Cisco has launched the Spark Board, an interactive edge-lit 55″ LCD with UltraHD (well Cisco said 4K, but we think it doesn’t understand the difference!) with contrast of 4,000:1 and brightness of 350 cd/m². The unit has capacitive touch, uses a bonded front panel and is supplied with a pen. The display has a 12 element microphone array that can record audio from a meeting room of eight to ten people. There’s an integrated UltraHD camera for videoconferencing. As well as HDM connections, the unit has an ethernet port Wi-Fi up to 802.11ac. The display can connect to the Cisco Collaboration Cloud, for which a subscription is required. It can connect to devices that have the Cisco Spark app and can support SIP or Cisco Spark conferencing.
There’s an unusual feature that uses ultrasonics to connect to client devices, although details were thin from the company. As we understand it, this uses the app on a mobile phone to establish a connection.
The board costs $4990 and there’s a subscription cost of $199 per month. A 70″ version will become available later in 2017 at $9,990.
Analyst Comment
We hope to get more details on the ultrasound feature if Cisco is at ISE. (BR)
