Many of you who read rAVe regularly work for what’s typically referred to as a “value-added” reseller. And you live by those words. You may just re-sell AV gear, but the value you add is immense. This includes everything from advice on how a piece of AV gear can solve a work-flow problem to building […]

Without much fan fare, Extron just started shipping a product that may well be the best classroom system switcher ever. Yes, ever. Before you think this is a paid-for plug, read on (since it’s not): The IN1608 is an eight-input (plenty for ANY classroom application) HDCP-compliant switcher that includes: Four HDMI inputs Two DTP inputs […]

In 2012, the third most profitable category of AV was power management. Trailing right behind signal management and control systems, power management is a cash cow for an AV integrator. It’s a no-brainer install — house fires are everyone’s biggest fear when they buy a new home. And, one of the leading causes of house […]

I caught up with Wim Buyens, Barco’s senior VP of projection, today at the projectiondesign booth at InfoComm in Orlando and I got the scoop on how the Barco acquisition of projectiondesign is progressing. You may recall, about six months ago, Barco announced they intended to acquire projectiondesign and integrate them into the Barco brand. […]

Everyone in ProAV generally makes fun of BOSE Corporation. For years, it’s sold products to consumers without any technical specs, performance details and without any information about how a product it makes is differentiated from another product of a different brand (e.g., Sony, Mitsubishi or Panasonic). But, there’s one thing we universally love with the […]

There’s a product we’ve written about a few times here in rAVe called Biscotti. Biscotti started out two years ago as a little $200 camera that you set on top of a TV that let you connect to other Biscotti users as well as to any Google Gmail user – face to face, via video and audio. […]

Insight Media will once again host the annual Projection Summit (PS 13) in Orlando, Fla. on June 10-11. The event will be held in conjunction with InfoComm 2013. And, you should seriously consider attending. For the past 20 years, projection has been the driver of our industry’s engine. And, the future of projection is bright — literally. Pico […]

I’ve seen a plethora of articles recently about how consumer electronics manufacturers have figured out what their problem is. After years of declining sales, laying off tens of thousands of people, reorganizing their corporate structurea and, in most cases, fired the president of the company, a handful of giant, Asian TV manufacturers and one giantU.S. software company […]

I was walking around the show floor here in Las Vegas at the 2013 Digital Signage Expo and saw NEC’s Director of Sales Rich Ventura with a giant grin on his face. I asked him why he was so dang happy and he told me how he saw NEC’s positioning here at DSE on Day 1 of […]

I am writing to you to ask for your help. We are on a mission to make this year’s InfoComm show the highest attended AV show, ever. And, there’s no reason that it can’t be. Why do we care? Well, at rAVe we spend a lot of time and money carefully tracking the industry trends, product impact, technological movements […]

There are lots of free AV Job sites. Heck, even we had one. And, it was one of the most popular places we had on our site. But, we got rid of it. Why? Well, the truth is, free job listings have no incentive. The manufacturers or integrator lists a job, but once it’s filled, […]

This blog is late. I don’t really have an excuse other than the fact that I’ve been traveling nearly continuously since leaving Amsterdam in early February. But, as the saying goes, better late then never. This year’s Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) Expo Jan. 29 – 31, was, in a word, AWESOME. And, kudos is in […]

I had a chance to sit down with Christie’s Director of Experiential Marketing Steve Capling last week and he told me about a very cool theater the company will be building inside its NAB booth next month in Vegas. Ever since the debut of The Hobbit, where they released the movie in both a traditional 24 fps […]

Last month, BICSI pulled its support (via a letter, the text of which is below) of the InfoComm STEP program. STEP is an acronym for the Sustainable Technology Environments Program (STEP), a rating system and guide managed by the STEP Foundation, a nonprofit organization comprised of technology trade associations representatives, their members and STEP supporters. At its core, STEP […]

I’ve written lots of InfoComm articles before. I’ve written all about how it’s THE ProAV show — and, if you can only afford to go to one show a year, it needs to be InfoComm. I’ve written about the quality of the educational experience and I’ve written about the value of the networking experience. And, having attended the last 22 InfoComms in […]

We’ve learned that SMART Technologies, once the de facto standard in electronic and interactive whiteboards, has pulled out of the top AV show: InfoComm. In explaining the decision to their channel, SMART said, “This decision was made based on how SMART can best utilize our budget and resources to deliver the best programs to you in […]

So far, the coolest thing I’ve seen at the 2013 Digital Signage Expo (DSE) has been from UK-based start-up company NOMADIX whose so-called iWalker is basically a wearable digital signage player (yes, the person wears a giant DS screen above his/her head) automatically serves custom digital signage content to the viewer based on age, gender, location and even distance […]

For years, Peerless-AV spent nearly all its marketing budget telling buyers of AV gear why they should use the company to mount all their stuff. And, Peerless still builds mounts — lots of them — all here in the USA. But now the company’s marketing budget is split between a few new non-mount product lines. […]

In just  a few years, Almo Pro A/V went from start-up to one of the largest distributors of digital signage hardware in the U.S. Almo, a 50-year old giant consumer electronics distributor, hired long-time AV veteran Sam Taylor to head up its foray into the professional AV market nearly four years ago. Since then, the company’s become the leading […]

I’ve attended every single Almo ProAV E4 AV Tour and it’s, by far, the best regional trade show in AV – and not just because i’m the keynote presenter. Seriously, after you attend, if you aren’t convinced that their E4 AV Tour isn’t the best distributor show you’ve ever been to, I will PERSONALLY give you a spot in rAVe to write your own rebuttal […]

Almo Pro A/V has added a new product line to its arsenal in ELO Touch — it will be ELO’s go-to distributor in the ProAV market. ELO Touch actually invented touch-screen technology back in 1971. Elo Touch happens to be the leading global supplier of touch-enabled technology. The Elo portfolio encompasses the broadest selection of OEM touch screen components, touch monitors and all-in-one touch computers for the […]

The 2013 version of the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) has come to a close, but our coverage here will live for another year – until opening day of the 2014 event. We have so much coverage – and there’s so much information on this ISE microsite that it can be overwhelming. So, please take moment to read this […]

I had a chance to grab Wilfred de Man, general manager EMEA of Philips MMD, today at the ISE show here in Amsterdam on a busy Day 2. We toured his stand and shot a number of product videos that are posted on our ISE portal at http://www.rAVeNOWise.com under the VIDEOS tab — you can then type in Philips in the search box. Afterwards […]

I had a chance to sit down with Eric Van Zele, the president and CEO of Barco, today here atISE in Amsterdam on Day 2 of the show. In addition to asking him where he sees Barco three years from today, I talk to him about his vision for how Barco fits into the systems integration segment of the corporate AV market. […]

Just four weeks into his new role as CEO and executive director of InfoComm, Dave Labuskes (formerly withRTKL Associates) hit the ground here in Amsterdam at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show – the world’s largest AV trade, which is co-managed by InfoComm and CEDIA. ISE kicked off the show by celebrating its10th Anniversary and recognizing its founding exhibitors, including companies like AMX, Crestron, Vogol’s and Christie. After cutting […]

In a first ever, Christie has integrated Corning’s Gorilla Glass into a forthcoming 55″ LCD display. Hidden above the show floor in a private suite, Christie took me to see a prototype of a new 55″ LCD where the company has bonded Gorilla Glass onto the surface of a screen that has less than a 6mm bezel. […]

After a couple of years of not being at ISE, Cisco is back and early indications are that the company will return in 2014. It had exhibited in the past under the Tandberg logo but, after it purchased the company back in 2009, didn’t attend ISE in 2011 or 2012. But as its ProAV guru Paul Depperschmidt told me last week […]

Digital Signage Expo (DSE) is a little less than a month away, but the president at Exponation, Chris Gibbs, found the time to fly into Amsterdam to check out the world’s largest AV tradeshow (ISE) to see what’s up with all this AV stuff. And, I happened to be heading into the Peerless-AV stand to shoot […]

I had the opportunity to sit down with Barco’s Dirk Hendrickx (VP of EMEA) yesterday morning ahead of the “official” announcement of the company’s ClickShare feature additions. He was upbeat about three specific additions to their one-click wonder. You may recallClickShare has the capability to route video via a network — without any cables or switchers required. All you do is connect a […]

rAVe Founder Gary Kayye was asked to moderate the Expert’s Panel at the end of the day-long AOpen Forum here at ISE 2013 in Amsterdam. It was attended by more than 140 people and experts on the panel included manufacturers, creative content companies and everyone else in the digital signage business chain including market analysts. Here’s a complete list of the panelists: […]

In this pre-show ISE 2013 video interview, rAVe’s founder Gary Kayye sits down withBarco’s vice president of EMEA, Dirk Hendrickx, and he speaks all about Barco’s future strategy. It’s way, way more than projectors. In fact, he outlines a really interesting vision forBarco’s future including something he coined as Cloud Visualization. He believes that Barco’s role in AV’s future will be to help in the convergence of AV and […]

Last week’s CES had to be the most over-hyped trade show in history. It reminded me of one of the last years of the famed PC-industry shows called COMDEX – the coincidences aren’t lost on me. For example, CEA — the people who put on the CES-fest exclaimed at show’s end that it was the BIGGES CES, ever. In fact, they bragged there were over […]