More lightning round impressions on Infocomm

June 19, 2009 by Dave Haynes

1 – really mixed feelings about the Advanced Method unmanned booth, and the funny and not at all surprising thing is the booth was staffed full-time by people from an audio company that had its gear running at the thing … and I saw Advanced’s main guy hanging out there today (this is after the copany announced the schtick that were sending a booth but staying home)

2 – Nexcom has a very nice little fanless Atom box they debuted at show … a faster CPU and still sub-$600

3 – Many of the software vendors I spoke with don’t seem to have a firm grip on what the market price for SaaS DS seems to be right now

4 – I got way too many weird looks from people. who should know betterm when they showed me little on-screen tools like clocks and weather bugs and so on and I called them widgets … do I live in a parallel universe or is widget not a pretty common term these days?

5 – Why, why, why do vendors think there is a market for 3D screens that require people to put on stupid glasses, both panels and projection systems … and why why why are there so many vendors showing 3D screens that don’t require glasses but using content that thoroughly reinforces the things are nothing but gimmicks … 

6 – I saw this cool thing that uses some German-made transparent film to create a holographic effect … hard to describe, but interesting … problem is you needed controlled (dark) conditions and a lot of depth to pull it off … have a look here

7 – I wandered into a “whisper room” for a company quietly dem’oing for prospects a new type of large format display that is very HD and modular and green. They wouldn’t let me see it, though I did. It would compete with big LED

8 – Christie also had a room for some new tech they were showing off. I got a promise to let me have a look, but could never find the room or the guy I know. It sounded similar to what these other guys were doing, and I know Christie has been pulling this thing together for well more than a year

9 – I finally met Lou Giacalone from CoolSign, someone I have got to know a little by email. Nice guy, and from what I saw of the software demo, really nice platform.

10 – I ran into a South Korean company called Tovis that had a whole range of those skinny LCDs that LG intro’d last year, and they OEM these to LG, I was told

11 – If you can afford it, stay at the Peabody for trade shows in Orlando … MUCH handier, and I heard some nasty stories about some of the lesser hotels in the immediate orbit of the Orange County Convention Center

12 – I’m not all that convinced any DS companies that do the SaaS thing should bother with this show … it is fertile ground for companies like Scala, Omnivex and Visix, but for others, not so much … though I did meet some guys like DC Media and Smart AVI with some very solid alternatives to the big boys, that integrators would like … the SaaS thing doesn’t seem to resonate well with many AV guys who just want to sell a job and move on

13 – Doing five cocktail parties in one night leaves one a little fuzzy come morning

14 – I looked, but did not see many signs the projection business is going to move to LEDs anytime soon … brightest one I saw was 300 lumens … I saw a somewhat unnerving projector set-up that replaced traditional bulbs with arc-lights and reflectors to extend the lamp life five-fold … but the the thing felt like a blast furnace

15 – Magink has some very interesting technology, but I need to get an engineering degree before I can understand how it works … the technical term is reflective, cholesteric LCD … they look like wall tiles and are modular like LED walls, and don’t emit light but reflect it … not cheap, but the outdoor guys who LED boards should probably take a look at the latest-gen version