I have just returned from the Integrated System China exhibition being held here in Beijing. This show is dominated by large videowall display systems aimed mainly at control room applications. You want a 2×2? How about a 4×20? Want the quality and reliability of a foreign-made system or are you shopping for a less expensive system? Step right in - there are many options for you.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

Leaders such as Christie, Sony, Mitsubishi, Vtron, 3D Perception, DNP and Stewart were all there, but Barco was not. Control room systems were being shown by Christie, Mitsubishi and Vtron, but absent were companies like Hitachi and Eyevis. On the other hand, I saw a bunch of new companies in the Chinese market I had never heard of before like Dartop (www.dartop.net), Sali (www.sali.cn), Great Quality for You (www.gqy.com.cn) and Jupiter (www.jupiter.com.cn) - all offering videowall solutions. Another, Dahao Electronics (www.det.com.cn), offered a video wall using the Orion 84" module that bonds four 42" PDP screens together to create a flat video wall product. I even saw US-based Sysview Technologies (www.sysviewtech.com) at the show with an LCOS-based 16:9 aspect video wall product - something they feel will be very attractive for the upcoming 2008 Olympics.

Video walls are popular here for installations like transportation centers, security centers, utilities, etc. The homegrown companies typically buy DLP-based rear-projection light engines from Taiwanese companies like Premier, Coretronic or Delta, but only Premier was at the show. Sysview wants to do the same thing with their LCOS light engine.

As in other parts of the world, the control room business in China is conducted through system integrators. But what is different in China is that the government controls almost all this work.

The market in China for professional display systems is young and not so mature according to most people. "The China market is like the US market 15-20 years ago," said Gary Fuller, VP of Business Products at Christie. "They are hungry for technology."

Jacob Christensen, International Product Manager from DNP Denmark, echoed this sentiment. "The Chinese are eager to learn about this technology." Christensen explained that he does training for dealers and system integrators all over the world. "In the US or Europe, we get 20-30 people in our classroom. In China, we get 150 to 500 people."

Companies like 3D Perception, is also trying to crack the China control room market by offering a front projection solution compared to the traditional rear-projection cube approach. Here, the idea is to leverage their expertise in warping and blending, honed in the simulation and visualization markets, to offer large display areas with fairly low cost front projectors and simple screens. "This solution is attractive for the system integrators because it offers higher margins," said Leo Liao, Director of China for 3D Perception.

"And bigger is definitely better in China," continued Christensen. The buildings, halls and conference rooms are large and there are so many people here that the size of display solutions tends to be very big." That must be music for DNP’s and just about everyone else’s ears.

But doing business in China is a process. DNP has been here for 15 years and is doing well, but 3D Perceptions is just starting to make headway after 3 years in the area. It is a lucrative market, but if you want to do business here, plan on it taking time to develop.

That’s all for now. Time to join one of the several evening party events.