Volume 14, Issue 1 — January 5, 2021

rAVe ED [Education] — Volume 14, Issue 1

January 5, 2021 | Volume: 14 | Issue: 1

Hello, ed friends! Happy New Year! I hope you’re all working hard (but not too hard) in preparation for this next school year and whatever that will bring. Scott Tiner wrote a column for this issue that I’d like to spend some time talking about. Stories and columns about buying direct have come across my desk more than a few times this past year. Lee Distad wrote about it not too long ago — and now Scott writes about the good and bad that can come from it. If you joined us during our very first LAVNCH WEEK, you’ll remember that Scott Tiner spoke of the symbiotic relationship among manufacturers, integrators and end users. Yet, very few are taking this relationship into account. Are you actually saving time and money by purchasing directly from a manufacturer?

Anyway, check out some product updates from Listen Technologies, Extron and GLP. Plus, some ~LAVNCH~ news and a few case studies I wanted you to see just because I thought they were cool.

Finally! I’m here to answer your prayers if you’ve been wanting to obtain a CTS certification but don’t really know how or where to start. Come join me on a journey I am documenting via podcast called Study With Steph. I am taking the test at InfoComm, and I hope you’ll take it with me! Check out my first episode here.

Later dudes.

— Steph Beckett

COLUMNS

+ Buy Direct? [Scott Tiner]

Being a technology manager in AV has been a wild ride. For years, many of us have felt like we were crashing the party. At first, we were not welcome at InfoComm, then that slowly changed. Then, when manufacturers started communicating directly with us, visiting us on-site, offering training, etc., integrators were not happy. Then — just as these integrators were afraid of — we slowly started doing our own installs and programming, drying up the most lucrative part of their higher ed business. In 2020, many technology managers in higher ed had pushed for what may be the final straw. They want manufacturers to sell items directly to them, rather than through resellers and integrators.

+ The Movie Theater Is Now Dead, Plus a Prediction: Apple Will Buy Sony [Gary Kayye]

There will always be people like me — people who want to see big-budget movies in big-time exhibition houses. In fact, I nearly always see the big movies either in an IMAX theater (whose stock has nearly recovered from its lows in March 2020 to pre-pandemic levels) or in a Dolby Cinema theater. But, for all others, I’ve always been fine seeing them in my home theater or even on my 75″ Samsung QLED. What happens next is clear. Just watch the big-five studios (since Fox is now also part of Disney). Three of the five have streaming outlets and the other two will by mid-2021. If they start releasing movies there, the theater chains will never recover. Never. It’s all about the money. If they can keep it all, they will.

+ The Evolution of AV [Nathan Haynes]

There’s no doubt the audiovisual industry has progressed a long way since the advent of the gramophone and cathode-ray tube. Innovations over the last 50 to 100 years have turned AV devices into the primary content-delivery system for almost every human on Earth, and definitely a requirement for every human not on Earth. These innovations affect how we interact with each other; how we handle the day-to-day; and how we create, teach, learn, share and access knowledge, memories and moments — to name a few daily benefits.