Idling in the Park in InfoComm’s Central Hall, attendees gather to ease aching feet and chat about the hottest show buzz. I took a stroll among the food trucks to listen in and see what trends are making a splash this year.
What seems to be the biggest area of growth in the AV industry today?
Hope Roth, Riordan Brothers Integration: Definitely integrated building systems. These include digital signage, lights, HVAC and more, all controlled by a facility manger from a central location. Customer education is a big problem, because they don’t know what’s possible. We can already integrate conference rooms, doing a whole building can take years, but it is really the same techniques, just scaled up.
Gail Haghjoo, Hall Research: AV-over-IP, but it’s not good for everything. HDBaseT is up there for sure. Control is also getting popular as it becomes more user-friendly, though it can get expensive. People want it to be plug and play, and we often have to massage our engineers’ ideas to a format that meets those needs.
Josh Petru, Hall Research: USB-C is definitely something that needs more attention. Compared to USB-B, it’s way more powerful. It’s going to be able to do everything. It’s going to have enough throughput to be able to do video as well as the usual USB tasks. More companies need to be looking at it. It’s emerging, and it’s very early in its lifecycle.
