Viewsonic Gouldian Finches

We saw everything from Pirates and Wenches to the Viewsonic Gouldian Finches to attract people to see what is new in their booth. I should have taken a photo with the Pirates and Wenches!

Conference Room Scheduling Solutions

We did not see much in the way of interactive meeting room scheduling products. Visx (seen here) and Crestron were the only companies showing this technology. The new iteration of RoomView may be a good product for in-house testing.

Panasonic 85" Plasma

In the category of large displays for a reasonable price - Panasonic was showing an 85" Plasma that sells for around 30K.

NSCA Robot

This robot was wandering around greeting people. It was sponsored by NSCA.

RPC Microtile Display

This display of Christie Microtiles is actually a section that is being built for the NYC joint task force Operation Center. It will be 150 tiles wide when complete. The rigging is by RPC.

Bose Outdoor Line Array

Matt and I spent some time at the Bose booth and met our new Rep. They have a new passive ceiling and surface mounted loudspeaker called the 100 series as well as a new outdoor line array. The had the line array mounted on a weighted lift so you could hear the pattern drop off sharply as the line array was raised. This is Matt with the MA12EX

Fiber Termination

This was a very cool - quick way to terminate fiber. Prep the strand as usual, insert it into the end and press the button. We need to test this for ourselves - it could be a real time saver.

Extron Power Cage

This is a good solution for combining many Extron CATX and Fiber devices into a rack mount power cage. It is populated with modules that are essentially the stand alone boxes that we need to rack mount and manage power cables. This is a good system to remember in the design phase of the TP or Fiber system.

DVI Extender for $79.00

They say that these will extend DVI over 150' for $79.00. Cat5 connector on the back. Hmmmmm - could it be possible?

Good Ideas for FSR

Two new things from FSR worth noting. First, the divider between line and low voltage is movable. Second, the deeper boxes have a pass through area at the bottom of the box so you can pass cable from one side to the other.

Field Termination of HDMI

Well - someone has done it. Maybe -- I have not seen it work, but, BTX has a field termination product for HDMI. You need their cable, connectors and tools to make it work, but here it is.

Our Extron Friends

Amelia and Chris have set the bar very high for the way a company should support their dealers. We took a tour of the Extron booth to see the new products and review some existing ones. The tour lasted about an hour. The Digital tuner may be the best new device for our needs. They were also showing their new video encoding and decoding products.

Display Deviced Camea Lift

This camera lift is designed to lower an HD camera from the ceiling when needed. It is shown with a Polycom Eagle Eye Camera.

APE Loudspeaker Rigging

This is why I like to visit all of the small booths at InfoComm. APE Rigging had on display their rigging for loudspeakers. These are well designed devices that have aiming adjustment systems built into them. J. C. gave me the overview and then posed for a photo. All of this was in a booth about 12'x12'

APC has a new look for AV applications

APC has redesigned some of their UPS products for the AV industry. They are shorter so as to fit into an AV rack. They have also had a face lift to make them more elegant in an AV rack. Their power strip/conditioner has a removable light that can be used as a flashlight in the rack.

Very Cool Display for Video Conferencing and DL

This device gives the illusion of 3D video conferencing. The demonstration was excellent. While it is very cool to see - the real world applications are limited because it takes up lots of space.

Smaart Training

Crammed 8 hours of Smaart 7 training in to 4. Smaart is no longer part of EAW and is now an independent company (again) Same group as was SIA in the past. Sound familiar?

Mic Processor - Problem Solver

We watched a demonstration of this mic processor. It does a great job of compensating for off axis and wide variations in volume of the talker. This could be a problem solver for public speaking installs that do not include a live mix position and technician.

Sound Tub Isolated Listening

Brian at the Sound Tube booth

Extron Announces a DIGITAL TV tuner

We've been looking for this!

Christie Microtile

Christie Microtile is a modular video product that can be configured like a video Lego. Access and service from the front with a suction cup. RP Visual makes rigging frames for the system.

The technology is essentially a DLP video projector with LED light source. The lamp life is 7 years.

eBeam Updated form and iStuff

eBeam has a new sensor - and both the capture only and projection version have iPhone and iPad apps that will provide remote viewing over the internet. The app logs into a server at eBeam with a PIN to join a session.

Orian 1mm Video Wall

Orian is showing their new video wall module. The seam is 1mm

Crestron iPad Application

Crestron has several iPads setup as touch screens running the Crestron iPad app.

Keynote Address by Michael De Beer

Keynote by Cisco

Michael De Beer of Cisco was the opening keynote speaker Monday night at InfoComm. He did a presentation on the acquisition of both Tandberg and Flip. They believe that in three years 90% of internet traffic will be video. He demonstrated some new Cisco video products as well. One was their video recording device that also did real time transcription of speech to text and the video is searchable by keywords. We then saw them replay the beginning of the presentation on some VC end points, iPhone and iPad. Cisco is most definitely in the AV business.

There also seems to be a general adoption of the term Tele-Presence for all video conferencing, not just the special high end rooms we have called Tele-Presence in the past.

CompTIA an education and trade association for the IT world is in discussions with InfoComm for a merger between the two as AV and IT become the same industry.

Monday IPD

"Telepresence is video conferencing done right..." That was the quote of the day by one of the instructors on Monday. We completed group projects and did presentations of our group designs. These are photos of my study group and the class.

The show floor is starting to look like there will be a trade show this week!

Sunday Recap

Sunday's class included several presentations and discussions about sustainable designs. In addition to the traditional design thinking; there is a reconsideration about past practices of leaving AV components on so as not to shorten their usable life from power surges and heat and cooling cycles. The day also included a number of site line studies and a review of PAG-NAG calculations and a discussion of conversions and comparison between dBu, dBv et al.

The sky is blue and he air temperature is hot -- about 101 yesterday. The convention center is buzzing with activity as one would expect.

Construction for InfoComm 2010 - only a few days to go.

InfoComm gathering to begin the 2010 IPD classes.

IDP Classes Begin

There is a large group here for the IDP classes this weekend. After working out some registration computer issues the classes began with a large meeting then on to classes.

Cleveland Airport - Paperless really works

I used the paperless check-in today at CLE. The email on my iPhone was read by the scanner at TSA and it worked. (I had a paper backup just in case) I would recommend to iPhone users to save the bar code as an image so you can manage the auto rotation feature a little easier.