by Fabio Varolo, Sales Manager, FOR-A Europe
The core technologies have moved on at ISE
“ISE – oh that’s the AV show”. That’s what people used to say. I visited again this year, and I would say that the atmosphere has changed completely.
The core technologies have moved on – we carry around on our phones cameras that just a few years ago would have been considered top-end broadcast quality. Devices can do high performance at a reasonable price point: what makes the difference is what we do with it.
Take a PTZ camera, a robotic pan, tilt and zoom camera that once would have been used for surveillance, or maybe for simple live relays of a stage presentation.
Because the camera inside is now 4K broadcast quality and the mechanics are digitally controlled and silky smooth in operation, it can do a lot more. If you visit the news studio of a premium broadcaster, the chances are you will see a PTZ camera – exactly the same model that an AV installer would specify, but doing a very different job.
That is the trend that came over very strongly at ISE this year. A bigger market means economy of scale. That means everyone can do more for less money, which is a win whether you are an AV business looking for uncompromised HD or 4K, or a broadcaster looking to streamline production and workflows.
People were talking about streaming, cloud applications, remote production and workflows
That is why there are an increasing number of what we would once have called broadcast vendors exhibiting at ISE, and many more attending. For me, it was a great opportunity to have real conversations with our partners.
That includes established collaborators, like Brainstorm, ClassX, Alfalite and Cinegy. It also meant I could shop around for new partnerships, like manufacturers of industrial PCs and boards that we might integrate into large-scale systems.
The developments in the industry, and in technology, have made ISE a really fascinating marketplace. I think it will become more and more important for broadcast vendors, and indeed for broadcast system integrators, in the coming years.
