The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas brings out the techies and geeks in full force to look at the latest in super-cool gadgets, gismos and concepts. But nothing you would probably want to bet your technology roadmap on.
This year, Las Vegas hosted another tech show – InfoComm16. It’s a similarly spectacular event, but focused on the latest and greatest in audiovisual technologies and, unlike CES, most of it is ready for commercial use TODAY. As you might expect, members of the ExhibitOne team were there, busy checking out the more than 1,000 industry vendors.
One of the top themes we saw at this year’s show was the attention given to AV over IP – the ability to use an existing Ethernet network infrastructure for distributing audio and video throughout an enterprise. ExhibitOne was one of the very first national system integrators to embrace this capability when we partnered with SVSi (now a part of Harman) and its industry-first video over IP technology.
SVSi now has LOTS of company. It was gratifying for us to see that many of the new and innovative technologies at InfoComm16 were coming from the same industry-leading vendors that ExhibitOne has partnered with for so many years.
This massive display of technologies showed that we’ve now reached the tipping point where AV over IP can be the implementation of choice for just about any type of commercial AV application. And believe me, it takes a wide assortment of technologies to ensure the AV signals going into and coming out of a network are the ones that will meet all of the different user requirements that are out there.
As an example, if minimizing AV’s network bandwidth consumption is important, one type of compression format (H.264) will be used. But, if latency is a major concern (the time it takes from when a button is pushed and something happens on the screen), then another compression format (JPEG2K) might be used. Some users need both while others want synced audio and video (it’s tricky…their respective signals travel at different speeds) and some want to display 4k resolution.
And technologies vary by application. Meetings. Education. Campus/enterprise-wide/global communications. Medical imagery. Security cameras. Digital signage.
All to say, InfoComm16 has shown the world that all of the different types of AV over IP technologies needed to meet most commercial requirements are here. This year’s show should give you the confidence to now include these capabilities as a safe bet in your organization’s technology roadmap.
If you’re thinking about making that bet…give us a call. We would be happy to give you a tour of it all – and save you the trouble of visiting a thousand industry vendors.
