Latest headlines: Scott Tiner on working with integrators in higher education, Christopher Jaynes on HDCP, plus news from Aver, Steinberg and others
October 4, 2019 | Volume: 12 | Issue: 19
Ten or fifteen years ago, if the technology in a room — a classroom, a meeting room, a church venue or lecture hall — didn’t work, what happened? Did they get the AV team and delay what was supposed to happen? Cancel the meeting, class or sermon? I’m betting in many cases, they just made do without the technology. But do you think that’s what would happen today?
Scott Tiner doesn’t think so and that even for classrooms, technology is no longer just a nice-to-have — it’s a fundamentally necessary part of the function of a room. That’s changed the relationship end users have with integrators because the expectation isn’t just that the technology will work — but also that there’s a reasonable back-up if it doesn’t. That expectation changes the way rooms and buildings are designed, service agreements are sold and the way technology budgets are planned. Read Scott Tiner’s article below to see what you think.
As long as I have been writing columns for rAVe ED, my aim has been to help integrators understand where they can provide value to the higher education market. The business has changed so drastically over the years, that the value propositions of ten years ago no longer exist. I write about this because I realize we all live in the same economic environment and rely on each other. Yes, we in education NEED integrators, designers, programmers and installers. We just don’t need them the same way that we used to. I want the people running these firms to make money, thrive and stay in business. If they are not doing so, then none of us can.
If you are an AV integrator, consultant or simply have to deal with AV room systems — you’ve probably run into the problems that HDCP creates. When you plug your OSX laptop into a wall plate so you can look at your device on the room display and all you see if black — that could be HDCP. So what is it? How does it work? Well — there is no locked salt mine, instead HDCP, a protocol that operates over the cable, is the vault.
Trade organizations like AVIXA, CompTIA, BICSI and others, as well as many of the top manufacturers offer numerous training opportunities, often for no cost. While AV and IT still have fairly well-defined and different market channels, there is a large amount of crossover between the two trades. Devices such as projectors, audio amplifiers, loudspeakers, wireless microphone systems, cameras and more all used to be stand-alone devices, but have all now become networkable end points. Additionally, many AV control systems have shifted to a network/cloud based model and AV signal delivery over IP is becoming more commonplace.
