The Evolution to Digital

In my 35 years of experience in the Commercial Audio Visual field, there have been three dramatic changes that have completely transformed the business model of the industry and how corporations present, train, collaborate and sell. The first, which happened in the early ’80s, brought video systems into the business workplace, quickly replacing slide projectors and 16mm projectors as the tools for delivering the corporate message. Beta and VHS came first, which evolved to Super VHS and DVD. The broadcast industry went from film to tape overnight, it seemed. Second, in the early ’90s, the personal PC started to become the standard in the workplace, and it didn’t take long for the need for projectors to become commonplace. Soon conference rooms were getting outfitted with more and more elaborate AV systems, and the VHS player quickly became a relic.

The most dramatic change in the industry, however, was the evolution to digital signals, which has given us much higher resolution images and allows us many more ways to communicate and collaborate. Today, we can have meetings with participants located virtually anywhere using IP-based videoconferencing. Via IPad and IPhone technologies and the numerous open wireless IP networks located everywhere, we can easily meet with those not able to be onsite for a meeting. We can deliver a corporate message through the use of digital signage anywhere on the planet and manage it from a single location. These are just a few of the marvelous changes we are seeing with the evolution from analog to digital and, by the way, the images are spectacular.

-Tom Tautges VP of Sales Engineering