The South African Communications Industry Association (SACIA) held its annual InfoComm Survivor’s Breakfast at Blandford Manor in northern Johannesburg on 15 July 2014. Attended by many AV integration industry stalwarts and a reassuring crowd of new faces, the event was moderated by SACIA Executive Director Kevan Jones and chaired by newly appointed Wynand Langenhoven.

Following a fantastically catered breakfast, Jones introduced a panel of notable show attendees, including Dimension Data’s JP Van Niekerk, Matrix Sound’s Trevor Peters, and Electrosonic’s Bruce Genricks, to give their impression of this year’s show and highlight products or technologies that caught their eye.

Before the 4k discussion got underway, trends observed by the panellists at InfoComm were discussed. Genricks highlighted such trends as collaboration products between manufacturers, turnkey solutions, interoperability between devices of differing manufacturers, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD); the idea of being able to share content from your mobile device in a meeting, preferably wirelessly, as well as 3D video mapping.

Van Niekerk was excited about the integration of the Dante AoE protocol and interoperability between products based on standards.

“With networks being more and more stable, we are getting more confidence to do control, audio and video over the network. So, you don’t just need to stick to one product because of it being a standard, whether you’ve got a BSS processor in the middle, a Kramer, Biamp or Clear One insertion box at the end; it doesn’t really matter. You can build the right solution for the client without having to stick with one brand all the way through,’ says Van Niekerk.

Undoubtedly the biggest topic of interest and debate amongst the attendees and panellists was 4k video. Questions and comments around the technology included when 4k would break into the mainstream market, its limitations and advantages, gearing clients for 4k infrastructure and discussions around current and future pricing.
“4k is a reality,’ says van Niekerk, “I think most of us have thought that 4k might be a bit of a “3D gimmick’ but it seems like it’s here to stay. The pricing of the displays and projectors are still quite high but they do seem to be coming down, so as integrators I think it is a conversation that I believe we should have with our clients. Although you don’t necessarily need to sell them 4k equipment right now, at least your back-end needs to be there for when it does become economical to implement it.’

Peters also had a fair amount to say on 4k: “I wasn’t at ISE so it was quite interesting to me to see how it dominated the show at InfoComm. Coming back to South Africa and chatting with my [business] partner, questions were raised like will it actually happen, how soon will it happen, how affordable is it and how soon will it spread to places like South Africa?’

Content, of course, is central to the 4k issue, and Peters continues: “One thing that was interesting for me was that I found at least two exhibitors at InfoComm that base their business on creating 4k content. In my opinion that’s a sign that it’s not a matter of yes, you’ve got the technology, but what are you going to display on it?’
A fair amount of comments and questions were posed to the panel about content creation because while commercial displays are already being sold at consumer outlets, it was posited that if you don’t yet have an industry that has the infrastructure and systems to create, edit and render 4k content, what is going to drive the market? However, the debate of whether or not 4k is more than marginally better than HD was a unanimous yes.

“As a sound guy my question was, how much better is 4k, actually?’ says Peters. “Well, in my opinion it’s infinitely better and I think that it will indeed bring a lot to the market when it goes mainstream.’