Friday, June 20, 2014

Infocomm mini update - part the second

The second - and final - day of this year's Infocomm journey is behind me. More when I get home, but here are skew quick impressions:

Vaddio debuted their new line of Roboshot cameras. These have some nice features, including installer-adjustable lens stops to configure the same camera for wide angle or tight zoom shots. Better yet, these cameras have an on-board webserver, finally allowing IP control. The Vaddio team remains playful in a good way, this time dressing in Grateful Dead inspired custom TShirts, one of which I walked our I'd the booth with. Now all I need is a Cadillac.

Smart Tech introduced something different; the Smart Kapp capture board. It's a neat idea: a dry erase board which can, via a web app, capture your sketches and send them to a tablet or smart phone. It's a different way to bridge the digital and analog worlds. I seem to have won one in a Twitter contest by taking an AV selfie with it, so you'll possibly get more impressions of it from me later.

There was also some buzz about the gorgeous direct-view LED video walls, including one from Christie Digital with less than a 2mm pixel pitch. From about five feet back the individual dots just disappear (that is a subjective impression. perhaps I'll check the math on this one when I get home).  It's also a sort of technology which can deliver very high contrast. This could be a very promising solution.

Yesterday I mentioned AVB as a bit of a disappointment. Dante continues to grow into the dominant platform, becoming a defacto standard. There are great options for Dante inputs and outputs, including break-in boxes, amplifiers, wireless Mic systems. Stewart Audio had a nice line of small network-enabled amplifiers using Dante. They are joined by Kramer, the 150th Dante licensee. Kramer quietly debuted a product very similar to Stewart's which, as of this writing, I cannot find in their website. This is the kind of product that gives me ideas for creating distributed systems. It also lead to a great discussion with the Stewart team about both done upcoming products and the plusses and minuses of a potential PoE amp. This is a discussion which will continue.

There's more. What, I'd any big stories did I take away? What did I think of the standards circus? Why did I give the cold shoulder to the VP off marketing from Earthworks, and why was that Purelink's fault? Stay tuned!

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