Tech Talks Part 1

What's up everybody? And welcome or welcome back to tech unraveled, brought to you by this dot com, where we unravel the AV industry We go beyond the buzz words here. We talk real and dirty with experts and thought leaders from a wide variety of sectors within pro AV. I'm Josh Herring, marketing communication specialist with Vistacom. And I'm Lianna Russell, vistacom's sales and marketing manager, and we are your host. Today is the beginning of a very special edition, a three part series that comes directly from Vistacom's Annual Tech Expo. At this year's show, for the first time, we sat down with our platinum and gold sponsors to have conversations with our manufacturer subject matter experts in the tech talks corner right on the show floor. This year's tech expo was a huge success. We brought together more than fifty manufacturers who exhibited the latest and greatest technology. If you've never been to one of our events, I highly suggest you keep your eye out for next year's tech so. But my favorite part of the show was sitting down with our sponsors and diving deeper into the most relevant topic in the AV industry today? Our theme this year at the tech expo was transforming your vision into reality. What that really means is, you know, we're all tired of the post pandemic planning conversation. How do we implement a hybrid workforce? These are important conversations, but the time really is now to prioritize the future of your organization's technology. And so these folks that you'll hear from are really on the ground helping Vistacom integrate forward thinking technology solutions. You may know our first sponsor that we interviewed if you watched any of the Johnny Depp and Amber HER trial, which I know I was glued to. But first up, with Dan Farisi, who is the editor and chief at commercial integrator is Vistacom Tech Expo Platinum sponsor Planar. In his interview, you'll hear about the advancements in LED display technology, including how it's been rapidly changing in both cost and availability. Yeah. And they also dive into, you know, what micro LED means and how the incredible picture quality of a fine pixel pitch displayed is actually created. A lot of your questions and curiosities about LED will be answered during this interview. And you'll even get a sneak peek into Michael's thoughts on what the future holds for LED technology. So with that, now over to Dan, live at the tech Fox AT THE VISTA COMEECH EXPO twenty twenty two. Reporter: Hello. This is Dan Farisi, Editor IN CHIEF WITH integrator here on tech talks at Vistacom tech expo, and I'm very excited to be joined today by Michael O'Hallerin, who is regional account manager with Planar thank you, Michael, for being here and taking some time to chat with me. My pleasure. So a lot of people obviously, the vast majority of our industry know plane are very, very well and those your technologies very well, but I'd love to just kind of give everyone a refresher about some of the amazing technologies and products point our offers, everything from LCD, LF, ultra narrow bezel, LED. What give us a sense of the breadth of the portfolio. Sure. I mean, you you nailed it. We're we're a full line display manufacturer. We'd started back in the eighties as an OEM of LCD screens. That legacy carries on today with a full line of desktop monitors and desktop touch. We go into your larger format displays for commercial applications. We offer those in touch environments as well as vandal resistant and and protected displays. Then we move into LCD video walls, which put Planor on the map for in my life, our Gen three Matrix line carries on. And then LED, I think, is where everyone's most excited talking about today with a full lineup of solutions in our LED offerings. So with that full lineup of solutions you're talking about, obviously, Planar can cater to a wide range of applications, a wide range of verticals. So can you talk a little bit about kind of the breadth of applications that you serve as some of the the verticals that you best in or that are most prevalent in terms of your products? Sure. Well, again, being a full line display manufacturer, we we fit into applications across the board. We've mentioned gravitating into LED walls and LED lend to larger installations, larger screen sizes, I should stay for our installations. And so, you know, command and control environments are where we see the biggest video walls, but even into corporate applications where a ninety eight inch display isn't just big enough for that executive boardroom where we're delivering a hundred and thirty five and a hundred and sixty five inch, you know, flawless pictures into, you know, this summer, we had a great some some unpaid for marketing during Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial, where they were all conveniently stationed in front of a plane arm monitor in that courthouse. But, yeah, we're we're in everything from higher education, corporate, military applications. We even have high end residences that use LED in their theaters. So I I think you probably would agree with me that one of the real virtues of our industry is that it's ever changing. It's ever evolving. You never go to a show like Vista com tech expo a year after you're into the exact same thing. So we're seeing for example, I would say the rise of LED. It's taking LCD's place in some respects, although certainly not in our respects. What are some of the changes you're seeing, some of the trends you have your eye on, that ever evolving nature of our industry you have your eye on? LED being the newest technology, the ones we're discussing. It's where we're seeing the the biggest strides and advancements in it. And I I think what's most exciting about it now is just seeing how it is rapidly changing in cost and availability. And and and in chewing out more and more of the projector or LCD video wall markets. And a lot of that's got to do with just efficiencies in manufacturing and the new technologies that we're putting into these displays. You know, LED walls or LED video walls are not new. They've been around for decades. You know, Times Square and football stadiums is where we've seen them the longest. What's changed is their optimization for up close viewing and for indoor applications. Indoor usually leads to up close. And so what that requires is is facing the pixels closer and closer together. So you could be with an arm length an arm's length away from it, and it still appear as clear as our phones and televisions are. And that's where we are already today. New advancements in in what's called micro LED very small diodes. The smaller they get, the more challenge when they get to integrate. We've advanced that technology with you know, the way that we're manufacturing these things. In the past, every pixel would be soldered to the board. Now this is the nerd talk, but this is what differentiates the technologies out there. In the past, every pixel gets soldered to the board. Every pixel has four solder bonds. When you get under one millimeter, those solder bonds become incredibly small and fragile. Making the installations very technical and quite frankly delicate. So the new technologies are are direct light ultra We manufacture a sub assembly that is four pixels that are already soldered into a little component package itself. And now that is what's going on to the board. Creating far more resilience in these sub one millimeter pitches where we're in market now with point seven and point six millimeters on that product as well. And as far as picture quality goes, over a thousand next peak peak brightness and supporting HDR. We've had people stop by. We have an instance of it installed at the booth today, and we're getting folks stopping by saying it's the best picture they've seen on these types of technologies and It's just reassuring us that we're doing the right things with the right stuff. Well, those ultra ultra tight pixel pitches certainly grabbed my attention. It's exciting see what what vendors like what playing are creating in terms of those really, really narrow pixel pitches. You mentioned micro LED, that's also something that kind of perks up my attention whenever something crosses my inbox as an editor. You want to go a little bit more into micro LED and what its future might hold? Sure. Well, so when when we say micro LED, what we're talking about is the actual diameter of the LEDs themselves in the actual product. So we have it defined as under one hundred micrometers in its diameter. So our DLU point nine point seven and point six are all using that's fine of an LED. It creates a smoother picture, and it's where we're getting our our incredible picture quality from in those products. What I see is is exciting in it is that this should increase to scale. Right? So if this technology is driven by the cost of manufacturing it, where you're assembling a pixel at a time versus now we're leading these you know, we're leading with these little sub assemblies. We're now placing four pixels at a time. And so we're, you know, I think the the goal or where the dreams of these things going is where their their cost effectiveness is easily starting to replace any of the other options, making them more available for us in our personal lives eventually. Right now, they're pretty exclusive to corporations and in higher red facilities, folks with substantial purses for these investments. But I think the long term the long term, we're gonna see these become likely alternates to the big screens in our base basements and family rooms. Well, I think clearly in the conversation we've had so far, you've proven yourself to be very adept observer and analyst of the display industry. So I wanna kinda try to take advantage of your prognosticating abilities. What is the future going to hold? Is it gonna be even finer pixel pitches? Is it gonna be broader adoption? What do you think the next three, four, five, six years is going to be like? I think that we're gonna still well, it's a great question. With the pitches that we're already getting down to in the point seven and point six, Physically, it doesn't seem like there's much more sense to get beyond that because the viewing distance you know, this comes down to viewing distance and picture sizes. So a point six millimeter looks as clear as a television screen from about six feet away. But, you know, LCD screens also look as clear as televisions from six feet away. So unless you're you're creating a very large room as very close distances, doesn't really make sense to be in that technology. So I think it's gonna be broader adoption. You know, as the more mature pitches, the one twos, the one fives, continue to come more cost effective. We'll see them more widely replace other technologies and be used more frequently. So if this is kind of piqued people's interest, they want to delve more into what Planar offers, to display solutions in general, what resource might you recommend they go you to go a little bit deeper. Well, plain art dot com is a remarkable resource. And then on plain art dot com, you will find a list of our showrooms. We're currently operating fifteen showrooms in cities across the country. We have one serving the Philly market based in Norris Town, PA. We've got far four large video walls built out there, as well as what we call a pixel pitch comparison wall. Which is an array from point seven millimeters all the way out to a two point five. So you can really see the difference on how these pitches impact your viewing since resolution and performance. And between, you know, visiting our website or getting into a showroom, you should have any questions in all your curiosities answered. Well, thank you so much, Michael, for sharing your insights with us sharing your wisdom with us. It was a really informative conversation. I appreciate you being here on tech talks. My pleasure. Thanks for the time. Thought that was a great interview, and the insights from Michael were spot on. I've really enjoyed working with Michael and Planar over the last couple of years. We've done some extremely exciting DirectView LED projects together and way more to come. Another close partner of ours, Our second platinum sponsor of the Vistcom tech expo was Lagrand, Grand AV. Dan Friese talks with Alan Jacobson from Lagrand about how their helping organizations get access. To robust conferencing solutions in the in different spaces. This is like where permanent might be in question. And versatility is important. And especially now, there's still uncertainty about how employees might return to work. Alan touches on mobile card solutions in those spaces, the scalability of AV over IP and what that means. And then also their tempo mounting and storage solution for conference rooms. Alright. Back to our favorite editor in chief with commercial integrator Dan Friese to take it away. Happy to be here at VISTAcom tech expo on tech talks, and I'm happy to be joined by you, Alan Jacobson, who is solutions engineer with Legronde AV. Thank you for being here on tech talks at vista com tech expert. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. So we have a lot to talk about. Let's get right into it. Okay. What sort of trends are you seeing when it comes to the surge in more need for conferencing space? So what we saw last year and we're still seeing is carts because I think everyone's not sure exactly how people are gonna come back, how many days they're gonna come back. So I think what we're seeing is a lot of people are still buying carts because that way they can put it up. They can eventually mount it exactly where they want when they decide what they want, but we're still seeing a lot of carts with complete systems embedded on the cart. So are we talking more about new spaces, existing spaces? Where are we primarily focusing? So Last year, it was more new. So we saw a lot of people preparing for people to come back. And this year, there's some of that, but what we're also seeing is people are reconfiguring existing spaces. So we're seeing a lot more reconfiguration at this point. Recon configuration and what I I've just visited a couple companies as well. And they're not sure, like, people will be coming back, but they want a lot of open spaces and kind of a gathering in a bigger area. Like maybe smaller groups, but in a bigger area. So we see it more kind of where you can modify it and change it when needed. So a lot of people have heard of, you know, the so called easy button. People want things to be as simple as possible. What would you say is your go two solution that should be in every video conference room. So what we use, what we have here and and other manufacturers, I would say the go to would be AV over IP solution. So what that is is you're running your audio and video over IP network And so we have what's called our easy IP solution. What's nice about that, anyone's brand, but ours is it's six spandable. So it can be small or large. You can make it as big as you want or as small as you want, and you have complete control remotely. On that topic of small versus large. Obviously, there are different factors to bear in mind if you have kind of a small single room solution versus a large multi room solution or spread across a campus kind of a solution. What are some factors that go into that? So for single room, that's a lot easier. If it's just a couple small rooms or even a large room. You can stand you can customize those. But when you're doing a larger mass deployment, larger scale, you really want the core to be the same and then just expand depending on the size of the space that you're trying to fill. In terms of considerations that you have when you're selecting solutions, specifically for office spaces, for campus deployments, What are some of those considerations that people should keep top of mind when they're approaching those? Again, I'm talking about office spaces, campus deployments, those kind of applications and solution areas. So in my new role as solutions engineer, we help end users design specific applications or any applications. So the first thing I will do is say, okay, when does this need to be installed? And I will design in component that I know they can get. So that's the first consideration is what is available on the market? What do we have available that we can ship? And then the second thing would be is really is to understand all the facets of that installation. The product manager of the purchasing agent and the installers to make sure that it's something that they can do fairly easily, fairly quickly. So my last question right off the top is, can you give me a specific solution and how it would fit your considerations? So for us, we have a product called the tempo, and that product is basically it's a conference room in a box. So in a sense that if you're not sure about where everything needs to go and you need to make spaces for everyone in this conference room, whatever, we have a product called the tempo, just right over there. But we have this product basically is two vertical upright pieces of metal that tethered to the wall, but all the weight is on the floor. And by doing this, you very easily can put up up to a two hundred a hundred diagonal display up to two hundred pounds. On the wall, you don't have to move anything. You don't have to get facilities put backing in. So literally and then it has a cabinet. So literally within two hours to four hours, you can have a complete room done, run cables with overflow raceway to your table, And then in six months, if they want to change, when you remove it, it's just four little holes in the wall. So we've been very we've had it out for three years, through the pandemic and it's been very, very successful. Very impressive. So, you know, whether you're you're tech tech talk audiences, commercial integrator audience, is people who wanna know more about La Grande, these solutions, more about thought leadership, more about outfitting conference spaces, campuses, things of that nature. Where could they go or how could they get some additional information if they want to go a little bit deeper? So if they go to our website, the website will have if you have help, you need help, whether it's solutions based. We have on our website, we have a ton of different solutions already designed for customers. But in their it's very, very easy to find where to go and how to get help. And most territories have a territory sales manager, so they can always go to that person for all of our brands. Well, thank you so much, Alan Jacobson for a really informative conversation. Alan Jacobson is, of course, a solutions engineer with LeBron Davey. Thank you for being here on tech talks at Vista com tech expo and joining me. Thank you very much. Thank you. I was so happy to have Lagrand as a platinum sponsor this year. They've tr they truly have a portfolio of products that cover such a wide range of needs for our clients, and they've absolutely been a go to partner of ours. So so far, we've covered high impact displays from PlanR and Look Rand's offerings that bring AB conferencing and all of this peripherals together in a wide range of spaces. But our next sponsor, sitting down with Dan Ferec, editor in chief of Commercial and Greater. Is a premier manufacturer of audio and control solutions that kind of round out a pleat high quality conferencing ecosystem. So back to Dan for his final interview at the live tech talks corner at the vista contact Expo twenty twenty two. Hello. This is Dan Farisi, editor in chief with commercial integrator, so happy to be on tech talks at Vistacom Tech Expo and especially happy to be joined by Mike Crawford, who is area sales manager with CUSis. Thank you for being here, Mike. I appreciate you taking some time to chat with us today. Alright. Yeah. Thank you. And thanks to VISTACon for putting on this show. It's a great show. QSC, Qces is is really glad to be here. Just want to start off by talking a little bit about QSC and who we are and the company name. My my shirt says CUSis on it and some people were wondering, you know, they come into the booth and they see QUSis. They see QSC and wondering what what that's all about. QSC is the the name of the company overall CUSis has now become a division of the company. And CUSis is also this main platform that has been growing over since two thousand nine when it started with QSE, and it's grown to the point now where queues has has become a division of the company. The basics of the platform, it started out as being audio DSP, and now it's grown to include video and control. So CUSis is now full audio video and control platform. And the the platform itself has been doing really well. Despite part shortages and and the things that have happened over the last couple years, we've been able to deliver a lot of product And some of the reason for that is because we the cusis platform is based around a lot of standards type things like we use Intel chips, It's it's a Linux based operating system, standards, I triple e standards. And so that's that's helped the the the cusis grow over the last couple years with it being very standard parts that we can get. It's all running on layer three network, and Q LAN is the name of of our protocol that the audio video and control runs on within the CUSis platform. So we can also run a Dante on over that network, we can receive Dante up over the network and also AES sixty seven. Well, thank you for that information about platform, obviously very, very informative, and we've been hearing more and more about CUSis over the last few years. And it doesn't surprise me. It's kind of being come recognized as its own division at this point. Given the power of that platform. Let's shift the conversation a bit to talk about collaboration. That's really the name of the game these days. Everyone is talking about how to collaborate effectively Teams, Zoom. How can QSC and Cuses support those very, very common and prevalent platforms? Yeah. I mean, one of the things why CUSis has been so successful over the last couple years is because, you know, we've really kinda grabbed ahold of that technology and offered a really good solution for really all the collaboration that's out there. You know, the biggest one is is Teams, Microsoft. We are Microsoft certified. We have a number of products that are certified. So a number of the cores, cameras, the technology that kinda to to build out a system in a space, it is is certified for teams. And we're we're adding components, you know, on a on a regular basis. Our Core nano one ten f cores, the MB thirty two, our USB bridges, SPA amps, cameras are all certified. And then we have a USB bridge connectivity into a computer for that. With with the team's experience, you we have a license that you can get that basically opens up the second page experience in Teams. If you're going to Teams room and with that opening of that second page, then you can kinda program that page to for for kind of room control or audio features that you need, and it kind of has the look and feel teams in that on that touch panel that you're using. So yeah, I mean, and and Google Meet, we're also certified with with Google Meet pretty much all of our products are certified with them. And so we're we have a team of folks that's kind of always working to develop and and and add new features to that capability. What's a great way of showing that QSE and QUS is kinda meets people where they are and services the platforms that people are using every day. Let's talk a little bit about more about what is new at q. So I have three particular things on my mind. I believe There's the first microphone by QSC, which you might wanna refer to, also the SPAQ amp, and then PoE speakers. Might you want to touch briefly on each of those? Yeah. And and that's kind of the exciting thing for me is that there's new products coming out And we've kind of behind the scenes. We've seen a lot of this product getting developed and it's been a little slow because of the part shortages. But the the new microphone, we we had that in Infocom. It's finally now, you can order it and it's over the next month, we'll we'll see people ordering them and they're they're gonna be delivering in in November. So the new microphone we're pretty excited about. I mean, really designed and built from the ground up by QSC employees. And it's a a tabletop microphone. I don't I don't have one with me, but there'll be a nice new microphone that is part it'd be part of the cusis network. So it's a peripheral plugs into via network. The PoE speakers, we do have them here in the booth. They're in stock and shipping and there's a there's a soundbar, a ceiling speaker, and a pendant POE speaker. The nice thing about that right now is amplifiers maybe a little bit harder to to come by with the part shortages. The PoE speakers are right for a lot of solutions where maybe you just have need a few speakers in a space. And you don't need an amp then. Maybe you already have a switch. You're plugging that in and you have you have a speaker in that space. So they're doing pretty well for us. The SPA Q amp we we sell a ton of the little SPA amplifiers It's a small amplifier that goes into smaller rooms, and traditionally those amplifiers have an analog input. Well, now we put a Q LAN connection on those. So now you don't have to worry about analog input to get into that amplifier. So that's something that people have been asking for and we finally are delivering that. And a nice little kind of bonus for that amplifier is it does have to mic line input or output channels on the amp. So you have that kind of one ramp of audio, analog audio in or out. If you need it in that space. So nice little added feature there. And just a real quick reminder on a couple other new things that just been announced this week, there is now a virtual core for cusis that you can you know, software that you can put onto a standard computer, and it will give you control features. Starting off with control right now. So that's brand new. And then a new core has been announced. It's the six ten which is going to be a it's a Dell server, basically. So it's a a one r u server that kind of fits in and will operate kind of with the same specs as the five ten -- The processor. Well, clearly, there's a whole lot going on at CUSis. It's an exciting time with so many launches, so many developments. Let's talk a little bit more about cuesys as a platform. The idea of kind of unifying audio, video, and control within a single system what are the benefits of that kind of unification? Yeah. I mean, the big thing is is that, you know, traditionally, Cuses has been really the go to DSP for large installations, and that's how it's grown. And there's a single piece of software called designer that you do your design in for audio. And the guys who've learned that software, they like it. It's easy to use. And now as you're adding video and control components, you're using that same piece of software to do that. So a lot of guys really like that. They don't have to learn any new programming. Once they have designer and they understand it, they can bring in easily bring in a touch panel and they're working on it in the same environments. That's that's one of the big advantages of kind of bringing it all together. The other thing is is that those peripherals if you use a a a QSC camera and you're bringing that that camera into the system, it really comes it's a plug and play type of thing where you don't have to add any there's it's not hard to figure out how to kinda add a camera and it comes up in the system. Auto auto is, you know, kind of you can easily see it there in the system. And then another thing is we have our enterprise manager software that kind of ties it all together where if you have systems out there in a in a campus wide space, enterprise manager can allow you to kind of monitor and manage those systems remotely You can you have the ability to kinda go in and take control of systems for help desk type situations. Monitor if there's a problem, and also update the the file itself remotely from wherever you are. So So we've talked a bit about the the CUSis platform. It's virtues and its benefits, some of the new products that you're particularly excited about. I did want to close talking about the NV thirty to video endpoint and anything you'd like to add about that. Yeah. Just maybe going into a little bit more detail about one one particular device. A lot of people don't realize what we have as far as video. They're they're really starting to learn it. The MV thirty two is our video endpoint. And it's kind of a Swiss army knife device. It's it's the one endpoint that we have, and it can work as a it can be an encoder. Can it has three HDMI inputs on it. It can encode three simultaneous ninety twenty ten eighty by sixty inputs onto the network. In another mode, it can decode two HDMI out at nineteen twenty ten eighty sixty. It can do a single four k in or out. And then there's a third mode where it actually works as a core. And in that mode, you don't have any encoding or decoding, but DMI work as a three by two matrix switch. So in smaller rooms, it can be it can handle your audio, video, and control in a kind of a small affordable processor that, you know, I think that as time goes by, we're gonna see more more people kind of doing more video with CUSis? Well, Mike, you've given us a lot to think about, obviously, we're learning more and more about cuses how it's building out as you say, as a division within QSC, and the platform gaining more and more traction, the products, the endpoint device, if people wanna go a little bit deeper, learn a little bit more, find out beyond what you've given us, where can they go? What can they do? Yeah. I mean, obviously, you can go to cousas dot com. We do have we do we have split the website now and so QSC, it used to be one website. Now there's a Cucis website and there's a QSC Pro. So that's the two divisions of the company. There's now two websites for it. And within there, there's a whole section for training Cucis training is available online. Really some of the best training in the in the industry right now, we have some guys that are really funny to do it, and they're known in the industry for their training. So a lot of that stuff's available online. And also Regionally here, I'm the guy that covers Pennsylvania and Delaware, so I'm available anytime. Well, you've been very generous with your time, Mike. Thank you for being on tech talks here at Vistacom, tech Expo joining commercial integrator and me. I appreciate the time investment. Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, there you have it, everyone. I want to give a sincere thank you to Dan Farisi, editor in chief at commercial Integrator for joining us at the VistaCom tech expo and being a guest host on today's episode and taking the time to sit down and dive deep with our sponsor at the Tech Tok's corner. So coming up soon on our next two episodes of tech unraveled, parts two and three of this tech talk series will feature our own conversations with our gold sponsors at the to contact Expo twenty twenty two. Be sure to join us next time for those two episodes. And after that, where we continue to unravel tech in the pro AV world. And just remember, you can't spell tech unraveled without AV. Bye everyone.