Whatever

After a jaunty day perusing the Gadget Show Live, our peepers and posable thumbs were pleasantly primed to spot the hottest tech.

Here's our top 3 technologies:

3. HDTV: Sure, it's old hat, but the quality of the screens is really something. Panasonic's range, which displayed underwater scenes, looked like staring through a glass bottomed boat. It's still the most cost effective digital signage option too.

2.  Bluman Associates' architectural projection mapping: Perfect for live events, this projection technology- showcased during the Gadget Show's live performance made the whole stage look as if it was and shimmering with weird 3d polygons and radiating colours. The software can be custom made to fit most event spaces and, when combined with good audio, mouths will drop.

1. 3D TV: Sony's 50" 3D model was demoed, with legions of tech geeks queuing to get a glimpse of what their living rooms would look like in the not too distant future. The results didn't disappoint with the display material looking sharp and natural. The glasses are also a vast improvement on the throwaway specs in multiplexes. After a 5 minute demonstration, it's still too early to assess whether nausea will kick in.

I think most people would agree video conferencing had a good year in 2009 - relative to other av technologies that is i.e. it showed a small drop in sales rather than 20 per cent+ drop like projectors & plasma/LCDs

The reasons for this? well swine flu and the recession have to take some credit - people just didn't want to/couldnt afford to travel, and spending £5000 for an HD vcon system (a price lower than it's ever been) stacked up as a pretty good investment against a travel budget of £50,000/£100,000/£200,000.

So I was mystified when Wainhouse Research reported Sony had decided to pull out of video conferencing in EMEA (it has already done the same in N America).

Far be it for me to dictate Sony's corporate policy (I wouldn't know where to begin quite frankly) but the video conferencing market in 2010 looks quite attractive to me because; 

1) There aren't a huge amount of players in this market (even less so after the Cisco/Tandberg deal), so the competition doesn't seem hugely stifling

2) Cisco are about to spend millions advertising the technology to ALL sectors following it's purchase of Tandberg (i'm sure Logitech will spend some marketing cash as well after buying LifeSize), so other manufacturers will reap the benefits of that

3) the recession isn't going to go anywhere to quickly, at least not in the 1st half of 2010, so travel budgets will still remain frozen

Also, Sony already makes screens and video cameras so it's in a good place to provide the whole package without too much added cost.  The Ziris digital signage system (using PS3's as processor units) has already shown Sony is well capable of utilising it's full product base.

I expressed this bewilderment to someone from Sony at BETT last week but was met with a response so heavy with spin it would make Malcom Tucker proud.  Added to that I have spoken to at least one angry Sony dealer, upset at the decision and the way it was communicated, given the time & effort they have put in promoting Sony's vcon products.

I trust we all had a good night at the Awards on Friday? judging by all the comments on the night it seems as though you did.  Even those who didn't win who approached me afterwards wanted to know the reasons why and what they could do to win next year (always a nice sign our awards our valued).  I will ask the relevant judges if they are open to providing feedback and puts the respective parties in contact.  It was rather disheartening to hear that AVM (who have had a great year & would have been a real contender this year) didn't enter the awards this year as they 'haven't won in the last two years', to paraphrase many a bad football manager, 'you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket'.

I think some of you may have overdone the celebrating however as two awards went missing (fairly standard Awards behaviour if i'm completely honest) and one is still unspoken for (poor old 7thSense).  And we were told at 230am by the security at the venue they were going to have to shut the bar early due to a lack of manpower.  They were having to re-direct staff away from the bars to the exit staircase as so many people had fallen down them during the latter part of the evening, it must have been..ahem..a particularly slippery carpet maybe?.... 

I was in an AV Awards production meeting in Soho when news reached me - in the exact words above - of what I reckon is a seminal moment for pro-av, certainly the corporate part of it. In terms of the big picture, this is the tipping point at which the IT players become mainstream in av, and by the same token, av goes mainstream in the IT world.

Peter (Lloyd) in his blog has already outlined how the mooted acquisition is a strategic investment for Cisco -  it's filled the room systems and enterprise-wide conferencing management systems gap in its portfolio taken Tandberg out of the market for competitors like HP, with which Tandberg has had a loose association, and filled the  room systems and enterprise-wide conferencing management systems gap in its portfolio.

But as well as the vcon capability, the value Cisco gets for its $3bn cheque is Tandberg's codec technology, which takes it closer to the wholesale movement of video and audio material. Naturally it will make more from selling its switches, networks and bandwidth to move that mategial than it will from selling the vcon cameras etc, but the content it's set to move is pure-play av. Cisco is sharp enough to see that, which brings av closer to the corporate top table. It not only makes the av/IT tussle irrelevant, but hopefully, also signals the start of a meaningful integrated offering. And as BT's Simon Frusher says, what a totally exciting proposition this makes.

At our recent roundtable on Live Events Staging (a full report will be in our next issue) our two participants from Jack Morton both commented the biggest thing to have taken off in the last 18 months for them was the use of LED in live shows.  They had seen LED usage go from zero to 100 per cent in that 18 month period. However, many at the Roundtable complained that content for LED screens was often uninspiring, and rarely made full use of the technology. 

Well, on saturday myself and 87,999 others saw a lesson on how to use LED at the U2 concert at Wembley Stadium.

888 hexagonal Barco panels showed a succession of very clever, relevant and creative content.  The highlight, and the moment when my jaw dropped and hit the seat in front of me, was when the panels began to separate (powered by 40 Kinesys hoists and 8 winches), producing a remarkable, almost tornado-like affect (see pic below).  When the panels were fully extended the screen had trebled in size, dominating the already huge set.

Hats off to everyone involved - XL Video, Barco, designers/architects Hoberman Associates, and Kinesys (apologies if you were involved in the project and haven't been mentioned here, get in touch and I'll rectify the situation immediately).

Many thanks to Lee Spencer and XL Video for the kind hospitality. 

(picture courtesy Kinesys)

I've lost count of the times i've deleted the phrase innovative or state of the art from press material before we can publish it online or in the magazine, and yes you may comment it's because I'm just another cynical journalist but here are my reasons for doing so;

• It's really for us to decide if it's genuinely innovative as PR companies have been known to exaggerate on occasion (i know, hard to believe eh?)
  
• 98 times out of 100 the product isn't innovative or state of the art, it's just a slightly brighter projector than the model it's replacing.
    
  

A perfect example of this was last week at a Sony press event in Soho which had a 1970s theme (it was all to do with remembering a period when we printed photos for public display or had slideshows rather than just keep them sitting away on our cameras).  The event was to promote their entire range of products for Christmas.  The standout products from our magazine's point of view were the WE5 range of TVs.   With a completely straight face the Sony representative never streered off the party line in trying to promote the new innovative feature that lay within the WE5 range - an on/off switch.  This helps to cut power consumption compared to TVs with standby buttons (evil things standby buttons are now by the way, they must be stopped at all costs).

Whilst we will applaud any manufacturer who is looking to cut the power consumption of their products, forgive me if i'm wrong but I'm sure TVs had on/off switches decades ago? it's not new is it? let's be perfectly honest.  My memory is bad but not that bad. 

The main problem is manufacturers are entering 'the boy who cried wolf' territory here, if you claim every product you release is innovative the danger is the media will become more jaded than it is already and we'll ignore something that is genuinely innovative and state of the art (and so will our readers/your customers). If used sparingly it has much more effect.

Reading Gordon's very wise words re the recent InfoComm exhibition got me thinking, and i I have to echo his comments, this is the first year in 5 i've not attended out of choice (last year i volunteered to stay at AV HQ in London as i had a pregnant wife at home).

 My reasons for not attending this year?

 a) cost - i can't deny that was a factor (publishing seems to be taking a real bashing at the moment & travel budgets are the first thing to go)

 but

 b) the growth of the ISE show as an alternative

The continuing growth of ISE means the show now gives AV Magazine everything InfoComm did (for a far reduced travel time & budget) i.e networking with all our UK/European contacts & leads on potential stories that will fill the magazine for months to come. 

I was finding year on year European visitors were dropping so you were continually met with blank faces at stands with only US representation - "AV Magazine, from where? Australia?", I can't blame them, we are only a UK magazine so in most cases I don't expect them to greet us like long lost relatives, but after meeting with indifference at stand after stand at companies you know well back in the UK and in Europe it starts you questioning if it's all worth it.

That said I think someone from our magazine will be there next year (Las Vegas is an easier sell than Orlando/Anaheim let's be honest), as it is still the biggest a-v show on earth, but the days of 6 or 7 people going from AV Magazine to Las Vegas are well & truly over (my liver is telling me that's a good thing)

Aside from Samsung's plans for global domination of the projector and signage markets (click here for Samsung story) the other interesting thing to come out of Screen Expo was the news that Sony's latest digital singage system is powered by the Playstation 3 games system (click here for Sony story).

This moves makes sense for two reasons; 1) Cost - Sony already makes millions of the units a year for the home market, so it won't incurr any additional hardware costs. 2) Graphics - the Playstation 3 is HD ready (and has a built-in Blu-ray player) and its graphics procesor can handle complex gaming graphics so will be able to easily handle more functional digital signage content (primarily still pictures with the odd video).

Where the issue might be however is will a games machine, aimed at teenagers and those in their 20s, be taken seriously in the corporate world?  I can see how someone in their 30s or even 40s would embrace the system as they will have grown up surrounded by such things in the home but will a 55yr old CEO of a large retail empire be willing to investing thousands of Euros into a system he/she thinks is 'just for kids'?     

I had an interesting chat with Samsung yesterday at Screen Media Expo in London (it's open again today and well worth a visit).  Two points jumped out of the conversation to me;

1.  Samsung had the only stand displaying projectors
2.  Samsung want to be #3 in the projector market by the end of 2009
   

The first point probably won't shock too many of you, after all projectors are used in very few digital signage installations (i'm guessing five per cent or less) due to a combination of brightness problems, health and safety issues and space restrictions.

The second point however made me raise my eyebrows considerably, if you ask anyone in the a-v industry about Samsung, they will talk about LCD screens primarily, then maybe digital cameras and mobile phones.  In the last AV projectors Buyers Guide Samsung's listing ran to just three models.  So how is this company going to get to #3 in an already overcrowded marketplace? well....

It seems as though they will follow the hugely successful model they used for the LCD market i.e. fill the market with aggressively priced, medium-to high quality models.  The current projector range sits at nine models, but wil rapidly expand to 18 by this time next year.

The question remains though - have they joined the party too late? Epson seem to have a firm grasp of the top slot with around 17 per cent market share, but as a recent presentation by BenQ at their Hemel HQ informed me, the majority of positions 2-10 are separated by minute percentages.  Also, at every event we have run in the last three or four years projector manufacturers have consistently griped about a crowded marketplace and collapsing margins, so why do Samsung want to enter this difficult market so long after anyone else?    

 As the LCD market has shown, Samsung are obviously doing something right, so can they replicate this success in the projector market? and would you bet against them doing so? let me know your thoughts..

AV is delighted to annnounce the signing of two new bloggers to our website, both are widely respected and vastly experienced industry figures.  Unfortunately Haymarket lawyers have forbidden me to reveal who they are until their multi-million Lira contracts have been finalised.  Watch this space.. 

There are a few scams/frauds currently circulating around the a-v sector at the moment and I thought a prudent warning to be extra vigilant would be in order.
One is a blatant case of fraud, and involves a company with fake credentials contacting events companies to pitch for a large scale, experiential campaign.  The campaign itself does not exist. Once the pitches have been sent in, the fake company walks away with several creative pitches it can then pass off to clients as its own work, saving a considerable amount of time and money in the process.

Another involves the creation of a made-up company, which files two years of accounts at Companies House all on the same day to achieve a healthy credit rating.  With this rating in hand, the company goes on a spending spree, buying kit that can achieve a healthy re-sale value. Of course lo and behold, by the time the bill is due, the company has long vanished, having re-sold the kit some time ago. 

It seems to be a play on one of the oldest cons in the book, the long firm.  I’m sure you are all too smart to fall for these schemes, but the worry is, in these harsh economic times where any contract win can keep the wolf from the door, desperation for cash may temporarily overtake common sense.

We’d hate for any one of our readers to fall prey to these chancers (I would like to use a far harsher word, but decency prevails).  If you have been contacted by anyone touting such a scheme, then get in touch and we can see if we can give them some unwanted publicity.
 

 3 days on and my head is still a bit fuzzy after Friday's awards, i'm sure a few of you feel the same (most of the AV staff ended up in Soho till the wee wee small hours - it seemed like a great idea at the time etc etc).

A big congratulations to all the finalists and winners, you should all feel rightly proud.  A special congratulations goes to Peter Lloyd, who picked up a (richly deserved) Lifetime Achievement Award. Many thanks to Jon Sidwick for his speech, and the sponsors of the awards and the casino.

A selection of photo's (the ones that were fit to print!) are available here

 In my 3 years+ on AV magazine I have attended numerous seminars/press conferences regarding interactive whiteboards.  Every single one has spoken about the successes of the product within the educational sector.  Which has led me to ask the same question at almost every event; “Will you be trying to enter the corporate market?”, to which the answer was inevitably, “We are hoping to, but will be concentrating on education market for the time being..”

This may finally about to change, with Smart’s announcement last week they are to concentrate their focus and resources to push whiteboards for use in the corporate market.

We await the results with interest…

One surprise to come from the event was that the company doesn’t see voting systems as part of their sell to corporates.  Smart and Steljes obviously know what they are doing (you don’t win 57 per cent market share without doing so) but I can’t help but feel this is a missed opportunity.  Both products are impressive, and have a place in the corporate market, so why only showcase one?