The material was prepared by the editors of the site "Video+Conference".
ISE 2020, the largest exhibition for all participants in the business audio/video market, has ended in Amsterdam. She managed to slip before the events with the coronavirus took a serious turn and the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was canceled. The most noticeable for ISE was the refusal to participate in the always spectacular LG, in its place it was necessary to quickly organize a food court.
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Last year we already reviewed ISE 2019, about the history of the exhibition and quantitative indicators, so as not to repeat. "Changeable Amsterdam weather", as it was written there, remained true to itself. This time we were met by Hurricane Kiara with howling winds, warnings, flight cancellations and other labor joys, but everything worked out.
Traditionally, we will talk about our own, that is, about video conferencing, corporate communications and collaboration. This year we shot a lot of videos, it will be much more fun. But everything will not fit into one article, for details, come to us in telegrams or on the website.
Start over. Below is the sacred moment of construction, when there are no visitors yet, but the contours of the future event are already outlined.
Unification of communications
This year, Microsoft Teams and Zoom rule the show at the stands of the Unified Communications Hall. Equipment manufacturers certify their equipment for them. Software vendors aim to achieve a zen of compatibility with them so that users can call their users and invite them to their meetings. Among manufacturers of peripheral equipment, Logitech rules.
New solutions for meeting rooms are built mainly on Linux, most of them on Android. This opens up opportunities to run different applications and services on the same hardware.
The space of most booths is divided into zones according to the size of the meeting rooms that you want to build. If you need a solid conference room, they offer one solution, if a small meeting room for three - another. At the same time, it is difficult for the uninitiated to catch the difference between the booths of software and hardware manufacturers. They all advertise kits consisting of each other's products. We could unite and save a lot by buying 4-5 stands, as it is now fashionable, according to “life situations”.
Microsoft booth
У Microsoft has a stand dedicated to Teams. They demonstrate integration with technology partners that make certified equipment under the Microsoft Teams Rooms standard - Crestron, Jabra, Lenovo, Logitech, Poly, Sennheiser, Yealink.
Plus there is another stand, joint with Lenovo. It features Lenovo ThinkSmart workstations that connect to Teams with a single click. Of the novelties - a small Android tablet with wireless connection to "expand" the possibilities of your workplace. Can be installed horizontally and vertically. It is positioned as suitable, including for offices with loose jobs. Whoever came first, that and Lenova.
Lenovo ThinkSmart View
Zoom has taken a very small space this time at the last minute with the Norwegian team Neat, a Tanberg legacy who now builds hardware for them. They say that the goal was to do something between expensive codecs and user laptops that are not always suitable for video conferencing. — soundbar with microphones and camera Neat Bar + touch control panel Neat Pad. It is very easy to set up in a few steps, it took us about five minutes right on the stand. Costs $2500, already on sale. See the video for more details.
Cisco keeps a little apart and builds its own ecosystem. They even unexpectedly erected blank a la brick walls at the booth from their neighbors Pexip and Poly. Behind a small window in one of these walls was deployed for complete immersion in the workflow. She makes a lasting impression. On both sides, the situation is synchronized, furniture is selected, people feel like they are in the same room. The good old telepresence is more alive than all the living.
Cisco Webex Room Panorama
If you're a manager or just love cool equipment that's fun to use, watch the Cisco Webex Desk Pro 5 Minute Video and Collaboration Desktop Terminal.
And if you are just interested in videoconferencing equipment for meeting rooms, then we also have a video about small Cisco Webex Room Kits and new codecs with great features for big money, its .
Google booth
Google, like Microsoft, is pushing its G Suit office ecosystem with a focus on Hangouts Meet video conferencing and the hardware that works with them. A very popular solution, in fact, but not with us.
Curiously, videoconferencing control in Hangouts Meet using the Logitech Tap controller is implemented - enabling speech recognition for displaying subtitles, layouts, chatting right on the screen in the meeting room, recording on Google Drive, pointing the camera. You can drive with us for 4,5 minutes:
Pexip built a huge booth this year and showed a novelty - the Adaptive Composition software service, when, regardless of the capabilities of your camera, the image is scaled and cropped by artificial intelligence. He tries to provide comfort and convenience, as in a normal meeting, when the surfaces of all the tables are at the same level, the heads are plus/minus the same size, and people who stop talking do not suddenly disappear from view. All this is relevant for up to 12 participants, then you still have to swap active with inactive ones, otherwise everyone will not fit on the screen.
Responsive Pexip layout. Three on a gray background below is an example of how wrong
Yealink, in addition to sets certified to work with Zoom, Teams and Skype for Business, brought two completely new MeetingEye 600 and 400 codecs for medium and small meeting rooms (in the video below). They are made in soundbar form factor on Linux.
King of the Periphery Logitech more than traditionally showed its sets for interphones of different sizes both at its booth and at almost all others. Therefore, we did not shoot a separate video about him, you will meet MeetUp, Rally and Tap many times in other videos below and above in the text + there is a selection.
Booth Logitech
Logitech is said to have taken advantage of the showroom bookings at the expense of Lifesize, which he owned for a while. According to the rules of rebooking, the owner company can overwrite the points accumulated by the subsidiary. It's a pretty complex, highly competitive process at the ISE, and Lifesize has a lot of experience with it. Next year, the Logitech booth promises to outshine everyone with its scope in Barcelona.
The situation with booking seats at ISE is generally quite tense. Not everyone could fit into the Unified Communications room. One and a half points matter, just like on an exam. When some companies refused to participate due to the coronavirus, there was a stir and an attempt to redistribute the vacated space. The organizers were forced to forbid everyone to move, and they organized food and leisure on wastelands.
Poly stand
Poly, which is Plantronics+Polycom, brought a "classic" G7500 system: a hardware codec, a choice of EagleEye IV or EagleEye Cube USB camera, a Poly IP microphone, a Bluetooth remote control, and a set of cables. It is positioned as a kit for small and medium-sized conference rooms starting at $5000 with an EagleEye Cube camera.
For larger halls with EagleEye IV, it already costs about $7500. For a serious project, you can take a second camera with a stand, then you get the EagleEye Director system from $10000.
Poly G7500 with EagleEye Director
The G7500 supports third-party cloud communication services such as Zoom, Webex, MS Teams, and so on. You can read more about all the components and features .
The trend for video bars for Android has not bypassed Poly either. They made two interesting devices Studio X30 and X50 at very affordable prices. There is a short video about these models and the TC8 interactive console for setting up and managing conferences:
In general, the topic of managing the negotiation rooms quite noticeably hit the remote controls. The control panel/tablet becomes the standard, by itself as a touchscreen or combined with a codec.
One Scandinavian company even made a spectacular installation on this topic. They develop AV equipment and intuitive meeting room control solutions. The founder is a fighter with infrared remotes that are constantly lost. The company is called Neets.
Soul Cry by Neets
And here, other evil people, under improvised thunders and lightnings, are pouring real water on JBL speakers ...
There were eight exhibitors from Russia this year.
In the video, a tour of the stand of TrueConf, a provider of solutions and equipment for video conferencing and collaboration. The guys brought a new TrueConf Group hardware terminal and announced the future TrueConf MCU.
The rest of the Russian companies are slightly from other, related industries. They didn’t even manage to find everyone at such a huge exhibition, if you are interested, look at the sites.
We've arrived again with its smart home automation platform and developer of power solutions for home audio/video systems .
Five new, not afraid of coronavirus:
— equips business events
— produces advertising structures
— makes creative advertising projects using VR/AR and other new technologies
— offers an AR platform for guides to museums, parks, other objects and events
— develops visualization systems for simulators, computer games
We finish our journey through ISE with the stand of an audio manufacturer beyerdynamic in the style of peace-friendship-gum. They tried to hack reality - they distributed seedlings under the slogan "Unite the People" so that everyone could plant a tree. Offered to grow a brave new world together)
stand beyerdynamic
From the "unreleased", if you are interested in the topic:
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— from LogMeIn in partnership with Dolby. For €3000 speakerphone, Linux codec, whiteboard-reading camera and very smooth panning
And finally, watch a meditative video with the most beautiful moments of the exhibition, there, out of the corner of your eye, you can see a lot of interesting things that we didn’t tell out of harm.
Source: habr.com