Every year, I like to release a top 10 list of my favorite things that I have seen at Integrated Systems Europe. Last Wednesday, in collaboration with Almo Pro A/V and Barco — I hosted a webinar in which I expanded on just that. But I understand that not everyone can attend every single webinar, so here’s a breakdown of what we talked about.

To start, every show has its own set of tech trends, and ISE 2020 was no different. This is what I noticed:

Top Tech Trends:

1. Bring-Your-Own-Meetings — There was a clear trend in sales of BYOMs, options that allow you to take YOUR chosen meeting software to a conference room and using it via your laptop, etc. This is offered as an alternative to making an entire conference room dedicated to one type of software. A year ago, this didn’t exist, and it’s coming to light as a way to avoid license fees and setup costs and maintenance.
2. Collaboration dominates — Even companies that don’t make collaboration products seemed to lean toward bringing collaboration techniques to the forefront of many stands.
3. 8K is exaggerated — It’s mind-boggling how great 8K is to look at on a display, however, right now, there’s not much 8K content out there to go with it. That’s a problem for me, but I think that we will eventually see more content pushed out as 8K continues to enter the consumer market.
4. Esports — Many stands were demonstrating products with esport applications as a way to show no lag or latency. However, rental companies have already been using these applications for temporary applications for years. This isn’t a new concept — it’s just now hitting the mainstream.
5. AV-over-IP — At no one’s surprise, AV-over-IP continues to be a big conversation at all trade shows, ISE included. There was even a proposed standard released during the show. You can find out more about that below.
6. Coronavirus — This created a situation in which some companies weren’t able to attend. However, I wrote a blog about how this affected the show in good ways and bad — you can read that by clicking here.

Continuing on, at long last, here are my personal favorite 10 products I saw on the show floor. Do note that these are in no particular order, only because I couldn’t decide what I liked best out of these. You’ll see why.

My Top 10:

1. The Vivitek 137″ NovoLED — A few different companies at ISE released what they like to call, “all-in-one LEDs.” This means it’s a pre-fabbed, pre-framed LED, all you do is plug in an HDMI connector, and you’re in business. However, the NovoLED includes all of this AND natively adds in its NovoConnect conferencing system.
2. The UCWorkspace Weav — This company built a user interface that’s universal for all collaboration boards, called QuickLaunch — aka this makes all brands look the same. Why is this great? The end user doesn’t have to learn multiple interfaces. So, that leads me to WEAV — it allows you to wirelessly connect and share content to anyone connected to these boards (even if they don’t have wireless collaboration built-in).
3. Barco’s ClickShare Conference CX Series — This is the bread and butter of the BYOM movement, as mentioned earlier. It allows users to use whatever client they have downloaded on their computer, and extend it for use in a conference room, rather than having a room built for one software only. Anyone just has to replace the PC that would be in the room with the Barco ClickShare.
   
4. The DTEN GO — This little device turns any non-touch-enabled display into one with touch capabilities. So, even if you have a random consumer TV and you want to turn it into a collaboration board, this device can make that happen for you.
   
5. The Vaddio RoboFLIP — This in-ceiling PTZ camera system has capabilities that make it flip out of the ceiling and it follows you around as you walk or move.
   
6. The Monitors AnyWhere MAWi — This is an Android-based system that goes behind any monitor and allows users to connect content to multiple monitors (up to 16, to be exact) — by pixel mapping and wiping said content onto multiple screens at once as an extended desktop (even if the monitors aren’t all touching). Also, the company sells a player you can use to do this, or you can use any Android-based player to accomplish the same thing.
   
7. SpinetiX ARYA Cloud-based Digital Signage Platform — It’s no secret that the future of digital signage is cloud-based. This functions best for distributing content to multiple places at one time (and you can use any Intel-based system as a player).
   
8. Leyard Planar’s 0.6-mm microLED — This uses a traditional LED system (similar to a mini-LED) to take the resolution of a 4K and convert it to millimeters for direct-view. You can be standing three or four feet away and not see the LEDs — making the LED resolution equal to a flat panel LCD monitor.
   
9. Arthur Holm’s Dynamic4 Diamond — Imagine a flat surface, then imagine pressing a button and having your monitors rise up from inside said surface. This is precisely what the Dynamic4 Diamond is — except the contraption then unfolds into a diamond shape, so if you’re sitting at a conference table, everyone can see a monitor.
   
10. MAXHUB All-in-One LED — This LED is different from the Vivitek one because this one has all the collaboration platform content built into it. So, it’s essentially a giant collaboration board, but it’s LED-based.
    

Honorable Mentions:

1. Epiphan Video’s LiveScrypt — This product converts speech to text for transcriptions in real-time. All you have to do is plug an HDMI into this product, loop it out, and the text is reflected live on a separate HDMI output that users can put up wherever they choose. Plus, it’s AI-based, so the accuracy is tremendous.
   
2. Alliance for IP Media Solutions’ Proposed AV-over-IP standard — AIMS published a proposed open-platform standard, based on the SMPTE 2110 broadcast standard, called IPMX.
   
3. Lenovo’s ThinkSmart View — Imagine taking a Microsoft Teams room and making it personal. This company allows users to move a system wherever they want, similar to how Alexa works on Amazon products. That way, you can pass this around the office, and anyone can join a meeting because you have this device logged in to the Teams account at all times.
   
4. Epson’s Moverio BT-350 AR Glasses — At ISE, the demo the company hosted for this product blew away all the ones from the past. Don’t worry; I included the video here.
   

Now, if you were looking for a few products that you didn’t see mentioned here, we still have videos of them, and you can find the rest of that coverage here.