As the editor of millimeter’s sister publication Sound & Video Contractor, it was informative to see quite a few professional AV technologies, applications, and players on the NAB show floor as I wandered around today. Digital Signage and various display manufacturers might well be expected, but what is interesting is that a handful of other hardware manufacturing types from the AV world are finding NAB a useful introduction to their own big summer show: InfoComm.

Case in point would be Kramer Electronics, which is displaying new switcher/scaler technology at NAB that is right in the wheelhouse of any AV man, and Kramer’s sister company, Sierra Video, as well. Kramer/Sierra are essentially showing most of the same new technologies they will have on display this summer at InfoComm in Orlando. Kramer Marketing VP Clint Hoffman suggested to me that an AV presence at NAB is important because there is now a natural crossover between broadcast and the various AV markets, such as worship or education—so much so that many dealers and users of such technologies in those markets are finding a need to poke around at NAB these days. And they were poking around, according to Kramer, who said much of his Monday was spent chatting with the same dealers and other AV industry types whom he will be seeing in June at InfoComm.

Kramer was showing new versions of its VP-729 and VP-728 ProScale line of scalers and switchers, for example—a technology with many house of worship applications. Sierra was demonstrating an interesting Multi Viewer technology capable of showing 64 images on a single screen that has security and government applications, among other things, and so on.

Hoffman clued me in on a little secret: There are plenty of pro AV people strolling around NAB this week as once separate worlds continue coming together.

–MG