Gary Kayye (01:01)
That was weird, I saw you flash like in the middle of the beginning. I don’t know what happened there.

Steph Beckett (01:04)
think I saw that

too, but then I was like, maybe it was just me. Well, I guess it wasn’t just me, but maybe it was just us who saw it. Maybe it wasn’t.

Gary Kayye (01:09)
It was definitely

you. I mean, I saw it. I I definitely saw you pop up. hey, this is Rave TV, the industry’s only live weekly TV show. come to you every Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. Eastern. And this is Gary Kayye and I’m with. And we sort of curate the things that you should care about in the industry right now.

Steph Beckett (01:15)
So it could be worse.

Steph Beckett.

Yes.

Yes.

Gary Kayye (01:35)
make sure

that you, there’s a lot of news, know, there’s, we had over 250 new product news stories and we shot over 2,300 videos at ISE for example. And, and you know, we curated a lot of that. And in fact, today we’re going to talk about ISE again. We have, we have Brad Hintze from, ⁓ from Crestron on today. We’re going to talk about their presence at ISE, but more, more importantly, we’re going to talk about.

engineering a culture of collaboration, ⁓ which is something that they’ve really focused on since even before ISE. But yeah, I’m excited about today’s show. I love it when we have live guests on. Which he had to get up at like four in the morning because he’s way over there on the west end. He’s in Utah. Yeah. And I think Utah is mountain, if I remember correctly. Maybe it’s…

Steph Beckett (02:06)
Yes.

Me too? Yes, yes with you.

Where, where is bread? ⁓ I forgot.

I just always

assume, I know it’s not true, but I’m just like, oh, everyone in Crestron is in New Jersey. They’re not. But I’m like, oh yeah, do you know how’s New Jersey this time of year, anytime I see anyone who works there.

Gary Kayye (02:29)
I know, but they’re not. That’s right.

I tell you,

if you’re in New Jersey, you got pelted with two feet of snow. It’s crazy how much snow they got. I I saw pictures from Boston. They had two and a half feet of snow. It’s crazy how much snow they got in such a short period of time. And they’re asking regular people to shovel the snow, because there’s just too much snow in all these places.

Steph Beckett (02:40)
Yeah. Yes.

That’s wild.

Thank you.

That’s true, yeah they are, and I would say no if I lived there, cause what am I doing? ⁓

Gary Kayye (03:02)
I mean,

if you have nothing else to do and you like to do stuff like that, I mean, you get paid for it. Well, they’re paying them. Yeah, they’re paying them. Yeah. See, if you like, I don’t know what they’re paying them though. I mean, no, it’s, it’s the city of New York. The mayor said, Hey, we’ll pay you. if you come and shovel snow, I don’t know what to pay them though. have no idea. But,

Steph Beckett (03:07)
And you like to shovel? I’ll just shovel some snow. Oh, okay.

It’s not like a volunteer snow shovel.

yes.

Well, every

little bit helps.

Gary Kayye (03:30)
But anyway, how’s it going with you Steph?

Steph Beckett (03:31)
Anyway,

it’s good. I saw a new movie over the weekend. I saw How to Make a Killing. Have you seen that? It’s an A24. Have you seen the trailer?

Gary Kayye (03:41)
I think I saw

the preview for, I haven’t seen the movie now, but I think.

Steph Beckett (03:44)
It’s Glenn Powell

and he is basically kind of an heir to a fortune, but there’s a lot of people in line ahead of him. he kills, it like the movie premises him killing the other people so that he can get the money. Yeah, it’s like funny. It’s funny, silly, like drama, comedy, dramedy.

Gary Kayye (03:59)
⁓ Okay, is it good? Okay.

I

have a question for you, because you and I are big movie buffs, right? Of course, there’s a lot of cool movies coming out this year. I’m excited about Hail Mary is going to be great. I read the book. That’s what Ryan Gosling. And then obviously Mandalorian comes out on my birthday, Mandalorian and Grogu. But I’m wondering how much more life is there in a movie theater? Here’s what I believe. I believe in

Steph Beckett (04:11)
Yes.

How much more life is there in a-

Gary Kayye (04:37)
Definitely 20 years now, but I think it’s possible in 10 years now that movie theaters will not be around and that they’ll be more like plays and musicals. Like you’ll go see the big movie a few times a year in a theater, so there’ll be just very few of them. They’ll be very expensive. Like you go and it’ll cost you like 50 bucks to go. And then everything else will be just streamed to your house. I think we’re conditioning people for that. And I don’t think the physical movie theater will be around.

Steph Beckett (05:06)
See, I think I disagree because I think they’ll be around for a long time, but I don’t I see what you mean where they won’t be as many and there won’t be as many theatrical releases.

Gary Kayye (05:19)
Yeah. And so therefore the economy won’t work, right? You can’t have an economy where you don’t have a continuous, like, like for example, did you know Steph that in the 1940s, the average person went and saw one movie per week in the United States, over 130 million people saw one movie a week in the 1940s. It was the same way in the 1950s. Yeah. And, and, and now, now 130 million people don’t see a movie every four months. Yeah. So

Steph Beckett (05:38)
That’s wild. That’s how I’m trying to be. I go to, I see about one movie a week.

It’s true.

Gary Kayye (05:49)
It’s a whole different thing. And I think what’s happened is, you know, it’s kind of a good random thing to ask Brad because, you know, you have 4K, soon to be 8K, you have Resolute, you can watch, you know, sports with all sorts of angles. You could see movies that are interactive. you know, a lot of people like watching with captions on. A lot of people like pausing the movie and then going back and hearing something that they missed. You can’t do that in a movie theater.

Steph Beckett (06:14)
Mm-hmm.

But wouldn’t they have to change the entire trajectory of how the Oscars are run that way? Because don’t the Oscars rely on a theatrical release?

Gary Kayye (06:24)
Yeah, but I mean, I don’t think people care about the Oscars anymore. think it’s like, you know, used to be a spectacle and I think now it’s, people forget it’s even on what Sunday it’s on.

Steph Beckett (06:34)
I don’t know, and people also

just don’t watch live TV anymore like they used to. They stream. So, yeah.

Gary Kayye (06:37)
Yeah, sports pretty much it is

live TV and news and even news as you know is not really watched that much.

Steph Beckett (06:44)
It’s, it’s a

dwindling, it’s a very weird area to be working in right now, that’s for sure.

Gary Kayye (06:49)
But the good thing is our technology is gonna be around either way, right? Cause either you’re doing it in the house, you’re doing an exhibit and we have Infocomm coming up. Infocomm 2026 coming up in June. It’s late this year. It’s like the second and a half week of June. So it’s the latest. I remember it being in a long time and we have a code. you go register and use code RAVE26, R-A-V-E-26, that gets you ⁓ free.

Steph Beckett (07:04)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Gary Kayye (07:19)
into the show. We’ve done it every year. A lot of people like using our code because it’s easy to remember and accessible. And the show is in Las Vegas this year and the convention center is somewhat still on construction, but all the parts that we’ll be using are all finished.

Steph Beckett (07:35)
Yes, because we’re not

in West this year, we’re in Central and North. So no 10 minute walk between halls, people. It’s a blessing. We just walk into the other hall, basically. It’s a nice two minute walk rather than a 12 minute walk.

Gary Kayye (07:38)
Yeah, back in the old, back where we were.

Yeah, I’m sure.

Yeah. And I’m sure Crestron is happy about that because the whole thing was split apart and they went one hall and then another hall, try to figure out where to go the last two times that Infocom was there. let’s have you check this piece out from Crestron. We’re going to show you five new products that they launched and then we’re going to bring Brad Hintze on the executive vice president of customer success and marketing.

Steph Beckett (07:53)
Mm-hmm.

Gary Kayye (09:04)
All righty. I think we’re bringing Brad on. There we go. There he is. Hey, Brad. Hey, could you hear us? Did you hear us when we were talking earlier? Okay, we couldn’t see you, so I didn’t know if you could hear us or not. But what do you think of my synopsis about the movie theater?

Brad Hintze (09:09)
Hey guys. I can hear you. Yep. I could. I did.

You know, I think that, ⁓ I think there’s a risk there, but it’s not unlike the discussion that happened related to trade shows post COVID, right? Because, ⁓ you know, the, the technologies to connect digitally became so good. People said, well, are you ever going to do a trade show again? But I think that when you root it actually into the human behaviors and what people are looking for, there are elements of it that will persist and survive. Right? I think you’re right in that.

there’s a couple of things happening. People’s attention spans are much shorter. ⁓ they’re used to as Steph brought up this, this kind of the second screen notion. So they never just pay attention just to the feature film that’s happening there, but they still want a connection and a shared social experience. Right. I don’t go to movies just to go watch the movie anymore. I go because my friends want to go right. And, or the kids want to go and we, we go to see it together. And so

Gary Kayye (09:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brad Hintze (10:16)
there’s this different need and social connection. It’s actually not unlike a sporting event, at least for like me, I’m not a huge sports fan, but I’ll go to a sporting event every time I’m invited because it is a social experience and all of that. Right. So I think that, I think there’s both the movie theater experience will continue to shift and change, right. because people want that connection of with other people and something to go and do.

Gary Kayye (10:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I agree with you. I agree with the social experience side of it. ⁓ And I think theaters that have added bars and food and other things like that are really smart. ⁓ know, Alamo Drafthouse, Alamo Drafthouse has started that. Yeah, I know you do. And I think, yeah. But I think that it’s so easy now from, you know,

Brad Hintze (10:56)
Mm-hmm.

Steph Beckett (10:58)
I love, you know I love the LMO. That’s where I see like nine out of 10 of every movie I go to per month.

Brad Hintze (11:04)
You

Gary Kayye (11:12)
I don’t know, certainly I think we all agree we’re never gonna get back to where we were. Like it’s not gonna go back to where people, like I was surprised when I read that data point that in the 1940s, the 50s, the 60s as well, 130 million people were going to a movie every single week. When I lived in California, I would go to two movies a week. Like was literally, that was a thing to do culturally.

Steph Beckett (11:16)
No.

Brad Hintze (11:33)
Well, but

at that time, know, because I, know, 15 years ago or something, you know, we went regularly too. And, frankly, I don’t think I’ve been to a movie in six months. Right. ⁓ but at that time for me, you know, I didn’t love where I lived. Right. You know what I mean? There’s, there are other factors too, that helped push that kind of a thing. I think the other one is a lot of movies have gotten so long. It feels like an all day commitment to go watch a movie sometimes. Right.

Gary Kayye (11:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So there is a

technological thing that we should point out because I think this is kind of a geek out kind of thing that I love because I used to teach a class for Infocom on all this technology and how we were converting to digital cinemas. But the reason why movies are long now is because there are no physical gatekeepers on movies. Meaning you used to have to ship a giant reel to a movie theater that had a film in it.

Steph Beckett (12:23)
Yeah

Brad Hintze (12:23)
you

Yep. Yep.

Yep.

Gary Kayye (12:29)
and

each one of those canisters could only fit about an hour and 50 minutes of film. So they would shoot movies to be less than an hour and 50 minutes because if you made it longer, you had to ship two of those canisters, which literally cost twice as much money to UPS and FedEx. So it was literally a physical thing. When we went to a digital medium, then you can make the movie as any length you want and it kind of got out of control.

Brad Hintze (12:32)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Yep.

Yeah. So, do you use that as an opportunity to speak to your students about the concept of creative constraints and how that actually pushes you? Right.

Gary Kayye (12:59)
Yeah, mean, it’s like,

I remember when Twitter came out, it was an art form to actually make a statement on Twitter. I loved it. Yeah. But now the lazy people go one of seven, two of seven, three of seven, like that’s not creative. Like say your thing in a few minutes, not in a few hours. That’s right.

Steph Beckett (13:08)
It’s true.

Brad Hintze (13:08)
I know me too, right? It required thought and you know, and it was you had to be really clever.

Yep. Yep. Nostalgic for the old days of Twitter. ⁓

Steph Beckett (13:21)
You

You

Gary Kayye (13:28)
But anyway, look, hey, how was ISC? We actually

have some pictures of your booth at ISC. We’re gonna put up here as we’re talking to you. Yeah, how was it?

Steph Beckett (13:33)
We do. Yeah, y’all are busy. Busy, busy, busy.

Brad Hintze (13:35)
It was great.

I love ISE. I think it’s ⁓ it is certainly one of my favorite shows because of the global audience. ⁓ You know, increasingly we’re seeing people from all over the world at this show. ⁓ It gives us such an opportunity. We have so much square footage to really demonstrate what we’re doing. ⁓ We did a few really exciting things ahead of the event as well. As we talked about, we launched ⁓ five new products.

Steph Beckett (14:04)
Yes.

Brad Hintze (14:04)
⁓

just two weeks before. then Monday night we held an event. called it the true blue summit. 400 of our closest friends got in a room. We talked to Microsoft. We talked with FC Barcelona. ⁓ we went and hung out at the FC Barcelona museum. ⁓ and you know, it was just a great opportunity to engage in a slightly different way with that audience, give them an early access to hands on on the product. ⁓ but.

you know, I love it because you get to talk to so many end customers, so many partners, so many technology partners in the industry, industry leaders like yourselves as well. So I always get really excited about ISE.

Gary Kayye (14:36)
Mm-hmm.

Steph Beckett (14:46)
Yeah, no, and I went to the True Blue Summit the night before the show. That was a lot of fun. And I got to see the keynote conversations that you were having with the folks at Microsoft and with FC Barcelona. And that was really cool just to kind of see firsthand the work that you guys are doing in the wild. It’s like one thing. Like, of course, I’ve been to many conference rooms in my life and seen Crestron technology there. But to see it at such a wide breadth.

Brad Hintze (14:50)
You did? Yep.

Gary Kayye (15:07)
in the wild.

Brad Hintze (15:10)
right.

Steph Beckett (15:16)
like

being used in such a big space. It was really cool.

Brad Hintze (15:19)
Well, I think the thing that I really enjoy about the conversations I get to have with customers is that, well, and the point you made about what we’ve been in so many conference rooms, but the cool thing is it’s the same technology that gets applied in a conference room or in a big stadium like Camp Nou. ⁓ But the conversations about why they invested, what they’re looking for, right? And actually it ties back to the conversation we were just having about movie theaters, right?

Steph Beckett (15:32)
Yeah.

Brad Hintze (15:47)
they’re investing $1.5 billion to redo their stadium because 60 % of their audience, they’re not fans. They’re not on like diehard fans. They’re there for an experience, right? And they have to be able to deliver an experience like that at scale, you know, with fewer people to manage that kind of a thing. ⁓ and so I love seeing the way the technologies that we’ve built and continue to rely on are unlocking new capabilities for

Steph Beckett (15:57)
Mm-hmm.

Brad Hintze (16:17)
organizations like FC Barcelona or anybody else.

Gary Kayye (16:20)
So you talked about introducing five new products. mean, obviously, this product group was focused heavily on collaboration. know that’s a big, ⁓ I mean, like I don’t think Crestron was in the discussion for collaboration much five years ago. Y’all have made a transformation, most important, that of those products, the one that I think is unique and key to me, it seems like is the ⁓ compute device because you’re building up, you have a purpose built.

Steph Beckett (16:20)
Absolutely.

Brad Hintze (16:23)
Mm-hmm.

No.

Gary Kayye (16:47)
⁓ computer that just does one thing which which sort of like solves a lot of the IT issues but also makes it much more reliable I would guess.

Brad Hintze (16:57)
Yep, it does, it makes it more reliable. It’s designed for our channel and for the way it gets deployed. I mean, we talked about one of the sleeper hits in the booth was the mounting bracket, right? I mean, it’s like, we knew it would be important and people would appreciate that, but you know, people are taking the computer off on and off the wall 500 times a day, right? Because it is so simple, tool-less, right? It’s those thoughtful things that we poured into the way that we designed this. Well, yes, it’s a computer.

Gary Kayye (17:10)
A mounting bracket.

Brad Hintze (17:26)
but it is designed to enable this kind of a collaboration. And ultimately what we are doing is building something that can become infrastructure for collaboration within the business that they can then scale to all of the spaces. And you know, we, we talk about the culture of collaboration and people can say, Oh, that’s a corporate woo woo. We’re talking about culture, blah, blah, blah. Right. And when we talk about it, we’re not talking about things like foosball and free lunches.

Gary Kayye (17:47)
Yeah.

Brad Hintze (17:54)
Right? We’re talking about the way people do their work today and how can you enable that? So there’s no friction. They don’t have to think about it. They can just get on and do their job. Right? And that’s what builds that culture of collaboration. And so we built these devices. We engineered them specifically to solve those, those kinds of scaling needs and that consistency that they need.

Steph Beckett (17:58)
Right.

I think that lands. think that message really lands, honestly, especially because I feel like you are backing it up with technology meant and able to actually help people with the way that they work. I think that it would be really easy to just say, you know, we have this cool tagline and, you know, leave it at that, but I like that you guys are really digging in and, you know, sitting with us and talking about what that actually means.

Brad Hintze (18:45)
Yeah, we try. ⁓ know, we internally actually, right? We, we try and look at the end of the day, Crestron is fundamentally an engineering company, but we have to convey our story. And so we spend a lot of work to make sure how do we convey the technical capabilities in a way that’s technically defensible, but with that’s catchy and easy to understand. Right. And anything we say has to be defensible all the way down. Right.

That’s actually one of the things that I really appreciate about ISC. You can put any tagline up there, but when you put a tagline up there, that then you hear people repeat and that you can show a demo and say, this is a data point for what we mean. This is a proof point for why we say this, right? And I’ve got sales team saying it, sales engineers saying that, dealers saying it to their end customers. Then it feels like we’re actually moving the industry forward because

That is part of the point too. It’s not just, we don’t go to the shows to just hawk our wares, right? It’s actually to build an industry and an ecosystem where everyone is delivering what customers needs. Dealers are building businesses to deliver on those. You know, we’re building a stronger business by selling more product and investing more in R and D, right? That’s the point of shows like this.

Steph Beckett (19:55)
.

Absolutely. My, one of my favorite things that you showed was auto measure. It’s so simple. It’s, but it’s really, really cool. And I think of that as an example, when people are like, is AI actually helpful in our industry? I’m like, yes. And I always use that as an example now of like how AI can actually help someone in a room rather than just being like a fun little thing that people throw into a product for fun. Cause I think that that’s kind of where we’re at.

Brad Hintze (20:10)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Good. Yep. Yep.

Steph Beckett (20:32)
in the industry right now in terms of AI, but you guys were actually very intentional with that and I think that was very cool.

Brad Hintze (20:37)
I saw this hilarious meme a while ago, ⁓ not too long ago actually. And the headline was legacy vendors trying to slap AI into things. And it was basically a bar of soap with a liquid soap dispenser pump shoved into the middle of it. Right. And, and you know, I think you’re right. I think auto measure is an excellent example of we had already deployed and built around visual AI ⁓ in these AI technologies. And so now we’re simply applying it.

to yet another function that makes it simpler to deploy. And I think this is where we’ll continue to see great value from AI is taking that capability and applying it to how do I make it simpler to deploy? How do I make it simpler to manage or monitor the products that I have out there? What are these techniques that I can use? And so you’ll see iterative expansion around those things and it is quite exciting.

Steph Beckett (21:33)
Yeah, it’s awesome.

Gary Kayye (21:36)
Well, I appreciate you coming on live. I know that means you have to get up really early in the morning. Don’t you have to get up at five o’clock or something like that? Let me ask you about ISE or Infocom really quick. How are you feeling about Infocom? Because Infocom’s kind of been up and down since the pandemic. It’s been kind of a show we don’t know what to expect, whereas ISE seems to have outpaced itself prior to numbers beyond what we had even

Brad Hintze (21:43)
For you too, I’ll do anything.

Gary Kayye (22:06)
the pandemic. ⁓ Infocom seems to be much narrower, now a US-based or North American certainly based show. What do you think about the show being in Vegas this year?

Brad Hintze (22:17)
Yeah, I think that I think you’re right. We have that sense ⁓ as well, but it does feel like a, like there’s still a good amount of energy. We’re looking forward to it. We’re, actually investing a lot in, you know, we have some cool stuff that I have a call with them in two days, you know, a really fun and interesting concept. ⁓ But yeah, we really like info come. What we’ve seen is a narrowing of who comes. And so while it may not be the same numbers as ISE,

Steph Beckett (22:42)
Mm.

Brad Hintze (22:46)
the quality of the people that are there are really high, right? And we’ve seen some integrators where they might have brought a hundred people. They’re bringing the 50 people that really matter, right? And, and customers instead of six people, they’re bringing two people that really matter. it, but the fact that the people that really matter are there, that’s the, that’s the important part. So yeah, we’re, we’re excited for it. I do too. Yeah.

Gary Kayye (23:06)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think that I love the show. think, I think actually,

think the show’s better than it was before. ⁓ I know a lot of people don’t agree with me on this, but the reason why I think it’s better is that, you have to be more creative because you have the, you know, it’s, like the one, once a year, the same people are going to the show. You’re not getting a whole bunch of new people. And the way to keep their attention is to do something creative. You can’t just open up a booth and say, here’s our new products.

Brad Hintze (23:20)
Mm-hmm.

Gary Kayye (23:34)
And I think it benefits more creative people and companies to be in that scenario rather than just drawing them in with the newest stuff.

Brad Hintze (23:43)
Well, I think the other side of it too, and Gary, I watched a video of you, this was a few months ago, when you led a panel 10 years ago or something with George Feldstein, it was a great industry discussion. And I challenged the ISE, like we need a venue for that. And Infocomm has started to bring that last year with Vision 2030, and Jen and team are very open to those kinds of conversations. we need a venue.

Gary Kayye (23:53)
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, yeah.

Brad Hintze (24:11)
to have those kinds of debates and discussions. And so I think you’re right. It is a good.

Gary Kayye (24:14)
Yeah, I love doing that. I

wish they’d do that again. And I haven’t seen the video of that, but I remember doing the panel and it was actually a little longer than 10 years ago, I think. But I, but I remember on the panel, I was talking about AV over IP and one of the panelists said, well, hadn’t happened yet. You’ve been talking about it for years. I hadn’t had me yet. Look at it now. Like AV over IP is all over the place now. mean, like, ⁓ so I like doing that kind of stuff. It was very future focused and, it was cool to have.

Brad Hintze (24:22)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Right exactly.

Steph Beckett (24:34)
You

That’s cool.

Brad Hintze (24:41)
Yep. Well, the, the, the clip I, in fairness, I didn’t see that. And, and I saw all of the highlights of, of, you know, George’s portions, but I think the more, the, important thing is that, you know, every business owner that is contributing to this industry needs to go there and feel like, wow, this is an industry that’s growing. This is one I can continue to get value from. This is an industry I want to be associated with.

Gary Kayye (24:41)
Leaders at that level. I didn’t even know that video exists, but that’d be cool to see

Yeah.

Brad Hintze (25:08)
Right. ISE delivers that info com continues to deliver that. And those are, those are the reasons I think that they’re really important to be at.

Steph Beckett (25:16)
And like you said, Brad, like what people, manufacturers are looking to get out of it is qualified leads. And while they’re not getting as many leads as maybe they were 10, 15 years ago, they are getting qualified leads, like really good leads. And I think like quality over quantity is going to win every time.

Brad Hintze (25:22)
Mm-hmm.

yeah, every time.

Gary Kayye (25:34)
Hey Brad, if

people want to connect with you on LinkedIn, do you actually pay attention to that? Okay, then they should connect with you on LinkedIn. I’m just joking with you because he and I talk over LinkedIn most of the time. That’s how we actually communicate.

Brad Hintze (25:38)
I do. I do. Yeah. Yep. That’s right. I thought it was like,

you have my phone number. can text me.

Gary Kayye (25:48)
I know that, it’s weird how we, isn’t it weird how we, how

we message mostly over LinkedIn rather than over the phone. But anyway, yeah, you can, you can connect with Brad Hintze on LinkedIn. Just type in his name, you’ll find him. But hey, Brad, Brad, thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. And thanks for getting up early and thanks for what you do for the industry. Obviously, Crestron’s been a centerpiece at Infocom for many, many years. And we look forward to hearing about your,

Brad Hintze (25:53)
No, no. ⁓

Gary Kayye (26:18)
Discussion with Infocon, maybe maybe you can come on before the show and tell us a little bit about what you’re gonna do All right Okay, let’s do that we’ll have you on before the show and ⁓ Thanks for joining us say Steph tell me about this ISE foundation because I saw the press release, but I didn’t read it

Brad Hintze (26:23)
Okay, if I get them to agree to my crazy idea, then I will definitely do that.

Steph Beckett (26:26)
ooo, yeah

Brad Hintze (26:31)
Yeah, good to see you guys.

Steph Beckett (26:34)
Yeah, this is interesting.

It’s interesting. It came out yesterday, I wanna say. So yes, the ISE Foundation, basically this is a new initiative, but it’s aimed at extending ISE’s impact beyond just February, beyond just the show. So it’s all about workforce development, startup support, which ISE has been really big about the past at least like two to three years. They have like a huge startup section at the show now.

Gary Kayye (26:39)
Yeah, was yesterday afternoon. Yeah.

Yeah.

Steph Beckett (27:03)
and also creating this level of community engagement that lasts all year long. So I think what the idea is is that they are trying to make ISC more than just this one time event that happens every year. You know, a lot, I mean, it’s very similar to what AVIXA does. AVIXA is known now as not only the organization that puts on InfoComm, AVIXA does stuff all year long and I think ISC is kind of trying to do the same thing, but in Europe.

Gary Kayye (27:09)
Okay.

Yep. Okay. Well, that makes sense. ⁓ there was also a story that came in. Yeah. There was also a story that came in last week that, that, ⁓ talked about Nissan stadium, where the Titans play the Tennessee Titans play and guitar centers, the official gear provider through audio visual design group. and, so AV DG, ⁓ is the official integrator for the venue. You know, they want to promote that obviously guitar centers. ⁓

Steph Beckett (27:32)
You said, okay, I’ll take that.

Yes. Well…

Gary Kayye (27:58)
the owner of that, I think that’s kind of an interesting partnership there. And I think you’re going to see more of these types of things pop up.

Steph Beckett (28:02)
Yes. Well,

I added that story to this week because you wrote an article like in 2022 that was like, don’t knock guitar sin guitar center. They’re going to be really big in our industry. And so then when I saw you write this story, I was like, oh, I’ll add it because you were look at you. You were right.

Gary Kayye (28:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I

remember people were beating up guitarists. I think they may have come close to the current bankruptcy, but they kind of reformed and focused on sort of the custom market. And, you know, I was just basically saying back then, you know, they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with eventually because they got a bunch of smart people there. But speaking of smart people, Viewsonics has a new pre-configured all-in-one LED. I think a lot of people know Viewsonic only for the foldable LED and don’t realize that they have

Steph Beckett (28:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gary Kayye (28:50)
a bunch of all-in-ones, different platforms, right? It depends on what kind of technology you want to use. So check out this new one that launched at ISE.

Steph Beckett (30:33)
You’re muted. ⁓ there you go.

Gary Kayye (30:33)
⁓ and

yeah, we were talking about 8K earlier Steph and Extron just introduced a 8K HDMI switcher with audio de-embedding which basically allows you to strip audio out and send it through a program audio system or distributed audio system in the building. It’s a two input switcher, it’s very very small, fits in a think a one-third rack size space, it’s ⁓ HDMI ⁓ and handles 8K signals. You know, it’s interesting and of course you can

handle the audio through HDMI or you can break it out separately ⁓ through the box as RS-232 control. It’s the SW2HD 8K. ⁓ Steph, you and I were talking earlier about movies and I think 8K is yet another resolution that’s going to start mattering when we start seeing content in 8K. We’re starting to productions, television productions and movie productions filmed.

in a higher resolution so that you can actually use 8K. So it’d be interesting to see. Yeah.

Steph Beckett (31:31)
Mm-hmm.

We’ll see. Yeah.

Really quick. I wanted to go back. We have a prerecorded interview because Shane is on the West Coast. I didn’t want to make him get up at 5 a.m. with him at Viewsonic, but he’s talking to me about DVLED and about their DVLED certification program, which is going to help you learn how to deploy that. So check this out.

Gary Kayye (31:48)
I didn’t know that. That’s cool.

Steph Beckett (32:02)
It’s coming. There it is.

All right, shout out to Shane, shout out to Vsonic for that interview and definitely go to Vsonic’s website if you want to learn more about DVLED or about opportunities for obtaining that certification. Gary had to run, he teaches class, he’s a man of many talents, of many jobs, so he had to run, so you’re just stuck with me for these last few minutes. Before we go, I’m gonna play you a quick video from our other sponsor and partner, Shure, and this is on the one and only Intel Mixbar Pro.

is a bar that moves barriers. Check this out.

All right, two more things before I let you go. I know this is a long episode today, but we’re yappers. You guys get it at this point. I’ve been doing this for years. So, all right, please go fill this temperature check survey out. This is our February, 2026 one. This is on AI and ethics and security and data privacy. I’m just kind of trying to figure out are these concerns real or are they just abstract?

So I would love if you guys go fill this out. It’s three questions. It’s embedded right in that story. And as always, we pick two random respondents ⁓ every month to win $250 Amazon gift cards. So please go do that. Appreciate you. And then the last thing that I would like to talk about is we have an upcoming virtual event on March 4th. And this is with our friends at AppSpace.

And basically what this is is kind of like all about orchestrating a hardware agnostic workplace. It’s again, it’s March 4th, it’s at 1 p.m. And this is how you can learn about how a software first hardware agnostic platform can actually unified, unify your existing ecosystem and create this connected experience for your employees and simpler operations for your behind the scenes team among a lot of other benefits. So definitely sign up for that. It’s gonna be like an hour.

It’s gonna be it’s gonna have David Fleck and Steve Gray from Appspace on with me and we’re gonna have a great time So definitely make sure and register for that at la v n ch.com Okay, I think that’s it from me for now. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode of rave TV Thank you to view sonic into Shane Thank you to Crestron into bread and thank you to sure as always and thank you to all of you who are watching or listening Okay. Bye