Final Thoughts From DSE 2024, And Some Air Travel Whining

December 12, 2024 by Dave Haynes

I am back from the US west – Palm Springs and then Las Vegas and a set of flights that really reinforced how I like the being there of travel, but not the getting there. Two hour and four hour delays on the way out, and a swing home that should have got me home mid-evening Tuesday got me there mid-afternoon Wednesday, including an unplanned airport hotel stay.

Montreal is an awesome city, but the domestic side of its airport is just awful. Among the many delights was needing to use a “mobile lounge” bus straight out of the 1970s to get off the plane and into the terminal, because it appeared the jet-bridge was broken.

Endless fun, but I am home now, with no flights in sight until ISE time.

Some thoughts and observations:

The Questex folks did what they could and made Digital Signage Experience into a genuine experience. The show was small but looked good, and seemed to run quite well. The social events were packed. I saw a lot of vendors and suppliers who had people there but no stands – reinforcing the idea that the community wants to get together and network, but not necessarily invest the money and time to do a proper stand. None of the major flat panel display companies had a stand at the show – though Sony was next door at the LDI show, which mainly addresses the live events sector but had a pile of LED companies showing (mainly) their rental/touring product. BrightSign was not at DSE with a stand – a first, I think.

As noted Tuesday, switching the format to somewhat mimic what invidis does with its Digital Signage Summit Europe events make sense. Questex will have its own twists and unique elements, but the overall idea is more about addressing the ecosystem’s meet-up and learning needs as opposed to focusing on attracting end-users and delivering lead generation. It will be in downtown San Diego – so there are more outside and off-site distractions than the airport Hilton in Munich, but good on-site events and programming should keep people from scattering the way they might in places like Vegas, Nashville, Austin or NYC.

A way west coast event is handy for people in that region, but not so much for others (see the first two paragraphs), but I could see moving this around year by year and running it at golf and spa locations away from downtowns and distractions in hub airport cities like DFW, Phoenix, Atlanta and Chicago. Just, please God, not Orlando.

Interesting sightings and show floor chats …

Amazon is serious about this space and has a decent-sized team on the file. I had a long chat with Dvir Doron, but we agreed to stay off the record so I will just suggest the industry pay attention and not just say lots of big companies like Cisco and Verizon have come into the sector and then left it, having minimal impact.

I saw the videos done by the start-up Stream – using AI to generate video news segments with on-air talent. They capture footage of on-air hosts in different clothing and looks and those baseline files are used to generate news segments based on text scripts. I watched pretty carefully and didn’t see any glitching (granted these were cherry-picked files for the show). Because they are indeed people, and they are not moving around, there was no avatar-like look to things and I think most viewers would never pick up on the AI component. What it means is on-air newsreader hosts producing a lot of content without having to full-time staff those jobs, which would be expensive and clobber the business model. Capture once > produce many.

Reflective LCD displays – the typical acronym is RLCD – is a technology that’s been around for years, but never got a lot of traction. That’s changing because of rising energy costs and sustainability policies – much more in Europe than North America so far. There’s lots happening. The core idea is using natural light to illuminate the display, instead of a backlight. So the power needs drop dramatically, as they do with E Ink-based displays (that’s very different underlying tech). These guys had a stand at DSE – full motion video with no backlight.  Reflective displays are covered in the report I am completing for release in about five weeks.

Clear Digital does a pile of specialty displays like rechargeable digital sandwich boards on wheels. The one that interested me most is a two-side LED display totem that folds down to make a sandwich board. I wanted to see it in both states and it looked good. It is from the Chinese manufacturer Ocolour, which seems to focus on unconventional products … which is kinda smart given how much competition there is for conventional video wall products.

I had a good briefing from an Israeli company called Radix, which has expanded into digital signage device management. Other companies that have mobile device management platforms and agents like Esper have tried to crack this industry with nominal success, but these guys seem serious. Their main and well-entrenched competitor is Prague’s SignageOS, which is focused only on this sector and growing like crazy. CEO Stan Richter briefed me on what will get announced at ISE and it sounds super-interesting.

UK-based LED Studio had what I would say was the most involved stand at DSE. One of the interesting products was a very sleek, skinny LED module that builds up into a wall and only needs a direct HDMI signal, instead of a video wall controller unit.

Vancouver/LA-based ClearLED has been doing semi-transparent displays for ages and has really advanced on a couple of fronts. The rigid, window-blind like units now have super-thin slats that are printed circuit board strips with the LEDs on them, so the back-end (what people see at the back) is very inoffensive. Earlier attempts by manufacturers like ClearLED tended to involve displays that looked bright and great from the display side, but involved a lot of metalwork and electronics in the rear. The company also has its own take on perforated, super-thin display sheets that can be applied to window glass or site just inside. I have seen versions from other manufacturers (like Muxwave) that look good, but the material seems a bit frail, while ClearLED’s 4mm version is solid, but still very skinny, metal that you can run a hand along.

Gable’s Stephen Gottlich pointed me at a display I would have otherwise walked right on by on the LDI side of the show, because it was at the deep back and alongside a fairly narrow chute. A subsidiary of the Chinese manufacturer Yaham – which has a big installed footprint in Las Vegas – has a variation on one of my favorite new products on the AV market – 3D-printed snap-on tiles over LED arrays that make a faux stone or wood wall active. A Unilumin-backed start-up CECOCECO started showing that about a year ago. In this case, Yaham’s Recience is using fine-pitch COB LED modules that have printed films that can be applied to the module face, and peel off without damage, if that’s necessary. So indoor products that are perhaps outside the buyer sweet spot now – like a 1.4mm pitch Chip On Board when 0.9mm to 1.2mm seems to now be in demand – have new appeal, and the resolution can be higher than what CECOCECO does. I think they are different products with perhaps different appeals, but architects would be interested in both.

No pix because the area was crowded and no good sightlines.

I had quick chats with Texas-based OptiSigns (longtime advertiser here but I’d never met CEO Henry Le … nice man), the tag team lead guys from Brazil’s OnSign, who told me they’re booming in that region, and the guys from KitCast, who are making some big changes and bulking up their headcount.

The Interactive Scape touch table tech from Germany, paired with tech from Portugal’s DISPLAX and US-based TSI Touch was interesting and always seemed to draw a crowd – though that might owe a little to the tub of chilled Bud Lights right beside it.

I walked right on by one stand because I made the wrong assumption about the business model, but LA-based DOOH consultant Jeremy Kolieb steered me back. I thought the thing was another no-hoper digital OOH play based on the dream of selling ads, but the Oscar Sort product from Vancouver’s Intuitive AI is not going after that. They sell the units and have more than 1,000 in the field. The idea marries a three-bin recycling station with a flat panel display behind and just above it, and a hardened, protected computer vision camera. The idea is walk up to one of these stations and the camera does pattern-detection of what’s in your hand, directing consumers on which bin to drop the trash into. You know how you try to be responsible and recycle, but don’t know what goes where? This solves that. The screen provides guidance and can encourage users. It supports ads and can marry to programmatic, but Intuitive sells these units for, if my memory is working, $15K – with big companies buying them for workplaces. The attraction is boosting recycling habits and lowering operational costs.

Walking around LDI – even with it mainly being about concerts and immersive stuff and hardened products that can survive repeated set-ups and teardowns – my impression was reinforced that the current state of fine pitch LED, even from lesser known manufacturers, is really impressive. MicroLED gets the marketing buzz these days, but display tech already on the market is very good. In other words, we don’t need to wait for microLED to mature and drop in cost to finally have great looking video walls. We’re there.

Next show: ISE. No planes for several weeks, yay!

Great to see a pile of friendly faces, and thank you for all the nice comments coming out of the awards thing.

  1. craig keefner says:

    DSE – West Coast is good idea. Asia can more easily attend. San Francisco would have been better. Ultimately, you need funding to increase visibility and influence. Asia spends money on ISE and Infocomm already. Brightsign? First one I looked for and noticed exit. Birds of feather model with some lunch/tabletops is more profitable for DSE. Thanks for the writeups Dave. I can do my own postmortem on end of tradeshow era. Seen it before in kiosks…

  2. Tom McGowan says:

    Congratulations Dave on your Dizzie Trailblazer Award!

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