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Volume 8, Issue 14 — July 27, 2010
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Welcome to another issue of rAVe ProAV Edition! Today, we're giving away our 2010 Best of InfoComm Awards! Here we highlight what we think was the best, coolest, most innovative, or unique stuff at the show. Agree? Disagree? I want to know who you would have picked instead and why. Email me directly at gary@ravepubs.com and let me know. In our next issue, we'll return to regular news and editorials. Enjoy the issue! –Gary Kayye, CTS Back to Top
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2010 rAVe Best of InfoComm Awards | Best Booth (tie): There were some really cool booths this year at InfoComm 2010. And, we had a touch time choosing just one, so we chose two:
- Christie. Highlighting their MicroTiles product, Christie set up venue-based application areas that included 3D, Digital Cinema, Restaurant and Bar, TV Set and Meeting Room applications. Kudos to whomever designed it – well done!
- Chief Manufacturing. It’s tough to make a booth full of bent-metal interesting, but Chief did a fabulous job! Maybe too good – their booth was, literally, packed all three days — we had a tough time even doing THE GAME iPad giveaways there for all the people.
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| | Best New Product at InfoComm 2010: Christie MicroTiles. This was the product everyone talked about at some point during the show. Although shown in a top-secret private suite at InfoComm 2009, MicroTiles didn’t actually ship until a few months ago and InfoComm 2010 was the first opportunity most ProAV’ers had to actually see it. It’s very creative, simple to build in all sorts of configurations/sized displays and, well, modular. Click here to see a series of interviews we conducted with Christie at InfoComm on the MicroTiles. | | | Most Ubiquitous Technology: Networked AV. InfoComm 2010 will be remembered as the year that just about every manufacturer had an IP-addressable or “streamable” product. For years, companies like AMX, Crestron and Extron have had IP-addressable control systems; others like Christie, Sony, Sanyo and NEC have had IP-controllable displays and networked audio made its debut almost a decade ago. But totally networked systems have been looked at as something we’ll see some time in the future. Well, at InfoComm 2010, we finally saw Networked AV everywhere… | |
Click above for more information | | Best Seminar Presenter: Max Kopsho’s Basics of IT Speak for AV seminar was the best we attended at the show. And, you can actually watch it here (through InfoComm OnDemand): http://www.infocomm.org/cps/rde/xchg/infocomm/hs.xsl/14062.htm | | Best In-Booth Presenter/Presentation (tie): - Polycom. If you went to their telepresence presentation (on the new OTX system), you’d agree with this choice – it was totally perfect. We were given a pre-show demo of the system you can see here.
- RP Visuals. We had to share this award with Randy Pagnan’s RP Visuals – he gave us the best 3-minute (err, well, 5-minute) booth tour ever. Can you talk this fast??? Watch this.
| | | Best Private Presentation: Extron’s Audio Demo Room. This was all about technical education. We’ve been talking about the true value of InfoComm being education — far-and-away — over the actual AV gear shown each year, and this was a great example of that. This presentation was totally free and not a hard sales pitch for Extron audio gear — it was all about understanding audio, acoustics and sound. | | | Best New Video Product: Cisco Show and Share. Cisco’s Show and Share is the best competitive product we’ve seen that could potentially unseat the market leader, the Sonic Foundry MediaSite, in video storage and serving on-demand content. Check out the video we shot at InfoComm here. | | | Best New Audio Product: Extron’s XTRA Series of Amplifiers. In a market full of ho-hum audio products, it’s nice to see Extron get creative with audio — they’re small, they don’t weigh a ton, they’re Energy Star-qualified (in fact, they’re the first electronics products, ever, to earn Energy Star’s new UL Environment Energy Efficiency Certification (EEC) Mark). You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product line at InfoComm here. | | Best New Projection Product: (tie)
- Epson’s BrightLink 450WI. Epson’s new BrightLink 450WI is basically a WXGA (1280×800) resolution, short-throw LCD projector that’s an interactive whiteboard built right into the projector! To understand this, you need to just watch this video.
- Sanyo PDG-DWL2500. This is a short-throw, 1280×800 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio) 3D-ready DLP-based projector with 2500 lumens light output. Wow, it looked amazing at the show: http://us.sanyo.com:80/Projectors-by- Market-Rental-Staging-Sub-Category/PDG-DWL2500
| | | Best New Flat-Screen Display: Panasonic’s TH Series 152” Plasma. How can you NOT give it to this?!? It’s a freakin’ 152” flat screen monitor! It’s just stunning — not to mention expensive! To watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm, click here. | |
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| | | | Best New Control System Hardware Product: Extron IPL 500. Loaded with 8-RS 232 ports, 8-IR Serial ports, 8-relays, 4 I/O ports and four switched 12-volt DC power ports, the network-controllable IPL 500 pits Extron against any other control system on the market. Here’s a short video we shot of it at InfoComm. | | | Best New Control System Software Product: Crestron’s Flash-Powered Touch Panel Interface. Crestron’s Flash-based touch panel interface is a dream for interface designers. Since Flash is already a widely-used web standard, you can now buy Flash objects (e.g., a turning knob) inexpensively or hire a Flash programmer (much easier to find inexpensively) to design custom objects, not to mention all the cool things you can do with Flash from a design standpoint. Check out our InfoComm video here. | | | Best New Classroom Product: eBeam’s projector-less, Web-based Interactive Whiteboard solutions allows teachers to use an existing whiteboard, normal whiteboard markers and a wireless network connection to transmit anything written on a whiteboard to any network connected display (real-time) — even iPads, iPhones and laptops. So students in a class (or remotely connected to a class) can see what’s written on a whiteboard in real-time and save it as class notes. You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm here. | | | Best New Rental/Staging Product: Electro-Voice Tour X Speakers. EV has always been the leader in live sound and the new Tour X tops the top for staging applications. You can watch the EV product manager explain this “value-line” here. | | | Most Creative New Product: CQ Media’s Lifevue. We’re always looking for unique products that allow integrators to stand out and be creative in their projects. This is it! Lifevue is all about delivering content to people in a hospital bed – making that dreaded stay more interesting. Lifevue delivers (via an IP network — but integrated by AV companies) HD or SD TV programming, movies, music and educational content to people sitting in a hospital bed via a touch screen. This company is ripe for a buyout! Congratulations CQ Media on earning our Most Creative New Product award for InfoComm 2010! You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm here. | | | Best New Videoconferencing Product: PolyCom OTX. We continue to be wowed by Telepresence and the fact that it truly gives you an immersive videoconferencing experience. Using 50 percent less bandwidth than the RPX, the new OTX system is a complete turnkey room solution for telepresence. You can watch a 3-minute demo of an OTX room here. | | | Best New Audio Conferencing Product: Audio Technica’s ES 963 Mic. We’ll bet that you weren’t expecting this award to go to a mic manufacturer, but in audio conferencing, the mic’s the thing that can make or break a good call. And if you’re doing a call in a room with multiple participants, they all need to be mic’d and if possible, they should all be talking into one of Audio Technica’s ES 963. Plus, it’s easy to install! Check out the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm here. | | | Best New Screen Product: Da-Lite HOLO. Many customers think screens are a commodity, but ProAV’ers understand that the difference. And, when it comes to the wow-factor (like in digital signage apps) very few screen companies come close. The optical-coated HOLO’s see-through screen has been around for a couple years now, but in very small form factors. At InfoComm, Da-Lite announced giant HOLO screens up to 25 feet wide. Click here to watch a video explaining HOLO. | | | Best New Digital Signage Product: the AMX IS XPress. This is a totally solid-state (no spinning hard drive) LINUX-based media player for digital signage apps. You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm here. | |
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| | | | Best Product You Probably Didn’t See: SMART’s new 52” Interactive Flat Panel Display (Projector-less!). Imagine a 52” LCD integrated with a SMART overlay and interactive whiteboard technology as well as their MeetingPro software — allowing for multi-point collaboration anywhere in the world, as long as they’re connected via the network. Did you miss it? You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm here. | | | Best New Presentation System Product: Extron’s DVS 510 Switcher. It’s a 10-input switcher (some digital, some analog and some combo) with three outputs and includes a 25-watt audio amplifier as well as preamp outputs. It’s the ultimate system switcher for any meeting room and we were thoroughly impressed with the scaling quality. It’s probably the best ProAV system switcher ever built. To watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm, click here. | | Best Potential New Technology (tie): - WOW Vision’s VEOS. Although not ready for prime time yet (our demo included a handful of glitches), WOW Vision understands the future of meeting rooms. Basically, it’s a wireless server that allows anyone on the network to connect and present (stream) whatever he wants via Wi-Fi to a connected projector (totally wireless). It’s overpriced, at $8000 per room, and streaming video was iffy (however, PC stuff was perfect), but the future potential of this new technology — when it’s glitch-free — is exciting. You can see the short video we shot here.
- Crestron’s 3 Series Control System. After seven years with Creston's Series 2 processors as the backbone of Crestron control systems, they announced at InfoComm their next generation, and it's totally new. Crestron says the 3 Series is actually an operating system, and the control protocols (e.g., HVAC, lighting, etc.) are more like pieces of software running within it — no question it's for complicated installs where programming is required. We'll be watching with interest to see how the industry embraces the change. To see a video about Creston's 3 Series Control System, click here.
| | | Best New Projection Technology: LED – Specifically, NEC’s 2000 Lumen LED. NEC Showed us a 2000-lumen powered LED projector that uses multiple red, green and blue LEDs that allow it to reproduce 98 percent of the Adobe RGB color space reference — something LED and DLP can’t come close to. Simply impressive. You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the product at InfoComm here. | | | Best New Rack or Mount Product: Chief Raxxess. The days of clients building rooms to rack AV gear are all but gone, but we still obviously have the need to house the products. Chief’s line of rack enclosures is nice enough to go in the room and is also simple to specify with their RackBuilder design software. We obviously couldn’t shoot the entire line, so here’s one video we shot at InfoComm. | | | Kudos Award: Premier Mounts for the iPad mounting solutions. The iPad’s been out for almost three months and it’s estimated that over 8,000 of them are already integrated into ProAV and HomeAV systems — all without a decent mount or docking solution. Well, leave it up to a ProAV manufacturer (in this case, Premier Mounts) to show the realistic mounting solutions for the iPad — two of them, in fact. You can watch the rAVe NOW Video we shot of the products at InfoComm here. | | | Best Killer New App: Digital Projection and Mechdyne's 3D Solution. DPI and Mechdyne had a consumer 3D solution at last year's CEDIA we gave one of our Best of CEDIA Awards, and this commercial solution was no less spectacular. Combining four Titan projectors, a FUSION box for edge blending and signal processing, a domed screen, and Mechdyne's software and computer technology to create an interactive, immersive solution for control rooms, virtual reality, or high level training environments. Check out our rAVe NOW video on it here. | | | Most Awkward Moment Award: Err, just watch this. | | | Congratulations to all our winners! You can get high-resolution award logos from our website here. |
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For all you REGULAR readers of rAVe ProAV Edition out there, hopefully you enjoyed another opinion-packed issue! For those of you NEW to rAVe, you just read how we are — we are 100% opinionated. We not only report the news and new product stories of the ProAV industry, but we stuff the articles full of our opinions. That may include (but is not limited to) whether or not the product is even worth looking at, challenging the manufacturers on their specifications, calling a marketing-spec bluff and suggesting ways integrators market their products better. But, one thing is for sure, we are NOT a trade publication that gets paid for running editorial or product stories. Traditional trade publications get paid to run product stories — that's why you see what you see in most of the pubs out there. We are different: we run what we want to run and NO ONE is going to pay us to write anything good (or bad). Don't like us, then go away — unsubscribe! Just use the link below. To send me feedback, don't reply to this newsletter – instead, write directly to me at gary@ravepubs.com or for editorial ideas: Editor-in-Chief Sara Abrons at sara@ravepubs.com A little about me: I graduated from Journalism School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where I am adjunct faculty). I've been in the AV-industry since 1987 where I started with Extron and eventually moved to AMX. So, I guess I am an industry veteran (although I don't think I am that old). I have been an opinionated columnist for a number of industry publications and in the late 1990s I started the widely read KNews eNewsletter (the first in the AV market) and also created the model for and was co-founder of AV Avenue – which is now known as InfoComm IQ. rAVe Publications has been around since 2003, when we launched our original newsletter, rAVe ProAV Edition. Everything we publish is Opt-in — we spam NO ONE! rAVe ProAV Edition is our flagship ePublication with what we believe is a reach of virtually everyone in the ProAV market. rAVe HomeAV Edition, co-published with CEDIA and launched in February 2004, is, by far, the largest ePub in the HomeAV market (we blow away ANY other Publication in the high-end home AV market. We added rAVe Rental [and Staging] in November 2007, rAVe ED [Education] in May 2008 and then rAVe DS [Digital Signage] in January 2009. You can subscribe to any of those publication or see ALL our archives by going to: https://www.ravepubs.com To read more about my background, our team, and what we do, go to https://www.ravepubs.com Back to Top
Copyright 2010 – rAVe [Publications] – All rights reserved – All rights reserved. For reprint policies, contact rAVe [Publications], 210 Old Barn Ln. – Chapel Hill, NC 27517 – (919) 969-7501. Email:sara@ravepubs.com
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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