June 19, 2008

InfoComm 2008

STEWART FILMSCREENS continues to expand their flagship StarGlas line. Shown below is a huge 214" diagonal 1/2 inch thick StarGlas 60. Steward also showed StarGlas 100 with beveled edges, an interactive touchscreen, and the Walkabout floor mounted high gain unit.









TEMPEST LIGHTING showed their outdoor enclosures for lighting and projectors.
Tempest products now protect Barco R12 or Christie Roadster projectors, as well as moving lights from Martin, High End/Barco, Robe, Clay Paky, SGM, and many others. They have a fully climate contoller system that cycles air and monitors the environment.











DATATON introduced their new Pickup Audio Guide, a sleek little device for audio tours. It is both an MP3 player and an FM receiver with sound reproduced through headphones or the built-in loudspeaker. It's very intuitive, with up to 100 hours of audio easilly downloaded during charging on the dock (shown).




OPTOMA'S handheld projector uses a DLP Pico chipset, and is due out in 2009.







Other exhibits......





























































June 18, 2008

InfoComm 2008 - Pre-opening exhibit floor report

The exhibits open Wednesday morning. My pre- opening reconnaissance of the show floor Tuesday evening (dodging fork lifts and crates) yielded the following info: (sorry... no photos. Some of us still do follow rules)
- Panasonic has fully productized their 103" display as a giant digital signage solution (configured in portrait format). They have three in a side-by-side array, again in portrait mode.

- Tomorrow Evans and Sutherland will be showing what they tout as " the highest resolution video projector". They will have a press release in the morning "detailing E&S’s latest advancement in projection, The E&S Laser Projector (ESLP™), featuring NanoPixel™ technology. The new ESLP with NanoPixel™ technology is the world’s highest resolution video projector, offering a resolution 16 times higher than HD television. "

May 20, 2008




Samsung 31" FHD AMOLED



Samsung 82" Ultra Definition LCD Touchscreen








LG Multivision/Multi-touch High Res LCD
SID 2008
Society for Information Display
Images from Exhibition, May 20, 2008
LA Convention Center

Toshiba LCD Automotive Displays





Samsung Flexible Displays


Microvision RGB laser video projector

Microvision's Pico wallet-size video projector uses RGB lasers to produce an 800x600 image.

April 19, 2008

NAB 2008



Sony Press Conference (Bally's)

Miss Universe 2008 presented Sony's PMW-EX3 HD camcorder ($13000 including lens). Recent Sony HD broadcast firsts were, of course, the Miss Universe Pagent, and the 2007 Indy 500. They also highlighted the burgeoning houses of worship market.
The new BVM L420 42" LCD is an impressive tool for broadcast monitoring... the largest LCD in its class.


Panasonic Press Conference (Planet Hollywood Hotel)
The present
ation opened with a groan, playing the "bringing us together with Panasonic" corporate video that was a re-edit of the pretentious CES pitch. John Beasley, President Broadcast Systems readings from Panasonic teleprompters included the now familiar "eco pledge". I.E. they'll do wonderful things, as long as it doesn't affect their ROI.
Panasonic introduced a new AVC field recorder, and the Varicam 2700 for sports, documentary and other lightweight requirements.

BlackMagic Design Press Conference (South Hall)
Blackmagic's new offerings for NAB include the Broadcast Vision Hub ($14,995) for SDI and control routing. Their Decklink HD Extreme ($995) is now 2K capable, with a lookup table built in. The spiffy little "Video Recorder" ($119) plugs into USB port, providing video capture with scaling/cropping feature built in. They also have five new 3Gb/s mini converters that will auto switch between SD and HD signals. ($495).