on Christie projectors, go to http://www.christiedigital.com/AMEN/ As the available mainstream computer monitors and graphics cards increase the availability of portrait orientations to the average user, we see more graphics created that way. The availability of this kind of testing data up front saves staging companies a LOT of time in show design and testing. I’ve had to ask several manufacturers for this type of data, and usually given up and done the testing myself. The big projector manufacturers do this, and it’s one of the things that makes them the big projector manufacturers. Kudos, Christie. – JRR
Mitsubishi Walk-in Panoramic Display The display is made up of 17 pairs of 67-inch panels arranged in a 340-degree near-circle (the 20 degree gap is for viewers to enter and exit the display.) The system uses TI’s DLP technology and has a total resolution of 27 million (1024 x 768 x 34) pixels. Mitsubishi plans on selling this virtual reality display system to museums and applications such as traffic simulations. The virtual display circle costs about $1.3 million and from Mitsubishi Electronics will deliver the system to an undisclosed customer early next year. For more information (Japanese only, sorry!), go to http://www.iza.ne.jp/news/newsarticle/it/internet/96070 Not reading Japanese is a real handicap on this one. The viewer looks awfully happy, and I love the cartoon characters of the deliriously happy Microsoft users. But I’m waiting to hear what makes this any more impressive than a lot of near-circle displays I’ve seen companies build with existing products, and what makes it worth 1.3M as a manufacturer model. Mitsubishi? – JRR
Gulfstream Park Installs Kramer Electronics and Sierra Video Solutions for HD Video Installation Element Labs Stealth LED displays chosen to add glamour to Take That Tour. Barco shines at the Country Music Awards
Well, that's it for this edition of rAVe! Thank you for spending time with me as we muse the industry's happenings. To continue getting my newsletter, or to sign up a friend, click the link below. To send me feedback, don't reply to this newsletter – instead, write to me at gkayye@kayye.com or for editorial: Denise Harrison at dharrison@kayye.com A little about me: Gary Kayye, CTS, founder of Kayye Consulting. Gary Kayye, an audiovisual veteran and columnist, began the widely-read KNews, a premier industry newsletter, in the late 1990s, and created the model for and was co-founder of AV Avenue – which later became InfoComm IQ. Kayye Consulting is a company that is committed to furthering the interests and success of dealers, manufacturers, and other companies within the professional audiovisual industry. Gary Kayye's rAVe was launched in February 2003. rAVe Home Edition co-sponsored by CEDIA launched in February, 2004. To read more about my background, our staff, and what we do, go to http://www.kayye.com Copyright 2007 – Kayye Consulting – All rights reserved. For reprint policies, contact Kayye Consulting, 400 Meadowmont Village Circle, Suite 425 – Chapel Hill, NC 27517 – 919/969-7501. Email: dharrison@kayye.com Gary Kayye's rAVe contains the opinions of the author only and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of other persons or companies or its sponsors.
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