Steph Beckett (00:18)
Okay. ⁓ I don’t see myself, but I’m just gonna believe. here I am. Okay. I was like, I’m just gonna have to believe that I’m live. Hi everyone. welcome to Rave TV. I thought Gary was gonna be here, but I was misinformed. So maybe we’re we’re just never together again. It’s been like three weeks. Maybe Rave TV’s just not ever gonna be the same again. ⁓ I’m just kidding, it will. So yeah, welcome back. I or I guess welcome back to me, because I haven’t been here for a while.

hope you guys have enjoyed some of the guest hosts that we have lined up for you. but now I’m back. I was really excited that Gary was gonna be here too, because I wanted to ask him if he’d seen the Odyssey. So if any of you watching on LinkedIn or wherever have seen the Odyssey, like give me a comment. I’m interested to see who has seen it, who likes it. Have the costumes bothered anyone? Because they’re not like super historically accurate, like, not to be

That guy, but I’m I’m a costumes person. I like those to be pretty accurate. And also, how have y’all seen it? Have y’all seen it as Christopher Nolan has intended? Have you seen it in the 1.43 to 1 aspect ratio? 70 millimeter. Because here’s the thing, here’s my problem. I can’t do that in North Carolina. ⁓ all of our ⁓ screens here, IMAX included, are 1.9, 1.90 to 1. And here’s my problem again.

There is a theater in Raleigh that is IMAX. It has the screen capable of doing 1.43 to 1. But guess what? It doesn’t have a compatible projector. So no matter what, I’m gonna be seeing it not in the right aspect ratio. So I’m kind of screwed unless I would like to drive five hours to Georgia. And here’s my thing, I’m crazy. I will do that, but my friends don’t wanna do that. So I think I’m gonna either have to see it in the IMAX with the capable screen and

not capable projector or I’m just gonna have to see it at like the Durham IMAX, which is just a regular, but it it has like more updated like like Dolby than I think the IMAX and Raleigh does. So anyway, that’s my nerd problem of the day is I can’t see I like my the movie I want the way that I want. And this is my qualm. So if any of you New Yorkers, Lincoln Square,

You need to go there. That’s where at the 70 millimeter is in New York. If any of you have the ability to see it the way that Christopher Nolan intends, I would like y’all to do I would like you to tell me what it was like. So thank you. ⁓ okay, let’s get on with the day. So, first things first, we have a piece from Mark Coxon. And honestly, I didn’t edit this because I couldn’t without crying. So basically, Mark writes a little bit about like

Dave Labuskes’ legacy and what he’s kind of leaving behind with the AV industry. Because as many of you know, ⁓ this past infocom was his very last info com. He is retiring from Avixa, which like is fair. I think like a lot of people are retiring this year. ⁓ a lot of the g the people in our industry, you know, they’ve they’ve been here for a long time and they are wanting to retire. So I’m so, so happy for him. But it’s like

you think about the legacy that they leave behind and what they did to kind of make the industry a better place. And it is sad to think about the fact that, you know, the next few InfoComms are gonna be I’m not gonna see him or, you know, the things that I think of him that he built, like I’m just gonna have to think about them. I’m not gonna be able to I mean I can still talk to him, but he’s not going to be like as involved with the industry anymore. And that makes me sad. So

Definitely give it a read. ⁓ Mark did a really good job with because Mark’s obviously been in this industry longer than I have, so he has a different view and a longer view of knowing Dave and seeing everything that Dave did. So check it out. ⁓ and that’s all I’m gonna say about it without getting emotional. So we are going to run a quick spot from our sponsor and partner, Crestron, on Spotify Camp Nou.

And then I am gonna bring on Brad Hintze because I don’t want to talk to myself anymore. So we’ll be right back.

Steph Beckett (05:53)
Okay. Am I I’m here. Can and let’s go ahead and bring up Brad. Hi, Brad.

Brad Hintze (05:58)
Hey, hey Steph, how are you? ⁓ good. Good. It’s so nice to see you as always. I did see Odyssey, not in not in the exact perfect, but how about this? Let’s go meet in New York and go together. Let’s do it. ⁓

Steph Beckett (06:00)
Good. How are you?

It’s nice to see you. You did?

Okay. Okay. Please. I would love

nothing more. And I feel like you’ll appreciate it. My friends are like, Can you shut up about this?

Brad Hintze (06:21)
It

is so incredible. It is nonstop action that you have to plan strategically if you need to step out and use the loo because there are no moments where you can take a breath and run out because it is just go, go, go, go, go. Spectacular. Truly, truly amazing.

Steph Beckett (06:29)
Right. Okay.

Hey. All

right. Well let’s go to New York and see it. I’m ready. I I feel

Brad Hintze (06:42)
Okay. Yep. Yep. Justin and I

will be there in like three weeks, so we can meet you there. Yep.

Steph Beckett (06:47)
great. It it’ll probably

still be in theaters. I feel like people are still obsessed with it, so

Brad Hintze (06:51)
Yeah, it will be there for a while.

Steph Beckett (06:53)
Great. Then let’s go. I’ve had it with North Carolina trying to keep me from doing what I need to do. Keeping me from achieving my dreams. So okay, we we were talking about this backstage, but you had a post on LinkedIn. It did really well. I’m interested in kind of talking about this a little bit. So this started when you are running this thing called Wedge. So talk a little bit about that.

Brad Hintze (06:56)
Ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steph Beckett (07:22)
And talk a little bit about what you kind of discovered.

Brad Hintze (07:26)
So one of the things that ⁓ we have done with our sales team, you know, in in sales meetings is run this little exercise to help kind of refine positioning and help arm them with the right way to, you know, speak to a customer about what we’re doing in a way that creates a separation between the customer and a competitor. Right. And so this exercise is really about getting them engaged and sharing what does a competitor do well.

You know, what do they not do well? What do the pros like or dislike? How can we win? You know, that kind of stuff. And we we did it ⁓ on paper and we did it in small groups, right? But a couple weeks ago, I actually heard somebody talking about just this concept of vibe coding for some short term need or whatever. It’s like that sounds really cool. I’d like to try that out. And I couldn’t think of what to do. And then suddenly it hit me. Well, why don’t we vibe code the wedge exercise rather than doing it on paper?

Plus, you know what, those those teams, they love new and novel things, right? So we in in order to keep them engaged, let’s do something new and unique and different. So I spent a couple hours just vibe coding this app so that we could run it either virtually or we could run it in the room and on their various different devices, but also then give them the ability to share their information, upvote it, and then walk out of the room with a a little bit of a a battle card, right? And

⁓ I think that this is really an interesting concept because when you think about it, when you have this kind of a capability, look, I’m a mark I’m I’m a technically oriented marketing person, right? I started in computer science, but this was very approachable to me. I could not have built this on my own without a tool like this. I would not have gone to IT to have them build it either because I couldn’t justify the ROI. But to spend an hour and a half or two hours, ⁓ yeah.

Steph Beckett (09:09)
Yeah. That’s very

Brad Hintze (09:19)
to be able to do something like that, it was totally worth it.

Steph Beckett (09:23)
Awesome. What would you say was the biggest thing you learned from using AI to instead of like creating content like a lot of us do, create a business tool?

Brad Hintze (09:36)
I think and it was interesting and I I hadn’t formulated this until I actually started drafting the post, but for 30 years, PowerPoint has been the tool that drives corporate communication, right? Up and down. Doesn’t matter what group you’re in. People will use PowerPoint to to lead a meeting. ⁓ but now you have a new tool in your toolbox. ⁓ and I think that this is a really compelling thing because now a creative person

Or somebody that has just an idea can go make that happen, where you used to drop it into a slide, fine. And clearly it was that way for a long time because it worked. But now you’ve got all of these new ways to engage the people that you’re talking about, express what you’re trying to do. And so I think that this is a replacement potentially for PowerPoint in that regard. I think it’s super cool. I’ve spent there are plenty of PowerPoints that I’ve spent more time on for a singular meeting.

Steph Beckett (10:28)
Yeah.

Brad Hintze (10:30)
than I did

Steph Beckett (10:30)
yeah.

Brad Hintze (10:30)
on that that app. And and so now to have this mixture of ways that you can communicate, I think it’s super compelling and super exciting.

Steph Beckett (10:39)
That’s so fair because I too spend a really long time on PowerPoints and this is like so boomer of me. I normally need help with them. So this could be a replacement for me.

Brad Hintze (10:48)
Ha ha ha.

Ha ha.

You could totally do it. And you know what? Let’s do it. Call me later and I’ll walk you through how to do it with Cloud Code. Real easy, right? Super straightforward. ⁓ and yeah, I think that it just brings more possibilities in terms of a platform to get your job done and to engage other people. ⁓ but it also comes along without the requirement that you justify the ROI, right? Because if you need a developer to work on it, even if it was

Steph Beckett (11:00)
Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Brad Hintze (11:25)
You know, if even if I had to have it down to just a week or two, I could not justify spending having a developer that could be doing other stuff work on this, albeit a toy it is a toy, right? It is it is just a little toy for a week or two. ⁓ but now when you lower that bar, I think that you know it opens up all those possibilities. And I think we’re going to see more and more of this, right? ⁓ a lot of single purpose, disposable types of apps. You know, maybe use it once and throw it away, fine.

Steph Beckett (11:37)
Yeah.

Brad Hintze (11:55)
It’s all good, right? It d it doesn’t matter.

Steph Beckett (11:57)
Yeah.

I like that you call it like a disposable software ’cause that that is the kind of the same way that we think of PowerPoints, right? Like we do a present presentation for one thing, like maybe we reuse it a couple of times and then we like, you know, put it in the trash because like we don’t need to get that presentation again. So it’s it’s very, very similar to that, but more engaging, it sounds like.

Brad Hintze (12:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.

Steph Beckett (12:26)
And at like projects like FC Barcelona’s Aspy Barça, like this stadium is is no longer the product. Like that, you know, that they kind of talk about that in the video that we played. So kind of shifting to that, like what like how are we seeing experience become the product? And how does that kind of relate?

Brad Hintze (12:48)
Yeah, I think that ⁓ you know, one of the things that this ex this vibe coding exercise for me kind of showed me is that ⁓ AI is becoming a platform that you can build the end product that you need to get your job done, right? And whether that’s a PowerPoint or a messaging document or of an app now, right, you have these tools to go and and get your job done. And we were discussing, you know, the Stadium project a couple of weeks ago and

The role of the CIO at an organization like FC Barcelona is to enable the teams to build products that they can then sell. And it was interesting when I was on a tour with that team. They kept talking about, well, we have this product and we have this product where a fan can buy this ticket and then they go to the parking lot and they watch the players arrive from their car and then walk into the locker room. And they kept referring to these things as products, right?

We think of products as black boxes, but they think of these products as an experience. But for the CEO and and or sorry, the CIO and the stadium project, ⁓ the intention here is to build a platform that they can then build their products on top of. And the interesting thing here is that AV is now an important part of that platform, right? Because, you know, for a CIO strategically,

How do you create all of the right components so that this these teams can build these individual products, iterate on them quickly, bring new concepts in there, but you have to have all the right levers. And that’s what you know, we refer to that as technology platforms sometimes. But the stadium now is a platform for building these products as well. And AV can play a really important role in that.

Steph Beckett (14:40)
No, I see that. Like I think that this could potentially change the way venues are designed. There’s

Brad Hintze (14:49)
I

it yeah, it is driving that today, right? You see that, you know, we we work with so many different venues and we’ve organically gone in there. We haven’t we haven’t targeted them specifically. ⁓ they have come to us. But the need to have at scale something that is flexible enough to reconfigure, simple enough that anyone can walk in and use it, gives them these tools to be able to build the variety of of of products on top of that. But the reality is that

you know, even if your project isn’t shaped like a stadium, ⁓ you know, a lot of a lot of organizations are doing this and they’re thinking about this the same way, right? Education has thought about this for a long time. And frankly, I think education is probably the vertical that has been ahead of ⁓ some of these others in terms of applying this level of thinking, right? ⁓ because their products are classrooms, right? Their their products are other kinds of events as well. But enterprise is right there, government is right there too. And so

Steph Beckett (15:38)
Yeah.

Brad Hintze (15:47)
⁓ A V is playing a really critical role in enabling organizations this way.

Steph Beckett (15:53)
Absolutely. So yeah, kind of expand on that a little bit. Like where do you see this being able to go for the AV industry? And how do you think like manufacturers and integrators and end users should be thinking differently as technology becomes more of like a platform than just an end product?

Brad Hintze (16:15)
Yeah, I think that for a while, out of necessity, and actually just the a reflective of the point in time, a lot of people thought about the A V products in a room as just the endpoint, like, okay, I’m gonna slap a soundbar in here, that’s fine, right? I’m gonna going to put in a a touch screen you can turn stuff on and off with, right? And that is discrete functionality within the room. But now with if you think about enabling an organization to to ⁓

leverage all of their AI workflows to monitor and understand what’s happening in the space. You really need technology everywhere. And so you need pervasive audio, video, you know, so microphones and speakers and touch screens and cameras and displays, that pervasiveness in every room gives them the option and the ability to build around that and build those capabilities. And so I think that if we as an industry

⁓ I think many have already been there for a while, but I think there’s a further opportunity for everyone that interacts with customers in this way. Think of A V as infrastructure that gets deployed for the whole of the organization’s way of doing business and and doing work, ⁓ which means then as infrastructure needs to be durable, it needs to have a long life cycle, ⁓ and it has to be everywhere in a package that works well for any type of space. And so

thinking about it as infrastructure, I think gives ⁓ us a huge opportunity to continue to ⁓ become a part of an organization and the way they run, but it helps arm the organization, the CIO specifically, with the tools they need to do their job and build, you know, enable these kinds of ⁓ platforms or products. I mean, yeah.

Steph Beckett (17:59)
Absolutely. No,

I think that’s I think that’s a great point. Where do you see yourself leveraging this next as you kind of you know, I can see you I can see you making a push for this at Crestron. I think that’s really cool. What where you think you’re gonna try to do this next?

Brad Hintze (18:14)
Well, which which part? My little vibe coding experiment or the AV as infrastructure? Both. on the A V as infrastructure, right, we’ve been engineering products for this deliberately. ⁓ you know, we have the Collab Compute just came out ⁓ earlier this year, started shipping, you know, two months ago or or six weeks ago. that’s a core component of enabling collaboration with all of the right endpoints to do A V infrastructure in there as well.

Steph Beckett (18:20)
Both.

Brad Hintze (18:43)
⁓ NVX, the our AV IP platform has been part of that as well. So we’ll continue to invest in those. You know, we we talk about, you know, ⁓ content collaboration and control. Those are the pillars of A V infrastructure. And so we’ll we’ll always invest there to enable that. But I think that, you know, continuing to inspire organizations that bring this technology in around the ways they can use it, right? And think about it as a platform, I think is is an important one.

on my vibe coding stuff. I’ve got like three other little apps that I’m working on. ⁓ you know, actually we’re running a planning a long term planning exercise with ⁓ with my team, the customer success team. And ⁓ I’m vibe coding a planning app that’s specific to us and specific to the way that we plan and and think about things and we’ll see how it goes and if we use it once that’s fine. But ⁓ you know it it’s it is

It has unlocked a bit of creativity and fun and ⁓ and excitement. It it’s a lot like the early mobile days, the early internet days where you feel like you have all of these options and so go experiment and iterate and change and and so that’s that’s pretty fun.

Steph Beckett (19:55)
That’s awesome. Brad, well, thank you very much for your time and thanks for coming on Rave T V. It’s been a pleasure getting to catch up with you.

Brad Hintze (19:59)
Always stuff.

Yeah, it’s always fun. So good to see you.

Steph Beckett (20:04)
Good to see you too. I’ll give you a call later so you can help me vibe cope my first project. Thank you, Fred. All right, everyone. Let’s go into a quick spot from our sponsor and partner, ViewSonic. This is on ⁓ I P L E D technology. And then I will come back and talk a little bit about the news this week.

Brad Hintze (20:07)
I’m I’m here for you. I’m here for you. I’ll be your Sherpa.

Steph Beckett (21:13)
Okay, hello everyone, I’m back. and I just had to run because my computer was dying, so I had to plug it in. ⁓ and so I just did that and then the light came on and I had to run around and turn that off. So I did all of that within the span of that commercial. So nothing like running around to keep your blood pumping. That was great. So let’s talk a little bit about the news. First things first. I mean, it’s been, I wouldn’t say it’s been a crazy news week. This is always typically like a slower news time.

It’s like a month after Infocom. So not a ton of huge news things this week. Y’all didn’t miss a lot, but a big which I think is big and cool a piece of news. This is from NetSpeak. They have appointed Mary McDowell to the board of directors. And if you guys are familiar with Mary McDowell, she was the former CEO of Polycom, which is now HP Poly. Poly has gone through a lot of changes, even ⁓ you know, through the time that.

I have been in this industry. ⁓ but this was when it was Polycom ⁓ and then kind of led the company through this strategic transformation and then the acquisition of Plantronics, which also like happened in the past 10, 15 years. ⁓ so then she was president, CEO, and board director of MyTell, ⁓ which is kind of all related in there. So she’s very cool and it’s very exciting to see someone who has, you know, been so

integral to kind of like UC Tech and that part of the industry being part of NetSpeak. So I think that that is a really, really good move on their part. ⁓ NetSpeak as if you guys aren’t familiar, they’re a very cool startup that ⁓ is AI-based. It is essentially generative AI built for the AV industry, built specifically to kind of work through problems in a room to

Help what I see as the problem of ⁓ AVIT managers having to constantly be in a room for problems that they don’t necessarily need to be in there to fix because they’re already overwhelmed and overworked. So this platform ⁓ which utilizes this AI based tool called Lena to help solve a lot of those problems. ⁓ it’s had some updates recently. I got to see them firsthand. the other day.

It used to be kind of reactive. You would have to set times for this AI to check through all of the online devices in a room, but now it’s proactively constantly in the background running tests to see that everything is working, which I think is really cool and I think is is something that we should be using AI for. There’s a lot of things, I have opinions on things that we shouldn’t be using AI for. I think we lean on it a little too much for content these days. ⁓

But I I see that as being like, okay, this is what technology is for. It’s helping. So definitely check this out. ⁓ and congrats to NetSpeak. Mary McDowell is a huge get for them. So ⁓ continuing on, we have a couple of launches this week. One from Amadeus Acoustics. This is ⁓ a down mix engine feature. ⁓ it’s the Art Director V1.3.1, I think.

⁓ this basically has some new workflow optimizations involved. ⁓ so in the performing arts industry, there’s a lot of ⁓ translating immersive venue mixes into standardized formats for broadcasting and studio, and there’s a lot of like weird things that don’t quite translate. So this is supposed to be a direct bridge to allow sound engineers to run a lot of

Customizable speaker down mixes in parallel, ⁓ following the in-house’s like spatial mix. So it’s supposed to make that translation a lot easier. And a lot of people use Amadeus Acoustics. I think that the 2026 Eurovision song con contest used this, so definitely check it out. the whole idea behind this is I think.

That they don’t want immersive audio to just be something that people can experience live. They want it to be something that can translate over broadcast so that you can, you know, watch it later or, you know, is it at least that’s how I take it. So definitely check out the full story. Every everything about how it works is on ravepubs.com.

Another release from our pals over at Xtron. So this is the BT100 ATD. It’s essentially a Bluetooth ⁓ audio Dante interface. ⁓ So it just integrates Bluetooth compatible devices into a Dante enabled audio system. So it’s just a wall panel, but it allows your cell phone to be used as the communication device.

within a conferencing system. So it also supports stereo audio playback from a range of these Bluetooth enabled devices. So it’s supposed to make it very easier or very easy for device pairing, volume media playback, just supposed to make life a little bit easier. It can also be powered through PoE. So single network cable connection from your equipment rack ⁓ for bidirectional audio

control and power. So definitely check it out. Full story, once again, ravepubs.com. We are going to go into our last spot of the day from our sponsor and partner, Shure This is on the IntelliMix Foundation system. We’ll be right back.

Steph Beckett (28:08)
All right, so got a couple more stories here. This one is from Penopto. ⁓ there are basically some new updates from them regarding these new generation of knowledge intelligence capabilities. So it’s it basically like they’re helping organizations use what’s already captured in like their videos better.

so it uses AI and it uses ⁓ its video platform to allow like organizations like schools, corporate, wherever use their already recorded stuff. Like it makes it more findable, searchable, measurable, etc. So one of the ways it does this is it has something called AI search and it aims to let employees and learners like ask questions in their own natural language, and it gives

answers that are drawn directly from that bank of video knowledge that that’s recorded and saved there. So it also includes links to precise moments in the recordings where this information appears. So it allows users to quickly like verify the answer, make sure it’s right and explore the surrounding context, which I think is very cool because if you are someone like I can see this working really well

in a university, for instance, when a professor records their lecture and as a student you’re going back and and checking over your notes, making sure that your notes are right. You wrote something, you want to make sure that that’s what the professor actually said, you can go and ask this, hey, ⁓ I think that I have in my notes on this day, ⁓ the professor said this. Can you find, you know,

the surrounding context. Is this true? And it can go help find that. So again, I think this is an actual very helpful use of AI. And it sounds like it would be easy, but that’s actually pretty difficult to be able to take a video, pull and understand the context of it and and help a student learn from it. So I think that’s pretty cool. I can see how it would be useful in corporate as well, like with meetings and and things that we kind of say one time and we want to go back and be like, wait, I remember someone, I do this all the time. I’m the worst about this, where I’m like

I think a month ago, someone said this. I don’t remember who said it. I don’t have any context. I just have a vague memory. Can someone help me? ⁓ and we have an AI meeting tool that kind of helps us with that now. But before that, we would just kind of hope to figure it out. So this is this is a really helpful tool. You can check out the full story as usual on ravepubs.com. okay, last story from me. This is from Sony. This is kind of like more of a creator story, but I like to throw a few of those in there now because

⁓ as we’ve talked about, the broadcast industry is paying attention to the creator market. So I see it as kind of my job to start paying attention to that and leaning into that a little bit as well. So Sony has introduced a new camera, it’s the FX5. It’s a full-frame camera, it’s kind of part of its cinema line series. So this has a full-stacked CMOS image sensor.

And it also aims to enhance like sensitivity performance through it has like 15 and up stops of dynamic range. ⁓ and it’s got a lot of ISO settings there too. I think three. ⁓ so basically this also supports open gate shooting. if you don’t know what that is, someone explained it to me the other day. ⁓ as basically ⁓ shooting in a ⁓ bigger aspect ratio almost. So

that you don’t have to crop a horizontal video for social content. It is just made very big so that you can just use that full frame for your social content. So for creators who shoot a lot of high res ⁓ social content like this, like who who don’t use which the iPhone’s great, but who don’t want to use the iPhone, who want to use a proper camera, I think open gate shooting is is going to support that a lot better.

So that was how it was explained to me. ⁓ shout out Buddy and Lane, who explained that to me last week. So check out the full story ⁓ on ravepups.com, as usual. ⁓ and I think that is about it in terms of news. So ⁓ the last thing I would like to share with you guys is Pro A V Symposium is coming up in August. It is August 20th. It’s gonna be at 1 p.m. and that is Eastern.

⁓ so we are going to have a few panels, I think about four or five. ⁓ and it’s gonna be about today’s most important technologies, trends, business challenges, etc. So you know the Durell, we’ve done this a few times. ⁓ so we hope that you kind of leave with this understanding of where the industry is headed. We’re hoping to kind of talk about ⁓ some challenges for integrators right now.

⁓ you know, we’re gonna kind of talk about security a little bit. We’re gonna talk about a few different things. It’s gonna be exciting. And it is also pending three CTS, CTSI, or CTSD RUs. So if you need to get your RUs up for the year, this is a great way to do that in one day, in a couple of hours. So please join. You can go ahead and register and add it to your calendar at LavnchH.com. And I hope to see you there. So that is it.

We’re done with Rave TV for the day, and hopefully next week I can get Gary back in here. Happy Wednesday. See you next week. Bye. ⁓