Welcome to another edition of rAVe! It's back! Welcome to the annual rAVe InfoComm Awards. Here, we acknowledge the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as those products and companies that stood out because of their ingenuity, or lack thereof. Yes, this year's awards contain more entries than usual. Have no fears of a declining industry – the volume and quality of new products and new companies was undeniable. Also this issue, rAVe Editor-in-Chief Denise Harrison recaps the InfoComm Manufacturers Forum. It was one heck of a good time for all attendees – including for the panelists, for me as the moderator, and for the standing-room-only crowd. If you missed it this year, you MUST see it next year. This year's panelists included Gerry Remers, president and COO, Christie, George Feldstein, president of Crestron, Andrew Edwards, president and CEO of Extron, Michael MacDonald, executive vice president, Harman Pro Group, and Rick Snyder, president of Americas, Tandberg. I had the pleasure of moderating. They had everyone talking for days. Enjoy the issue! -Gary Kayye, CTS Click above for more information IT or Die: InfoComm Manufacturers Forum Panelists Emphasize Infrastructure By Denise Harrison
Editor-in-Chief
rAVe By the time the InfoComm Manufacturers Forum began, the auditorium seats were filled and the walls were lined with a standing room only crowd. The panel was seated, including Gerry Remers, president and COO, Christie, George Feldstein, president of Crestron, Andrew Edwards, president and CEO of Extron, Michael MacDonald, executive vice president, Harman Pro Group, and Rick Snyder, president of Americas, Tandberg. rAVe's own Gary Kayye moderated. At times, watching the panel was like being a fly on the wall during a poker game among long-time friendly rivals. Other times, it was like a master class in succeeding in the AV business. Everyone attending would agree that Kayye's moderation, and the panel's candid, sometimes snarky, and always authoritative contributions made for one of the most lively, fast moving one-and-a-half-hour events of the week. Kayye asked the panel to comment on general trends the executives are seeing lately. For Christie, Remers said the company is seeing green. In fact, many companies at InfoComm this year talked about green initiatives, and Christie has been one of the leaders in this area, with its Environment Program designed to reduce waste and consumption. Christie has experienced excellent growth in recent years and is re-investing some of those profits into helping the environment. Crestron, too has grown. "Since I was eight years old, I've been making things in my basement," said Feldstein. "The basement got bigger, to about 100,000 square feet now." Growth has also been huge, just huge, for Tandberg. "We've seen 30 percent growth in the last quarter," said Snyder. "Customers are more interested in videoconferencing, and especially, telepresence." MacDonald's answer was indicative of the theme that took up much of the rest of the panel discussion. "An increase in scope of solutions means dealers need more knowledge about first class audio solutions," he said. "We're seeing more complex system integration." When Kayye asked the panel what concerns them, most everyone on the panel said they also see the more challenging integration as mentioned by MacDonald. And those challenges mean integrators are going to have to step up to meet them.Feldstein said the industry itself is a concern. "In many large companies these days, what needs to be AV is turned over to IT. Only through growth of our industry will we all have jobs." Edwards agreed. "The focus used to be on product. But now, the trend is toward increased demand for infrastructure." In fact, Edwards feels so strongly about this that he said: "We have a weakness in the AV industry on the IT side. Unless it's addressed, it will be a big issue over the next five years." Few companies know about this need for networking expertise better than Tandberg and Christie. Snyder says Tandberg is now benefiting from the technology advances –, advances such as improved networks that better allow for standard and high definition in videoconferencing. "The technology is easier to use," he said. You don't need three AV techs in the back of the room to run it anymore." Networking is also key to many of Christie's AV solutions. "It's important to us as well," said Remers. "We have more than 100,000 devices networked for cinema. It's difficult for dealers to find AV-IT experts so if you can't find them, you have to hire and train them."Feldstein added that "being a manufacturer is easy compared to being a dealer, he said. And by the way, employee morale should be someone's priority." The panel then fielded audience questions. As if to sum up the event, one of the last of those stood bravely in front of the hundreds and declared himself an IT dealer. "I'm an IT dealer here at the show," he said. "More and more of us will be coming to this show. What are you going to do about us?" Feldstein didn't back down. "I would prefer that AV dealers become IT dealers rather than the other way around."
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Best Booth: Crestron's Humongous Booth was easy to find what you were looking for and eye-catching. All the credit apparently goes to Rosanne Lang. | |
Best Presenter: Andrew Edwards (Extron) and George Feldstein (Crestron) at the Manufacturer's Forum. They were entertaining, honest and clever. | |
Best New Product InfoComm 2007: Extron's AVTrac – a floor-mount raceway system that allows for power, analog and digital video, audio, RGB, and control signals to be routed on the floor. Ingenious! | |
Click above for more information Most ubiquitous messages: TIE: DLP BrilliantColor (shown in six booths and on 14 products, not counting TI's own exhibits) and going "green" Almost every manufacturer has a new environmental protection program. | |
Best new killer app: AMX's Anterus RFID system for tracking the whereabouts of devices and triggering automated series of actions (like control systems do). Finally, a whole new set of products you can take back to existing customers and sell to new ones. | |
Best question at the show: TIE: An IT guy from AOL asked Rick Snyder of Tandberg when all the videoconferencing companies were going to standardize. A guy from Lehman Brothers added: "Sure, you're all standardized. It's just different standards." And an IT told the manufacturers forum that he's here – "More of us are coming. What are you going to do with us?"" | |
Most integrator-friendly product: TIE — Peerless showed a new projector mount – you don't actually have to HOLD the projector in place while you mount it. You just hang it there then make you adjustments… which, incidentally, are done with two hands not with tools. That is tied with Premier's Polaris, which uses magnets to hold the project in place during positioning! Both are very cool ways of helping the integrators get the job done easier and faster. | |
Best New Projection Display: Christie Digital's LX650. It just looked perfect! It's a 6500 ANSI lumen, 3LCD, XGA resolution projector. | |
Best New Flat-Panel Display: TIE — NEC's LCD 4620, 46" chevron-shaped pixel design that had an amazing contrast ratio. I am not sure they specified exactly what it was, but it was clearly higher than anything else in its category. And, Sharp's new LC-42BT10U is an LCD-TV in the Aquos line of Sharp products that, although it's a 1080p HDTV, it's specifically aimed at the ProAV market where a lot of applications exist for an HDTV that's a bit more ruggedized than the ones you get at HomeAV stores. | |
Best Rear Projection Display: Planar's RP System – an SXGA resolution rear screen projection wall system designed for Command and Control system applications. Simply put, it looked stunning! | |
Best New LED Display: Barco's amazing NX-4 system. It uses 4mm indoor LEDs and has, BY FAR, the blackest black I have ever seen on ANY LED display! | |
Most Creative Product: LongPen. Most of you may never have an application to use or specify LongPen, but it’s very cool and the potential uses will expand as the idea catches on. You can sell this to bookstores, where it’s becoming a smash hit during book signings at retail bookstores, and don’t be surprised to see this show up in courts, where videoconferencing is increasingly used for proceedings. It's a signature system where someone can sign documents in real-time over a videoconference. They demonstrated the system at InfoComm by having authors of books sign the books via videoconference. | |
Best Potential New Technology: A little known company called Element Labs showed a flexible LED video screen system called Helix. Helix can actually bend, wrap, drape and fold. It was amazing to see. It's brand new technology and will no doubt be a winner in 2008. | |
Click above for more information THE Company to watch for 2007: Arrive Corporation – Arrive has created a content, control and room management system that works with AMX, Crestron, Extron and IP-enabled rooms (facility or company wide). It's sort of like Crestron's RoomView for every system. Selling software in the AV market has proven tough over the years, but Arrive's technolgy is powerful enough that they may well do it! This is THE new company to watch in ProAV for 2007-2008. | |
Best New Audio Product: Extron's new System Integrator series of in-wall an in-ceiling speakers. | |
Best New Video Product: Analog Way's new AXION controller for live, large venue staging events. | |
Best New Conferencing System Product: Polycom's SoundStructure – it's an HD audio system (22KHz) that truly sounds like you're all in the same room when you're talking on it – you can't even tell you in an audio-conference. | |
Best New ProAV Networking Product: AMX's Inspired Signage system which allows you schedule, deliver and manage content via the network to digital signage displays. AMX getting into digital signage validates that market in a way like no other manufacturer has before. I am sure all the flat-panel display manufacturers are happy as this system will draw enough attention to drive digital signage solutions. I guarantee you that we'll see Crestron move in this market by the end of this year. They know they need to be there. | |
Worst Show Uniforms: Barco's Burgundy booth attire. | |
Best Booth Giveaways: Spinitar's Who Wants to be an AV Millionaire – they gave away a flat-screen every day! | |
Worst Booth Giveaways: Candy – I took way too much | |
Best In-Booth Presentation: JVC's 4K projector presentation where they actually fed it with a native 4K studio camera. | |
Worst Display of Product on the Show Floor: Sony – Yes, this will shock people but it was virtually impossible to figure out how to get in to their booth. Once you were in there, no one seemed to know anything about the new products. When I asked someone with a Sony badge on about where I could see their 4K projector, he didn't even know they had one. | |
Best New DVI Product: TIE — RGB Spectrum's 8 x 8 DVI Matrix Switcher and Crestron's new DVPHD-PRO. | |
Best New HDMI Product: Extron's new HDMI Wall-plate, the HDMI 201 A D. | |
Best Small Booth: Kramer's Booth looked incredible for its size. | |
Best New Microphone: Shure's KSM9. | |
Best New Screen Technology: TIE — Da-Lite's Polacoat Wide-Angle Optical Coatings (up to 72-degree viewing angles) and Da-Lite's new 16:10 projection screens. | |
Best Breakfast: Starbuck's, of course, at the Anaheim Hilton (even with the line to get drinks). | |
Best Lunch: I never ate lunch! | |
Best Dinner: Morton's Steakhouse in the parking lot of the Anaheim Hilton. | |
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. The new 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 2006 – 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. |