Things that happened this month while you were on a ladder:
Diversified bought Technical Innovation for an undisclosed sum. According to their self- reported (projected) revenues from 2015 that’s roughly $400m combined. That makes them #2 to AVI-SPL, and it bumps the ever-growing Whitlock to third. Initially it seems like a logical match—I’m sure they competed, but they do quite different kinds of work. The task that now falls to TI’s Mike Landrum is the time-honored challenge of herding the AV cats into a blended family.
Crestron dropped out of CEDIA (but not out of residential).
Has this kind of thing ever happened before in recorded AV history? Where the 800-lb gorilla pulled up its planet-sized tent and left a great big hole in the skyline of a tradeshow? Oh, wait. It’s double ironic considering the number of years that CEDIA CEO Vin Bruno attended CEDIA as a Crestron representative. But, as we’ve seen in the past, when “philosophical differences” as Bruno put it, come up, it can be hard to avoid parting ways. Crestron’s director of residential programs Ami Wright says there will soon be a new VP of residential, and put the emphasis on everything Creston is planning to do for the channel, while remaining a proud member of CEDIA, if not an exhibitor.
A cheap USB-C cable fried Benson Leung’s Chromebook Pixel and two USB power delivery analyzers.
Fried them dead. Leung is a Google engineer who has built quite a reputation as a cable vigilante, bravely testing all the crap cables out there to confirm the danger so we didn’t have to. He is now the scout with the arrow in his back and USB-C (David Pogue’s technology of the year for 2015) is having a rough go out of the gate. Apple is also doing a worldwide recall on it’s USB-C cables so even spending ridiculous sums on white cables is no guarantee. I’m sure USB-C (and Leung, and Apple) will all survive this setback, but there will be gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in the meantime.
Also this month, Matrox came out with the first 9-output single slot output graphics card, the first 4K Blu-Ray shipped, as did the first Atmos soundbar (begging the question of how Atmos actually fits in a soundbar).
Oh and PS, some scientists found Einstein’s gravitational waves.
CORRECTION(S): In last month’s issue in our Mounts and Racks roundup we erroneously referred to Peerless-AV as Peerless. Due to a proofreading error we wrongly attributed the OE8 outdoor speaker. It is a SpeakerCraft product. We regret both errors and I appreciate the vigilance and feedback.
