UK distributor PSCo was the first we met to comment on the massive growth of LEDs’ popularity in the market. Stuart Holmes, CEO of the company, said that the money that PSCo takes through LED is still smaller than LCD rental (around £5 million ($7.6 million) versus £12 million ($18.4 million)) – but between 30% and 40% growth is predicted for LED in 2016, compared to flat performance for LCD displays.
PSCo has been expanding this year, since being acquired by Midwich in April. The company has reduced its LED display lead time significantly, as it keeps a certain amount of 1.9mm, 2.5mm and 3.9mm stock on hand. Previously, displays were made to order and supplied from China; it took about 60 days for the displays to reach a customer! Absen makes all of PSCo’s LED displays, but Holmes did let slip that a new partner, “doing something very different from Absen”, will be stocked in November or December.
On the subject of new partners, PSCo is now working with RGBlink, which makes infrastructure products like scalers and switchers. The companies first met at Plasa 2014. Holmes said that this partnership has helped his firm to solve a problem: namely, that infrastructure products were too expensive! Customers could purchase displays and players for a relatively low cost, but large scalers, routers and so on would cost as much as $50,000. With the RGBlink partnership, costs have been reduced.
James Heron is the co-founder of Green Hippo, which makes media players and servers for the rental & staging (‘Hippotizer’) and pro-AV (‘AViary’) markets. PSCo is one of the company’s distribution partners, and was using the AViary products to send content to every display on the stand.
A key feature of Green Hippo’s products is their ability to be used to manipulate content in real-time. Heron showed an example, scaling, moving and freely rotating images on an LED videowall. The players (Par4Keet, for up to 12MP resolution, and 2Kan, for content up to 3MP) are now in their second generation. New features include a lockable screen; the ability to host interactive or bespoke software; the Videomapper plugin for content manipulation; splitter support; and the ability to synchronise multiple units with a time code.
Because some users will prefer to have the AViary players hidden, Green Hippo has developed the Bird Keeper software. This enables a tablet to be used for control – and a free Windows Tablet is bundled with every AViary product sold. PSCo is offering the AViary players with 0% finance.
Finally, new Samsung video wall displays were being shown on the stand: the UD55E, UD55E, ME95C and OM75D
