The annual Integrated Systems Exhibition (ISE) in Amsterdam has grown ever larger and more important in the What You See and Hear calendar. Steve spent two days at ISE 2016, meeting with our suppliers and looking at the latest innovations within our industry.
The key technologies that we were excited by were primarily in video presentation.
OLED screens are, finally, becoming more affordable and the performance is just staggering. LG have led the way until now and continue to do so, however Panasonic are now snapping at their heels and their screens are quite astonishing with black levels that really do have to be (not!) seen to be believed.
Today it seems that nearly every display device is 4K and more and more now support HDR which, in our opinion, is a
hugely exciting development. There’s still confusion and some obfuscation from the industry on what 4K truly is, and the content is still lacking. Beyond Sony Pictures, most film productions are still not shot in 4K and even fewer are using HDR. But when they get it right, it is quite mesmerising. There are many challenges to overcome in our installations with 4K, but with the help of Crestron DigitalMedia distribution we are confident that we are creating systems that are ready to adapt to the changing needs of the coming years.
Talking of Sony, once again, the Sony VPL-VW5000ES laser projector stole the show with one of the best demonstrations Steve has ever seen.
ISE 2016 was also an opportune time for Steve to spend time with many of our friends and suppliers within the industry to discuss our new showroom and some of the technology we will have on demonstration. We were very keen to have Stealth Acoustic Invisible speakers in the showroom as they’ve been a revelation for us over the past couple of years. We have a number of projects under our belts with them now, including one with over 60 units in the main house alone, and we’ve been amazed by the performance they have consistently delivered and the company have helped and supported us in any way possible. We’re really pleased to have been able to incorporate their highest performance invisible speaker into the showroom and look forward to amazing you all with them. We will have more news over the coming weeks on other technologies we’ve incorporated into the new showroom.
We were delighted to see that our main lighting control supplier, Lutron, have started to ship the long-awaited Palladiom keypads. We have seen prototypes and development models over the past year or so and we’re really excited to see the finished product. They look and feel amazing in use and we’re very much looking forward to using them on some future projects.
Overall, ISE 2016 was a huge success. It’s attendance was up once again, officially positioning it as the world’s largest AV and systems integration trade show. It reconfirmed that our industry is in great shape and ready to take on the challenges that ever increasing demands place on it, particularly in the video sector.
It’s always great to take a couple of days out of the day-to-day work and get truly excited and inspired by the technologies and the passion of those who create them for us. Here’s to another great ISE show in 2017!
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