ISE 2022 Observations, Albeit From Afar

May 10, 2022 by Dave Haynes

Photo: Invidis

The giant scissors came out, a big ribbon sacrificed in the name of a photo, and Integrated Systems Europe opened up in Barcelona today – the first normal-ish version of the big pro AV trade show in three years.

I did not make the trip over, as the sister show InfoComm is just weeks later in Las Vegas and much of what and who I want to see will also be there. Plus attempts to wish COVID away do not seem to be working.

For me, less travel means less risk. And if I was in Barcelona this week I’d be missing out on peak black fly season in Nova Scotia (little biting bastards take chunks of flesh!).

Covering a trade show by reading press releases, coverage from other publications and social media posts is not the proper way to go at this, but here goes …

It Looks Busy

There’s no mask mandate, and apparently the pandemic is over.

 

Outside …

And in the booths …

https://twitter.com/ucworkspace/status/1523993576996225024?s=20&t=As7BWuffDF0vXvznhqUqIA

Barcelona In Spring Beats Amsterdam In Mid-Winter

The weather in Amsterdam is super-nice today – 22C – and almost exactly what it is like in Barcelona today. But ISE will revert to a Q1 show after this year (barring more contagions), and it will still be nice and possible to mingle or hang out on a patio in Catalonia. Amsterdam in early February means heat lamp and blanket.

Observations from Inside

Sixteen:Nine’s German language content partner Invidis has people at the show and Florian Rotberg put up a quick post summarizing things:

Long queues in front of the entrances, full aisles in the exhibition halls and a good atmosphere everywhere. ISE is back and the industry is happy. The skepticism has gone and the move to Barcelona has been a success despite the pandemic. For most ISE visitors, the first thing to do is find your way around.

There’s some good advance coverage of the show here, and your browser should do a decent job of converting German to English.

This Is Kind Of Interesting

PlaceOS is an Australian company that has a software platform that integrates with devices and systems in buildings of all kind, doing things like room and desk assignments, and all the way to access controls and utilization analytics.

Immersive Projection Room

The cynic in me wonders if this ISE Immersive Art area was booked and then cancelled space, and that big wall projections was an easy way to make it useful. On the other hand, to fully demo large-scale mapping like this you need a hall like this, not just an exhibit stand.

Monorail Marketing?

Transparent OLED is already a super-niche product, so why not go after the vast (picture me smirking here) global monorail market. Weird use-case. Why not subways, which at least tend to mostly be underground and not fighting natural light?

The Wall 2022

Here’s the latest iteration of Samsung’s microLED-ish premium video wall product, The Wall. There are three pixel pitches in the series and let’s assume Samsung brought the super-premium 0.84mm pixel pitch version.

If you are thinking that doesn’t look to be any finer in pitch than premium LEDs not marketed as microLED, you’d be right. The visual quality is not about how tightly the LEDs are packed, but using LED light emitters so small they create a lot of black space between each other, which bumps up contrast by showing much more black.

Whatever the technical case, it looks great and I continue to have an open offer to Samsung to send me a test video wall. I’ll need about five years to assess. Send me a note if you need a delivery address.

Your Product As Booth Facade

I like what the Shenzhen LED manufacturer Lamp Technology (owned by Unilumin) did here … using its product as part of the facade, picking up on an emerging trend of retailers – particularly in airports – using video walls to be dynamic facades and gateways to the shops.

Website Down-ish

I went to the ISE website to see if there were any announcements about attendance projections (I saw one tweet that suggested 50,000 excpected), but the site is am little bit down, which is a bit of a bad timing oops.

More to come …

 

 

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