Thanks to the publishing team for getting so much done to the issue while I was at ISE and looking at the bright side, the long delay to my flight home and the time for de-icing the plane allowed some unexpected connected time as we tried to get ready to publish.
ISE was once again a busy event although I had a few grumbles. Not only was the Wi-Fi in the press office completely useless, the reception of mobile signals was so bad that there was no real way to work, although the hospitality and endless coffee was very appreciated. Still, a press room without good connectivity really misses the point!
The show’s app was also poor. It forced a registration, which is a pain and it took me two days to find it as it didn’t appear if you searched for it in the Google Play store. The magic phrase was ISE Europe. However, when we’d found it and downloaded it (after the registration), it didn’t seem to allow the marking of favourites, so was useless for our purposes. These days, at big shows, I tend to get the app, mark as ‘favourite’ those exhibitors that I plan to visit and gradually de-favourite them (if that’s a verb!) as I see them. That gives the joy of gradually seeing the list get shorter. Instead, it was back to printing out spreadsheets and marking companies off with a pen. How quaintly 20th century!
Having got that grumpiness off my chest, the show was interesting, although there was little of great significance in the display area that I saw, although there was progress in pretty well every area. LEDs were, of course, everywhere and I also saw more improvements in large area touch. Although some panel suppliers showed some innovation (more in our full report), there was little real innovation in any LCD-related display products. Part of the reason for that, of course, is that LCD is pretty good these days.
LEDs got better and both Matt and I will be giving you all the background. COB LED architecture got closer to the mainstream and Samsung was very, very focused on promoting LED. The company had a ‘first’ and set up a small LED cinema screen on its booth that was showing 3D on the system, the first time that the company has done this, almost publicly, at least. It was pretty good, but not perfect. I’m still not convinced by active 3D and the demonstration used that technology.
LG was promoting OLED, of course, but no other supplier or integrator, at least the ones that I spoke to, sees OLED as an important technology for ProAV. In fact, I would say that the comment that I heard most was that LG must be desperate to promote OLED.
Anyway, we’ll have a big report for you in a few days when we have it done. We will be publishing online as we get reports written up, so if you want to keep an eye on our coverage, keep an eye on the website.
Bob
