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A View From The Road – Volume 3, Number 3
Observations on technology trends from the latest conferences
and seminars.
June 19, 2009
In This Edition:
• InfoComm 2009 – The
Hot Place To Be
• Quality Over
Quantity Again
• Unified
Collaborative Conferencing Pavilion
• IMCCA’s Second
Annual Telepresence Day
• New And
Notable - My Pick Hits
Those of you from the
northeast area may remember the popular “Christmas in August” commercials
from the now defunct “Crazy Eddie” electronics chain – “…it’s the middle of summer, the streets are sweltering, the air is
hot and sticky…” If you close
your eyes and imagine the sweaty scene that those words conjure up, then
add equipment and people from the AV industry it will almost be like you’re
here with us at the 2009 InfoComm for the event’s 70th
anniversary. Saying that this is a
hot show would be an understatement.
Unlike the arid climate of the vastly superior venue of Las Vegas, here in Orlando you can cut the humid air with a
knife as you attempt to slice off chunks to breathe – until the rain washes
them away and the lightning hits the knife.
I exaggerate only to pay tribute to the over 800 exhibitors who
braved truly torturous conditions getting their exhibits all set up. With the loading bay doors of the Orange County Convention
center wide open to bring in the displays and
equipment the venue did not even attempt to cool down the hall as the floor
was set-up. The brave crews
assembling everything and connecting the gear endured 120 degree temperatures
for days - all the way through to the morning of the show opening. The heat and humidity from the
non-air-conditioned halls permeated into most of the spaces being used for
Super Tuesday classes. It was a hot
show indeed - even before it began.
Once the ribbon was
cut to open the show Wednesday morning there were no signs left of the
struggle with the heat – just spectacular displays and enthusiastic
exhibitors and attendees.
A record 28,000
registered for the show, but it was clear many fewer than that showed up
due to the current economy. The
signs of this drop were everywhere – such as half-filled sessions (with a
few hard pressed to pass a dozen attendees) and the main hotel next to the
convention center still having rooms available. Even with all that, it seems the trend
of quality over quantity held true here as well. Some of my friends at one of the video
conferencing manufacturers told me that at the end of the first day they
had as many leads as they had received in the entire show last year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For attendees that
did make it there was plenty to see.
To begin with, the show sported IMCCA’s largest United Collaborative
Conferencing Pavilion in InfoComm history.
In a conference with over eight hundred exhibitors just about ten
percent chose to align themselves under this banner. They included not just the traditional
video conferencing and telepresence companies, but also firms associated
with streaming media, video lighting, conference furniture, managed
services and more. There were
innovative offerings on display from firms such as Accordant (www.accordent.com releasing their
third version of their media management system), AVI-SPL ( www.avi-spl.com announcing IMCCA board
member Mike Brandofino’s new role running their
managed services), Brightline (www.brightlines.com showing their
new fixtures) , Lifesize (www.lifesize.com
introducing a new desktop VC solution), Polycom (www.polycom.com introducing an HD VC
solution for under 6k), and many others.
See the sponsors and full list here (http://tinyurl.com/kwjo6l ).
It was terrific to
finally see Cisco displaying one of their TelePresence products in this
pavilion and at InfoComm. The team
that designs and manages Cisco’s custom video installations was here with
an impressive booth and nearby demo.
While this team did have to endure some hostility over the Cisco’s
TSBU’s (TelePresence Business Unit’s) poor decision to utilize a
non-standard form of H.264 encoding, there were just as many present who
welcomed them to our industry and wanted to see their products.
Cisco’s team
participated fully, interacting both with the attendees on the floor and in
related sessions. Now that that
artificial barrier has been broken through it is time for Cisco to get past
the other one hanging over them - and ditch their non-standard codec. At this point it is irrelevant whether
the TSBU chose proprietary encoding to achieve 1080P/30 faster than others
as they originally claimed, or truly only in an attempt to lock-out
compatibility and competition. Now
that their devices have been dwarfed by the superior 1080P/60
resolution/rate displayed on standards-based systems here at the show it is
time for them to suck-it up and begin to utilize standards based
encoding. Any suggestion that there
is a technical advantage not to do so has vanished.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The IMCCA’s second
annual Telepresence Day was a terrific success this year. The full day of networking, expert forums
and presentations was bracketed by two industry leaders making stellar
performances.
Tandberg’s
President Americas, Rick Snyder, gave the opening keynote, highlighting
Tandberg’s video to everywhere strategy.
The presentation included a jaw-dropping demo of their signature T3
product and telepresence server – connecting their telepresence rooms with
a Polycom RPX room, standards based video systems and webcams
simultaneously – with each end having a useful view of all the others. If you haven’t seen T3 or their server
you owe it to yourself to get the demo - at least virtually by going to www.tandberg.com and clicking “Watch
Interop Video.”
The closing keynote
was presented by Polycom’s Chairman and CEO Bob Hagerty. Rather than having to fly to Orlando, Bob presented Polycom’s point of view
remotely from San Jose,
California.
Bob discussed
Polycom as a company, their outstanding “VC2” strategy (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoJ3SUXhbOw
) and then took questions from the audience. He also explained how his one hour
presentation would have taken him two days of lost productivity (flying, missing
meetings, etc.) if video were not utilized.
I had the pleasure of chatting with him myself over video
(discussing our mutual background in broadcasting) just as if he were in
the room with me. His appearance in
full life size and HD quality right behind the presenter’s podium was the
exclamation point to our Telepresence Day events.
The Telepresence
Day seminar was supported by an exceptional group of sponsors including BT
Conferencing, Polycom, Tandberg, Teliris, Glowpoint,
Masergy, York Telecom and Telepresence Tech. Preparations are already underway for the
third annual Telepresence Day seminar to be held in Las Vegas at next
year’s InfoComm. From what I’ve
heard discussed so far there will be some very innovative displays and
demonstrations of the latest technologies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Back on the show
floor there were a number of new products to make note of. Some highlights include:
·
Tandberg’s new C20 Codec – achieving 1080P at list price of
under 8K; and their often discussed but never previously seen HD camera for
OCS:
·
Teliris’ bold campaign to switch their telepresence
systems to software based codecs utilizing Scalable Video Coding or “SVC”
(h.264 annex G) and their equally bold challenge to current and potential
Cisco users:
(The only word for placing this sign facing the Cisco booth is
Chutzpah. I’m afraid some of you may have to look
that one up.)
·
The move by Samsung and Radvision to jointly market a 24” 720P
HD widescreen desktop video appliance with an under 2K list price:
They promised to have the unit widely available for delivery
this September. Samsung, being the
world’s largest manufacturer of display panels has a great advantage in
this space, which has the potential of making this product tremendously
disruptive. Will any traditional
video conference manufacturer be able to compete with them on price if they
first have to source the displays?
·
ClockAudio showed their new line of “Retracta” table
microphones. A picture says a
thousand words in this case:
Available with both cardioid and omnidirectional patterns
these may finally help make some peace between the room designer and the AV
guy.
·
Finally, there are the new Litefast display products. You know those battery operated fans that
you see at theme parks that can spell out short messages as the LEDs move around at speeds faster than your eye can
perceive? Someone finally thought of
replacing the scattered red LEDs with a full
resolution array and the results are outstanding:
The pictures here hardly do the product justice. Check out their website at http://www.litefast-display.com.
~~~~~~
That’s it for the
InfoComm 2009 edition of A View From The Road. Look for the next report from the
Wainhouse Collaboration Summit in Boston
at the end of July (http://www.wainhouse.com/boston09.)
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A View From The Road is written by
David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. David has spent
31 years in the audio visual and broadcasting industries. He has designed
facilities for firms such as AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU
and Lehman Brothers. He has recently joined JPMorgan Chase & Company
and is the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology. Email David at
David.Danto.IMCCA@Danto.com
About the IMCCA
The Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) is a
not-for-profit user application and industry focused association with
membership comprised of service and product providers, consultants, and
users. Members benefit from the understanding and the use of various
interactive and collaborative communications technologies in their
professional and everyday lives.
For further information please contact Carol Zelkin, IMCCA Executive
Director, at 516-818- 8184 or czelkin@imcca.org.
Visit the IMCCA web site at www.imcca.org
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