Eurotek's annual ISE Showcase Review
This year's ISE conference and exhibition took place at the RAI in Amsterdam from 7th to the 10th February. As usual, Eurotek had a big team in attendance, roaming the floors to see what's new.
With the growth of the AV industry over the past few years, ISE has itself grown to become a huge show, with 60,000+ attendees, and spread now across four days. It has arguably become a bigger show than IBC, the Broadcast convention that takes place at the same venue each September.
Getting to see every new product from every vendor is impossible, so our focus is on new and interesting developments- it can be taken from granted that all the major manufacturers will have new versions of their established products, and without wishing to diminish the importance of these, we think that highlighting the clever new stuff is more interesting!
So, the highlights:
Christie Pandora's Box Widget Designer wins InAVate Technology Award
The Christie Pandoras Box 6.0 and Widget Designer 6.0 captured the Technology for Entertainment and Live Video award, which were presented by InAVation magazine on Tuesday evening, February 7 at ISE.
Christie Pandoras Box, featured in numerous sports arenas and other installations around the world, combines the latest rendering technology with intuitive media and show control. Christie Pandoras Box 6.0 features editable meshes & warps, UV map adjustments and live canvas masking. In addition, its multi-user mode allows operators to share the workload and complete different tasks including warping, encoding and timeline programming simultaneously.
The new Widget Designer 6.0 redesigns include an HTML5 user interface, native HTML support, and CSS styles. Animation and transitions are now available for all pages and widgets. Together, Christie Pandoras Box 6.0 and Widget Designer 6.0 allow show managers and integrators to build fully customizable control interfaces with a flexibility no other system on the market offers.
Christie Velvet LED Videowall
Our team were very impressed with the new Christie Velvet APEX LED Videowall range. With a range of pixel pitch options from 1.2mm-1.6mm, the Velvet APEX is a modular, high-quality display system, which is starting to make inroads in the traditional monitor-based videowall arena, as the ultra-high resolution displays content in impeccable detail, making it the ideal choice for applications where image quality and clarity is paramount, but which up to now has been at a significant price premium.
Christie Mystique
Christie also showed a clever suite of tools to assist in the design and implementaiton of large-scale projection projects, with the ability to "virtualise" the projection plan in advance to test the setup, and the ability to simulate the licve setup on a small scale plan- at ISE, they were using a model of a stadium, with mini projectors, to simulate the setup in a real-life stadium environment.
Details here: https://www.christiedigital.com/emea/about-christie/news-room/press-releases/launch-of-mystique-at-infocomm-english
You can see Christie's ISE Video Blogs and releases here: http://www.isechristie.com/
AREC Video/Audio capture System
An interesting product that caught the eye of our team was the AREC Video/Audio capture system. This is a system to capture, record, and stream live video content, with a really simple and easy to use user-interface. Designed for corporate, educationa, and mediacal applications, the AREC media Capture System provides an easy way to record training sessions, confidential interviews, surgery, lectures, counselling sessions, and any application that needs to record a video and audio record.
AREC MediaStation is the core capture device, and can capture virtually any signal type, including HDMI, VGA, and of course standard video signals. Options include remote PTZ cameras, with optional auto-tracking of the subject, and VOD/Live streaming options.
Angekis SABRE PTZ Camera
The new SABRE PTZ camera from Angekis is winning plaudits across the board, for it's picture-quality, user-interface, quality of the pan/tilt movement, and overall design. Featuring a HDMI & USB 3.0 interface, and resolution of 4K, the SABRE provides ultra-high quality images, for use in video conferencing, control room monitoring, corporate studio areas, and any application where a high quality camera system is needed.
SABRE is very competitively priced, and with low-light capability down to 0.01lux, it is equally at home in virtually any application. http://www.angekis.com/saber.asp
Absen
ABSEN have been gaining a reputation for being one of the leading manufacturers of LED displays for the past couple of years, with high-profile installations throughout the world. In fact, our colleagues in AVTEK have almost 80SqM of Absen LED in their rental fleet, used for such high-profile events as the 1916 Anniversary Commemorations.
At ISE this year, they were showing off their latest super-high resolution HDV series of UHD videowalls, featuring a super-slim profile of just 65mm, making them suitable for installation in virtually any environment.
The attractive and wire-free HDV series is comprised of three models with pixel pitch ranging from 1.25mm (for the HDV1.2) to 1.92mm (HDV1.9), boasting brightness of up to 1000 nits and a refresh rate of 3840Hz. It can be displayed openly or installed in hard to reach areas. Each HDV module is imbued with the strength of its distinctive honeycomb cellular design, to aid perfect flatness and prevent warping across its 160° ultra-wide viewing angle.
Absen will also unveil its expanded N series of LED indoor display solutions within a retail-inspired environment to ISE visitors. The recently added N3 and N5 panels offer greater viewing versatility to the range with the additional pitch levels of 3.2mm and 5.14mm. The dedicated retail area will display the full N series range, including N2, and N4 panels.
Check out the complete Absen range here: https://www.absen-europe.com/
BlackTrax
One of the most exciting products our team saw at the show was the BlackTrax real-time tracking software for projected images. In fact our AVTEK colleagues were so impressed with this when they saw it at last year's Infocomm show, that they've ordered a system for their rental fleet!
Blacktrax lets you project video (or lighting) onto free-moving objects, using techniques similar to tracking software in VFX systems. A number of tiny LED emitters are attached to the object being tracked, and a number of cameras then pick up the light from these LEDs, The Blacktrax system then controls the image processor- for instance, Pandora's Box- which manipulates the projected image to map onto the object being tracked. it's an amazing effect, and is used by organisations such as Cirque du Soleil to add that WOW! factor to their shows. But it is equally impressive for corporate launches, live TV shows, outdoor events, or anywhere that you want to control the projected image or lighting in free-space.
Check out the Blacktrax showreel here: http://blacktrax.cast-soft.com/showcase/
Sony
Not usually at the forefront of mainstream AV equipment, other than displays and projectors, Sony are entering the BYOD connectivity arena for meeting rooms, with a device that looks set to compete with devices like Clickshare and We Present. The Vision Exchange is aimed at providing collaborative working within the meeting room, with the ability to share content from the participant's device, via wireless connections.
Interestingly, the device also has some optional additional features, available as licenced options: a streaming option allows remote participants to see streamed video, and allows the device to provide a video conference capability compatible with industry-standard video conferencing systems.
The system is due to be released in the first half of 2017, so it will be interesting to see how Sony manage to make inroads in this pretty crowded marketspace.
Details here: https://blog.sony.com/press/sonys-new-vision-exchange-brings-active-learning-and-corporate-meetings-alive/
There were many more products and ideas that left our team excited and enthusiastic for the coming year's activity, and we'll add these to the blog as we extract details from them....
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