Remember when Polycom and Cisco were always mentioned in the same sentence? Seems like a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, huh? Do you remember when we were all saying, “Why don’t Polycom and Cisco just make their stuff interoperable?” Well, that was what led to their ultimate demise — in […]

Kandao Technology is now shipping its 8K, 360-degree videoconferencing camera dubbed Kandao Meeting. Kandao Meeting combines two high-quality fisheye lenses, eight mic arrays and a speaker. It can be put in the center of a meeting room to capture all the attendees at 8K resolution, while automatically focusing on people as they speak. The remote […]

Earlier this month at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced that soon Microsoft Teams, the company’s web based video meeting and productivity applications, would be natively compatible with Zoom and later WebEx. If you missed this part of the story, rAVe founder Gary Kayye wrote about it here and it’s been a very popular article, especially in […]

TrueConf announced this week a new offering called TrueConf Group, a videoconferencing endpoint with built-in MCU that boasts high-quality video and audio clarity. TrueConf Group will be available for shipping globally sometime this fall in multiple configurations as ready-to-use kits for meeting rooms. TrueConf Group includes: 1080p60 video and content and enables users to share […]

Jabra announced today that Zoom Video Communications, Inc. selected the Jabra PanaCast as the video solution for its new telepresence capability, Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching. Announced this week at Zoomtopia, Zoom’s user conference, the Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching is an added feature to Zoom Rooms. (Zoom Rooms equips every sized conference room with all of […]

Zoom Video Communications just announced at Zoomtopia 2019 (its annual user conference) that major additions are coming to its software platforms. All of these, which are outlined below, will be become available on the platform by the end of January 2020. New Zoom Rooms Appliances: These are purpose-built Zoom Rooms hardware devices that Zoom is […]

Ah, September. Back to school, and, for many of my clients who are coming home from the Hamptons, back to work. For AV rental companies, in most parts of the country, business will be picking up again as their clients return to meetings. And for many of us it will be time to plan for […]

As part of my quest to better understand the UC/AV space – I’ve been reading a lot of research reports. This week I put two reports together to realize something pretty interesting: The professional video cable market is predicted to reach revenues of $2 billion by 2024. If you sell cable to the enterprise – […]

Key Digital just launched the KD-CAMUSB, a USB camera with pan, tilt and 10x zoom functionality aimed at video conferencing and capture applications in huddle spaces, conference rooms, board rooms, lecture halls, etc. The KD-CAMUSB features multiple mounting options on the wall and ceiling with included mounting hardware and may also be table surface mounted. […]

Jabra today launches the Jabra PanaCast, a smart panoramic-4K plug-and-play video solution certified for Microsoft Teams. Jabra PanaCast is aimed as a UCC camera for huddle rooms and meeting spaces as well as collaboration. Jabra PanaCast uses three 13-megapixel cameras that work together as one via core technology embedded in the built-in Jabra PanaCast Vision […]

I participated in a unified communications panel at InfoComm about three years ago. It was a great panel with representation from companies like Cisco, Polycom, and (the now defunct) Tely Labs. I was the oddball of the bunch; promising the audience that a focus on software to improve proximate meetings was needed at least as […]

If you read our industry press at all (and I hope you do) you will note large numbers of articles on two subjects: 1. The “Huddle Room” and 2. Drones When two subjects like these fascinate an industry, it is almost inevitable that they combine in some way. (I consider this the “you got peanut […]

Last week was an eventful one for Zoom. In less than twenty-four hours, we had: The revelation of multiple security vulnerabilities in the popular Zoom conferencing software A [now updated] defensive statement by Zoom, dismissing concerns related to same Public outcry A reversal of course and introduction of an immediate patch for one vulnerability and […]

Poly today announced the Poly G7500, which is basically a hardware-based VTC codec, an EagleEye IV camera (or EagleEye Cube USB), a Poly IP Microphone, a Bluetooth Remote control and cabling all packaged together in a way that integrates audio, wireless content sharing and 4K video for small and medium-sized meeting rooms for those that […]

Extron says that Extron AV control can now be part of any Lifesize videoconferencing room. You can now add Extron control to the Lifesize Icon meeting room systems, providing enhanced control functionality to their video conferencing solutions. This collaboration with Lifesize allows our TouchLink Pro touchpanels to provide a familiar Lifesize interface to control audio […]

Acoustic Magic is using InfoComm to introduce the Voice Tracker III, which is based on the technology of the Voice Tracker I, but has 2 dB better signal to noise ratio and a flatter frequency response curve leading to a brighter sound quality. The $450 Voice Tracker III is designed for lecture and meeting recording […]

Evolving how we understand and design collaborative spaces One of the most consistent things we see in corporate facilities/classrooms/lecture halls worldwide is that they have been equipped with some manner of technology package that is there for the users of that space to better communicate with others. And one of the most consistent things about […]

Over the past few months, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with dozens of AV and IT professionals tasked with deploying and supporting enterprise video conferencing. Although every project is different, a few themes seem to be consistent across all my conversations, and so I’ve come up with the following “notes from the AV/IT trenches.” […]

This is the tweet heard ‘round the AV world — or at least, it should have been: The March 21st tweet from R/GA read: A thousand years from now humans will have shed their physical form and ascended to a higher state of consciousness and conference room AV systems still won’t work. — R/GA (@RGA) […]

Blue Jeans Network, Inc. today announced its plan to offer BlueJeans Rooms-as-a-Service featuring Dolby Voice Room in the near future. BlueJeans Rooms-as-a-Service featuring Dolby Voice Room will be a new service-based subscription model for quickly adopting Dolby’s hardware with BlueJeans’ enterprise-grade cloud meetings platform. The Room-as-a-Service model provides IT decision makers with the benefits of […]

Oblong Industries just announced something called Rumpus, a new visual collaboration application for purely virtual teams. Oblong is marketing it saying that Rumpus makes web conferencing both content and context rich. It provides simultaneous access to shared screens from meeting participants, and delivers a new layer of communication with shared cursors, annotation and emojis for […]

Videoconferencing technologies have improved tremendously over the past several years. Cloud services have made it possible to cost effectively scale deployments to thousands of desktops and conference rooms. Improvements in video encoding, compute power and broadband services mean anyone can join a video call, from almost anywhere, via practically any device. And USB conference cams […]

I love writing this annual predictions article. If you’re a regular reader, you already know this but for those that don’t, my Kayye’s Krystal Ball piece is an annual article where I not only tell you what I think is going to happen in the AV market for the upcoming year, but I also go […]

RTI today announced its product lineup for Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2019, taking place Feb. 5-8 in Amsterdam. In Stand 1-N85, the company will be showcasing media distribution and collaboration solutions for classrooms, lecture halls, and meeting spaces, including the new VXU-SC video conferencing system. In addition, the company’s Miravue VIP-1 video-over-IP system and VMS-741 […]

Altia Systems, known for the PanaCast 2 180° Panoramic-4K USB camera system, today announced the introduction of PanaCast 3, the world’s first UCC panoramic video system with 40 Megapixels capacity. PanaCast 3 integrates three 13-megapixel cameras, stereo microphones and advanced software to deliver 100 percent video coverage, 100 percent audio capture and 100 percent data […]

Well, here we are again. The holidays are upon us, so it is time to pour a glass of, well, whatever a sales rep sent me for the holidays and summon my internal psychic. Each year at this time I write a final column for the year, summing up what I think the year has […]

I was fortunate enough to cross paths with the senior editor of a well-respected technology magazine while I was over in London last week.  It was a far-ranging discussion, but on the flight back, I continued to think about the question he’d put to me regarding software that enables collaboration when we are together and […]

QSC just announced it has been awarded a utility patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its Q-SYS Web Conference Integration Solution. This patent (USA 9,973,638) recognizes the solution’s ability to bring an IP camera stream from Q-SYS PTZ-IP conference cameras into soft codec applications (like Zoom, Skype for Business, GoToMeeting, etc.) […]

Last week, I attended Oculus Connect, the conference for Facebook/Oculus virtual reality developers. It was one of the best glimpses I have yet seen into the uses of a new technology that will change the way we do business in industries with events or communication and collaboration with remote people (rental and staging, collaboration, education, […]

Huddle spaces are the Goldilocks of meeting rooms: not so big and formal they stifle creativity, yet not too small for a team to get work done. And while they’re great at facilitating collaboration, it’s important to note that they’re not “just another meeting room” when it comes to implementing video conferencing. These ad-hoc collaboration […]

Everyone who’s anyone in AV knows that 4K provides four times the resolution of 1080p. 1920×1080, commonly referred to as ‘Full HD’ was the industry’s high-resolution display platform for over a decade and has recently been usurped by 4K — which in ProAV-land is known as UHD, or 3840×2160 (or in DCI-world, 4096×2160) is, in […]

By PanaCast College campuses around the world are enabling students to be more flexible with their learning by providing high-tech solutions that allow for more distance and remote learning opportunities, mixed in with traditional classroom learning. Many universities now have two or more campuses, further heightening the need to keep campuses connected. The good news […]