rAVe Videos Help Backfill What I Somehow Missed At InfoComm, Like A Godzilla LCD

June 19, 2024 by Dave Haynes

North Carolina-based publisher and promotions agency rAVe Publications once again had a small army of smartphone-wielding twenty-somethings in purple Ts swarming the two halls of InfoComm, shooting usually quick and seriously unscripted videos at all the stands of last week’s show.

They edit and post those photos during and mostly in the days after the show, as there are 100s and 100s of them, with one and often several videos from each of some 800 stands. So far, there are 1,300+ videos up.

I have started to scroll through the rAVe YouTube channel having a look, as it is frustrating how I can buzz around a show floor for two days and still miss all kinds of things. There’s also only so much time, so missing stuff is inevitable.

The rAVe videos are short and sometimes painfully bad, with sales or marketing people handed a mike, told where to look, and asked to rattle off their elevator pitch for 60-75 seconds. Some people are naturals with a mike and camera. Others are stammering, umm-filled trainwrecks, or the videos are rough because of language hurdles and accents.

But they all serve a solid, base purpose, and can be very handy for me in getting a quick look at things I missed or quickly saw and wanted to hear more about. I don’t think the edit team has posted anywhere near all of what was shot, but I went through a pile of them last night (bored, nothing on the telly) using my haunted Samsung smart TV (it turns itself on when it feels like it, with no one near the remote???).

This will probably involve a few posts, but here is a first pass at what I missed and caught my eye:

Moka, which is the commercial display side of Chinese flat panel giant TCL.

The company first gained some attention when it did a deal – the first of its kind, I think – to put BrightSign player modules in Moka commercial panels, which created a new kind of all-in-one smart display.

Moka had a display that caught my eye for its sheer scale, and also a series with naming that made me a little cross-eyed.

Parent company TCL at the start of the year debuted a 115-inch flat panel TV, and now there is a Moka version for commercial applications. A 115-inch display that starts to compete – a probably beats on price – the fine pitch all-in-one LED panels that have somewhat flooded the AV market. In a twisted way, 115 inches would be on the small side compared to some of the all-in-one LEDs, but still … this thing is a beast.

If Moka wants to send me one to, ummm, test … 🙂

I also watched a Moka video showcasing its DLED panels and thought, what the hell is DLED??? Turns out it is yet another acronym and moniker for LED-lit LCD flat panels, and not some new technology. The D references direct-lit, as in the LED back-lighting that illuminates the LCD. This is a variation on those TV makers who call their LCDs LED TVs.

CTL’s Chromebox:

I was certainly aware of Lenovo and some Taiwan PC manufacturers making and marketing Chromebox, but had not come across CTL, a company in Beaverton, Oregon (Nike’s suburban Portland HQ community) that also has small Chromeboxes aimed at commercial markets like digital signage.

Interesting touch tables:

I DID manage to find my friends at Braga, Portugal-based DISPLAX at a stand nested in the West Hall booth maze, but only had time for a quick demo of the object recognition stuff it is doing with the Berlin firm Interactive Scape. I have seen a number of demos through the years that trigger cool and interesting user experiences when an object is placed on a table-style screen, but most have skewed to learning applications for things like museums and similar attractions.

This one has some interesting sales and business meeting applications, because of the smartphone integrations that I thought were pretty slick. This video is roughly what I saw demo’d …

Here’s a video from a different interactive solution, the New Mexico company Ideum, which I did NOT see (might have been in Central Hall, which I had maybe 75 minutes to bomb  through).

While the one above is a partnership between hardware and software firms, Ideum makes and markets its own touch hardware, and in this video demos its own Tangible Engine software, referencing an interesting application used at a Starbucks tasting room in its head office city, Seattle.