>> Chris Dechter: This is AV Super Friends off the Rails, an almost regularly scheduled open discussion on audio and video in higher education. We'll sound off about our most brilliant ideas, our dumbest mistakes, and everything in between. And because this conversation will almost certainly go off the rails at some point, we'll end up covering just about everything else. And now, the AV Super Friends
for July 16, 2025. It's the best sounding and most technically focused podcast in higher ed. This is the AV super friends off the rails, episode number 118. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Technically Lord. >> Chris Dechter: from coast to coast, we're broadcasting live in the heat of the summer. The signals are hot, the takes are hotter, and the AC is just barely keeping up. I'm riding the faders, running the stream, and trying not to melt before the end of the show. My name is Chris
Dechter, and you're in for another Friday afternoon podcast adventure. I, on this Wednesday afternoon, blame Mark because he said, don't do it on Friday. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, and my AC works brand new. >> Marc Cholewczynski: My AC doesn't work on Fridays. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, well, it's actually not all that hot. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We didn't pay for Friday. >> Chris Dechter: Whatever. you have to pay for that subscription.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: It's premium day. Cost more. >> Jamie Rinehart: That's where. That's where we're at. >> Chris Dechter: All right, so let's say hello to today's panel of AV Super Friends. Where's this one? So he's officially in charge of airflow optimization, which means yelling shut that rack door. For the fifth time this week. He's a director of thermal management and Passive aggression from Kansas City. Say hello to Jamie Reinhart.
>> Jamie Rinehart: That actually hits me to a T. >> Chris Dechter: I worked on these. Our next contestant confirms conference rooms maintain both 72 degrees Fahrenheit and 72% participation. He has a fan, a towel, and a very short fuse. He's a certified zoom room stabilization engineer from Corvallis, Oregon. Say hello to Mark Cole. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It's all hot air and clouds, every bit of it.
>> Chris Dechter: And Larry's not here, so he doesn't get to hear that one. our final contestant keeps gear cool during the summer installations by strategically misting the encoders. And he knows which pelican cases can be turned into ice chests most effectively. He's our vice president for seasonal streaming infrastructure, Hydration from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Say hello to Mr. Justin Rexing. >> Justin Rexing: Sounds like I'm laying pipe.
>> Chris Dechter: Take it back. Take it back. >> Justin Rexing: Like a plumber. >> Chris Dechter: He m. Missed it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Miles of it. >> Chris Dechter: Walked right past that one. >> Justin Rexing: So on today's show, I don't think I did. >> Chris Dechter: No, on today's show. We're going to discuss automatic cameras and what are they good for? M. Anybody? >> Jamie Rinehart: No Crates laying pipe.
>> Chris Dechter: Oh, yeah. What are they good for? >> Justin Rexing: Absolutely nothing. Hey, I won that because I won that game. I got points. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah. After I figured you guys would all be jumping around with a quarter of a point. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Just. >> Chris Dechter: I'll give you a half point. >> Justin Rexing: Got that.
>> Chris Dechter: so we're going to discuss automatic cameras and commercial displays that seem to be getting cheaper but also seem to be getting worse. But first, some housekeeping and something I want to start doing more often here. But I want to start this one new today. because, we change our artwork every episode almost. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yes. >> Chris Dechter: Apple itunes always change it though. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So just.
>> Chris Dechter: Yeah, so we've noticed that if you use the Apple podcast app, first of all, please stop because it is terrible. It does, the bare minimum that you need to do and nothing more. So there's all these additional features and things you're not seeing. So please go find. Please go get a different application. I know a lot of people do. It's still like by far the most popular. go get a different application. I recommend going to go to
podcastapps.com and there's like a list of hundreds. You can pick them on there. But, anyway, so we change our artwork every show and we change the feed, artwork every show and we don't often talk about the. That. What that is and where it comes from. So I want to make sure that we start just kind of recognizing the artwork from the most recent episode and start working our way backwards. So our artwork is always based on one of our alternate show titles
which you don't use. We generally try to find the one that's got the most visual appeal or most visual impact and that becomes the artwork. So on the, the last, the Infocom ones don't count because I just used background that did that because, we did a whole bunch of those. But the last one we changed was, it's a little picture of Mark and if you look at it, it's. It's a little like.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: It's a pocket hanging out in the pocket. Which has been the COVID on itunes now for the past like month because itunes sucks. >> Chris Dechter: But, so that was based on a comment that somebody made on. I think it was the Infocom wrap up show. >> Jamie Rinehart: A little Mark in your pocket, right. >> Chris Dechter: That you'd have, you'd have an expert in your pocket with you with some of these AV
tools. And that's where that came from. So I Believe the phrase actually was mini mark in your pocket. So yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to do this every show that we talk about. What was the last artwork? What did it come from? Where did it, where did that exist? So if you're not reading the show notes, there's all sorts of other stuff in there. We put in alternate show titles, all sorts of fun stuff in there.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: So if you're a guest on the show, you get to hang out and help us choose and usually we let you choose them and that's how a lot of this stuff comes to. So yeah, come on. >> Chris Dechter: That is true. So advantage to being a guest on the show. All right, so also if. So if you are listening to this As a reported MP3, we do stream live on Fridays, except when today
we're streaming live on a Wednesday. So follow us on the socials when we actually stream a double header this week we will stream on Friday. So yeah, you get you get double show, on our, on, on this week. So anyway, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blue sky, all those fun places to find out when we actually go live and stream stuff. Wait, I take it back, not Blue sky, because they don't much integration with damn near anything. Also there's nobody on Blue sky, so no, don't care.
if you can't join us live, we still want you to connect with us on those same socials. So hit us up on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blue sky, etc. please don't forget to spread the word. So share this podcast with your friends, enemies, colleagues, perfect strangers, anyone else who might enjoy it if you could cause some sort of scene at the dmv. Have I used that one before? Maybe? >> Justin Rexing: Yeah, you have. >> Jamie Rinehart: I was just there last week.
>> Chris Dechter: Did you cause a scene? >> Jamie Rinehart: I already had that. No, it's just a normal everyday, just for fun. >> Chris Dechter: Just went just for to hang out, see what's going on. >> Jamie Rinehart: Well, I mean, what else you do on a small town on a Friday morning? >> Chris Dechter: So the DMV for me is on the way home. I stopped by on my way home from campus every day and I take a number, then I leave and rolled.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: In when there was like lines. People were pissed and I was like, oh yeah, just walk on in. And how about angry people when you just like walk up in there after you just walk in the door and there's like 100 people sitting there. >> Jamie Rinehart: They love that. Really? >> Chris Dechter: Well, next time you're at the dmv, ask some people to subscribe to our show and make sure they don't. They're not using Apple Podcasts as their application. So, if
you want to support the show, please consider donating your contributions. Help to keep us bringing you the honest content that you love or that you love to hate, depending on what your, what your take is on it. You can find that donation link in the show notes of this very episode on our website. We, do want to hear from you. So if there's something you'd like us to cover and you want to reach out, please send us an email. Mailbagvsuperfriends, dot com or.
I get a ton of messages through there, most of which are just kind of like spamming people who want to, sign us up for their advertising services. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You should talk to this person who has nothing to do with anything we talk about. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, tell me, how did you tell me that you never listened to our show without telling me that? By trying to pitch yet another person who has nothing to do with what we do on, on our show, but he's a leader.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: this one's a leader. >> Chris Dechter: Some of them get really aggressive too, and I have to like, finally respond to them and tell them to knock it off. And finally, when you're listening to us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wait, stop listening there. Go get a different app. But wherever you're listening to us, please leave rating and review because that, helps to bump, us up in the algorithms and then more people see the
show and all that fun stuff. So all. Ah, right. All that being said, we're going to take a, a quick break. No, we're not. We're going to do the news. Let's do the news. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Let's do the news. >> Chris Dechter: All right. Yeah. And today, some bandwidth problems. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yes, you did. >> Chris Dechter: You want me to run it again for you? >> Marc Cholewczynski: No, it's fine. We heard you might break it. It's news.
What's the news, Chris? >> Chris Dechter: What do we got? All right, today's news. and we covered this news once before. This was strange. Yeah, I guess call it a follow up. A year ago, Panasonic announced they were in the middle of some big buyout with a financial firm and Panasonic was reorgang and all sorts of crazy stuff was going on and we were assured that, well, we're not really changing anything. It's just, you know, the business is being structured differently, but we're
still going to be selling projectors, we're still going to be selling displays. We're still be doing all that fun stuff. It took a year and then it comes back and they've called the whole thing off, right? >> Justin Rexing: Oh they did, yeah. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: It's news to Justin now too. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, they decided they're not going to go. >> Chris Dechter: This came out last week.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. What was the name of the. What was the company that was supposedly going to take the projector wing? >> Jamie Rinehart: It was Money Incorporated. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I can't remember what it was called. >> Chris Dechter: Oryx. So yeah, the, the, the headline is the, it's the second link there in the show notes, Justin, if you want to look at it. >> Justin Rexing: I look at it.
>> Chris Dechter: The, the headline, this comes from AV Magazine link is in the show notes for those of you listening. And it's Panasonic Sail. A projector business to Oryx is called off. >> Chris Dechter: And apparently this was some sort of mutual agreement. They couldn't decide on the terms and they couldn't decide what percentage people were going to own or who was going to own what or I don't know. And they just walked away from it.
>> Justin Rexing: So that's got to be complicated when. I mean. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yes, absolutely. But I think the weirder part is if you all were independently wealthy, Chris, if you were just a little less independently, we. And you were out there looking to purchase wealthy. >> Chris Dechter: I'm. I'm mutually wealthy. >> Marc Cholewczynski: If you're out there looking for, I don't know, some acquisition. I
just want to kind of just curious. Would you be wanting to sink your money into a projection company? Yes or no? Do you think there's rapid growth in projection? Just curious because my answer would be no. I wouldn't be looking at doing this. >> Justin Rexing: I would probably do it knowing that they would have to change their business model at some point and go direct V LED anyway with the market shifts that way. >> Marc Cholewczynski: There you go. Just said it. Right?
There's so much discussion around like direct view that my guess is somewhere like somebody's like hey, you know Chuck, I'm not really sure we should be investing in a projection company right now. Like just let you know. >> Justin Rexing: Well, it's more than that though. you'll be investing in their clientele and their business model and you know that they're going to be coming out with some stuff and well, it's a gamble, you know. It is.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: We had some internal conversations with folks we do about Panasonic and. And there actually was some a level of excitement from what I heard, ah, that there was a. This going newfound resources were going to be made available because of the financial pieces so there were, there was excitement. They were going to have, have some growth. So it was interesting, interesting to see how it just kind of fizzled out and fell apart and it was taking a long
time. It was almost a year now. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Or whatever, Whatever it was, it was. >> Chris Dechter: Over, over a year ago. Yeah. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: Because it was right before if you recall, we had Darrel on, We tried to. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: no, no, this was the one where he was on some sort of super lockdown laptop that wouldn't let HM him connect.
oh yeah, but it was, it was, it was like right before Infocomm and it kind of came up like, wait, this is being announced like two weeks before Infocom or weekend F4 Infocom. You know, are we going to see changes or whatever. And it was no, because it was, it seems to be very much as you mentioned Mark, kind of a financial capital sort of
deal. Not an operational change. but clearly something in the intervene or in the intervening inner, intervening intermixing inner interim year, whatever that word. I can't think of mid year. something in the last year they did fell apart for some reason. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So. Yeah, I'm curious, I don't know. Will we see changes? Will the falling part of this deal have larger consequences for Panasonic as a brand? Because they're losing that cash infusion. That's what I'm curious.
>> Justin Rexing: Why do they need it? That's. Did they need it? >> Marc Cholewczynski: I don't know. Well, there was excitement for it. >> Jamie Rinehart: I, I, yeah, I don't know if like Panasonic. Look, we know Panasonic corporate is so giant they probably it didn't matter him at all. you know, but I think this in combination with the weird to me rebrand to. Was it Merv? What is it? >> Chris Dechter: Merkin. >> Jamie Rinehart: Merkin. That's not it.
That is not it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: no. >> Jamie Rinehart: Thanks though. My head. >> Chris Dechter: It was something like that. It was something inscrutable. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, it's in this article. >> Chris Dechter: Mixel Flake.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I don't remember in these articles too. It's like, like it's this combination of not only is there a potential for this rewards restructuring of their business, but also a rebranding of a company so that the Panasonic name starts to become removed from the. And does it lose prestige? Does it lose some trustworthy does it lose the value that Panasonic brings? The units might be the same old units, but after a while I don't, Yeah, I don't know. I,
so I'm curious too. I, I, I found it would, would. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You buy a projector that was okay, here's XYZ brand that you know and trust and we're gonna rebrand that in five years down the road like are you still buying that if you know that it's Mercantile Exchange
Projection Co like market tech. Like what I feel like when if you pull enough people they're gonna be like I'm m gonna probably look at the field like it just doesn't feel nothing around it seems like sound financial. >> Chris Dechter: I suspect where it came from was some it was focused entirely financially and they were like what are the margins? What are you guys selling how what's your volume? And it looked good as a place to invest and kind of
own that. And maybe either as they've dug deeper or exactly what you said they're kind of like after they got into that they looked farther field and were maybe. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Not a lot has changed in the market and industry over the last year and a half too. >> Chris Dechter: Is it though? >> Marc Cholewczynski: I m think so. I think if you were to pull people what's their investment level in Technologies today versus what it was
16, 18 months ago. I think you're probably starting to see some plateau if not some. Some actually pulling back of investment in technologies. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah. And as per usual, we're just a bunch of goobers that really don't know any part of. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It's not financial advice. >> Justin Rexing: Speak for yourself. >> Marc Cholewczynski: This is not financial advice.
>> Chris Dechter: I've been investing based on what we've been talking about this entire time. >> Jamie Rinehart: I mean I was a millionaire. I normally consult on multinational conglomerate m so we do on the side business transactions. But this particular one, I I didn't plausible. >> Chris Dechter: Well to be fair they did ask how you got that number and what are you doing on the call? >> Marc Cholewczynski: Well, I bought one share so I was here at the shareholder.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I will say sometimes you just get lucky when you type in the weird numbers. >> Chris Dechter: I will say the. Yeah the rebrand thing is very strange. Knock it off please stop just making yes. >> Jamie Rinehart: And if you're gonna do it, I don't understand why it's not like I'm not seeing that marketing reflect it.
>> Chris Dechter: No. >> Jamie Rinehart: Well like I saw the name on the shirt different in Infocom and every so often you see those would be. >> Marc Cholewczynski: The shirts to have. Now it's just the merchant shirts. Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: All right. Oh boy. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Anyhow, so it's not happening. So all you that are wishing for it to happen, it's not going to happen. >> Jamie Rinehart: So sorry for all of those of you who forgot that it
was even going to happen to begin with, it's not happening at all. So don't. >> Chris Dechter: It was our reaction. We saw the news from last week on that, so. All right, well, let's take a quick break. We're going to, run a, a comment here. What do you call a commercial? That's the word. We're running a commercial. We're going to come back, we're going to talk about, stuff and things. What are we talking about
today? We are talking about automatic cameras and all the joys that come with that. So this one m the AV Super Friends are sponsored by Computer Comforts Incorporated. CCI has been building tech furniture for the education market since 1987. Instructor lecterns, computer lab tables, collaborators tables and active learning clusters are just a few of the many innovative products made by cci. Speaking of lecterns, Computer Comforts has just released
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>> Chris Dechter: Topic one starts now. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Topic one, yes. Topical. >> Chris Dechter: All right, says hot takes in there too. So topic one today is automatic, cameras and what are they good for and all that fun stuff. So, and I, I want to back up on this. So this is based on a presentation I did at Infocom, which none of you guys showed up to, by the way. Room full of people. >> Marc Cholewczynski: The camera didn't work.
>> Justin Rexing: I was, I was busy. >> Chris Dechter: So was I presenting. So. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Oh, how was the audience otherwise? >> Jamie Rinehart: I just ignored it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Jamie was busy. >> Chris Dechter: I know you did. I know it went well. We had a lot of good
interaction with the, with the, it was well attended. We had a lot of good interaction with the people there, a lot of good questions, a lot of people interested in it, interested in our, in the presentation on that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So was the acp. >> Chris Dechter: Well, no, it wasn't. So that's the thing. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Good. >> Chris Dechter: That was one aspect to it, but it was a very general, like, what type of automated,
camera technologies and automated camera solutions are out there. And so that's what, like I said, I want to step back on this. So this is not about the giant appliances driving AI, visual driven whatever Stuff that was part of it. It's not about automatic preset systems. That was part of it. It was also about auto framing. It was about the on camera processing visual auto tracking systems. It was about the ones queuing on audio. It was on the ones cueing on information from other cameras in
the space. So we tried to cover the gamut on the. Oh and I'm sorry and also ones based on environmental and control inputs too. So we tried to cover the gamut on all the different types of camera automations is out there where it works, where it doesn't. I've been doing a lot of deployments. I think all of us in various ways have version. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah for sure. >> Chris Dechter: Different versions of this to, to some extent. I will
say an interesting experience about three weeks ago. We've been doing the auto framing all in one camp. Conferencing bars. Conferencing bars. Conferencing bars for years because that's a nice solution for a small space. I had the first request for somebody to say can you make sure the software is running on our. It was an admin versus user level thing. Thanks deployment. can we make sure we have the software running so we can manually steer the camera
around? And I was like this is the first time in however many hundred plus of these systems I've done where someone's actually wanted that. >> Justin Rexing: So okay, why did they want it? Did you ask like why do you want to do that? >> Chris Dechter: So they used to have a, an older system in there with manually steered PTZ cameras and they liked the ability to to set up the frame
specifically of certain. I was like okay, they had a. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Very kind of narrow unique need and they wanted to be able to recreate that. >> Chris Dechter: And that need by the way is incorrect. >> Jamie Rinehart: Automated. >> Marc Cholewczynski: They wanted control. >> Chris Dechter: They, I think they think they want control until they realize they now have to like go into an app and click that around.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: But do you find or in this conversation that may or may not have unfolded an Infocom the. Was there kind of some, some lines in the sand where people like it were and versus where they don't like it. Was there any conversation around that? so I can say kind of our perspective here is that we have a lot of folks that are interested in it in the cookie cutter conferencing collaboration room. Like give me a small integrated sound
bar, put it on there. But I will also then follow up and say more often than not it is asked to be turned off after the fact for whatever reason. They're like, cool. That's neat. But it's a little bit noisy for us. Can you, like, just frame it out and let us manually control from thereafter? That's typically how it goes. Not every single time, but more often than not, that ends up being the story. And that's for that type of.
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah. We've had about maybe less than 5% of our clients through, you know, university and my business, both, which is not much. Say that the camera was too good and zoomed in too close. What was happening is there's a conference room with 10 chairs, and there's two people in there, and they're sitting in the front. And when they start zoom, all they see is their big face on the screen because nobody's joined yet. And they're like, oh, my God.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: So that equitable head on the screen. >> Justin Rexing: Yeah. And they were like, you need to turn off the auto. Blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, so we just set it wide and just let it run. But it's just a, you know, preference. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Sure. Yeah. And to me, that's kind of that flavor. Right. You have like, the. The conference room scenario. we've
toyed with potentially auto. Auto framing, auto tracking, whatever you want to call it in learning spaces, but. >> Justin Rexing: We have a little bit of it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We haven't really gone down the road yet because I think we're stuck on this little concept of, like, being able to turn it off, turn it on, right. If you like it, whatever, but then you go away. >> Justin Rexing: And we've found that some manufacturers don't allow you to do that
through the touch panel. It's only on the remote. And then you're like, well, I can't. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Exactly. and we've also found that instructors, for whatever reason, different topic, just don't want to be pressing much buttons. They just don't want to be burdened with that. They don't want to have to, like, engage, disengage, turn on, turn off, do that stuff. They just don't want
to do it. And so I don't want to do it. It ends up being left in whatever the last state it was in. And so it's not really being leveraged or used the way that it may be intended. which then kind of leaves us in this weird lurch because we just don't know what's the right approach because we just got mixed feedback all around. So. But, Chris, you. You're actually doing it, and I would say to some level of success. And have you gotten feedback from folks?
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yes. >> Chris Dechter: So that's where this, this presentation started, was kind of like a lightweight case study. On our first, like I said, we've been doing auto framing stuff or the ones built into cameras. But like our first intentional wide scale deployment is a little over a year. Yeah, about a year old. A little over a year, whatever. Some number of
months new. Relatively not buying it out, but we've been able to gather some feedback from people on their thoughts on it. And also that has kind of some of what you're talking about there, that has informed how we are deploying some of these. Not from the physical locations or any of that stuff. That has not changed the cameras or cameras and microphones or microphones, but how we're operating them in the system. So one of the things is we found from faculty, initially we
had it off. We had the automatic system off by default. So they had to enable it. We wanted to put them in charge of the cameras. So these cameras are going to be dumb until you push that button. And then they will look around the room depending on what's going on in the space. which is kind of in. That follows our mantra of like you go into a room that's got microphones, those microphones are off until you enable them. You are in charge of what's going on in your
space. That's very much. And that, that changes campus by campus by campus. So there's people listening right now who do it completely differently. That's fine. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Is this a distance education strategy or recording? What's the strategy? What's the. What was the reason for this enabling.
>> Chris Dechter: Feature to come in with back up even more? All right, so during COVID as many schools did, or as every school did, there was kind of the ready, fire, aim method of let's get cameras and mics in these rooms or documents or documents that were just aimed at people. or owls everywhere. flocks of owls. What's. What's a flock of owl? Murders of owls. Loose, turlets, of owls. Anyway, these things were everywhere. They were not well deployed well, you know, it
was like. It was not slap dash. That's not the right term and that's not fair. But it was just like, let's get stuff out there. Because we were haphazard. It was done expediently. So this was just the point of this. Initially we did one building, initially because there's one building on campus that is entirely general pool, general inventory. It's not owned by any department, any college, anybody. It's Just classrooms for people,
classroom, flavored classrooms. And we use that one because it would be the widest application to campus. So it'd be exposed to the most number of departments, the most number of colleges, the most type, the most number of students, all that stuff. And there's everything in there from small seminar rooms to see, I think that's 11 people to lecture halls to see. 250. So it's, it. The whole gamut was covered. So it
was a good opportunity for us. Say, like, we're going to try this, we're going to go big and we're going to get a lot of data based on how people use this stuff in different spaces. So it was an intentional choice to do that. And as we were then I mentioned the physical mounting cameras. But as we were mounting cameras, we made sure that we put them in places that made the most sense too, because some of them, due to expediency and things of where the cabling and all that stuff
was, the, the the cameras were kind of to the side of the room. And so, you know, you realize, well, now even when I'm looking at the students or looking instructor, I'm looking at the side of their head. So you get that, you know, awkward experience. And we really wanted to focus on ensuring that the people who were remote had the most level of interaction possible. So they felt like they could fully interact with the, with the class.
They could be in the room, they could see who was talking, they could, they felt like they were part of the class. They weren't just somebody who was remotely viewing this over a TV screen. And they felt like they were a second tier participant in this sort of thing, which I'll be brutally honest, is how most of the remote learning stuff. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That was done is not the way. >> Chris Dechter: Right. I can see the room. It's a wide shot of the room and
there's 60 heads in that room. And I don't know who's really talking or what's going on and I can sort of pay attention and yeah, it's not great. So we wanted to improve that experience based on when the instructor is presenting. I want to be able to see and hear them clearly and I want to. Justin, your comment about giant heads. Maybe we need a giant headshot so I can clearly see
that person in the room. we want to make sure we're capturing stuff written on physical, whiteboards, marker boards, chalkboards, glass boards, whatever you want to call them. We use dedicated cameras for that in a lot of Cases, not all cases, because some rooms don't just physically won't support that. but when, most importantly, when students were speaking, we wanted to improve what was being seen from, you know, the. The. As much as we'd like to change it and we're not there yet. the. The.
The wide sea of faces in a room seating 3,040 6,200 people. I want to know who is speaking, and I. Because, you know, if I'm in the room, I can turn and look at them, but I can't do that when I'm looking at that back shot of the room, and I can't see what's going on. so that was the intention. What we realized, by setting it initially to be off by default so instructors were in charge. we realized, well, it's not really serving that purpose because
those features are not being enabled. Yes. When they connect to a zoom or teams or Google call or whatever, the cameras wake up and they go to preset their default preset one, which is generally a medium shot of the room, but it usually just stays there. And it wasn't moving. And we were kind of like, this is exactly what we had before. This is not getting us anything. So we just turned it on. So it's on by default, and we still put
the instructors in charge. You don't like that, go turn it off. what we found is initially faculty wanted it off by default because they want to be in charge. It's. It's very much a cultural thing here on campus that they want to be the ones in charge of the space. They are the experts in the space. They are in charge operationally of the space when class is in session. I get that. Like I said, we ran into challenge with that because we just weren't getting the data.
Is this a value or anything? So we turned it on. what we have found since then is, faculty don't notice it doing its thing. It's turning and looking at people and whatnot. In most cases, it's fine. It's invisible. It's changing cameras, it's changing views. Some of them are physically moving, depending, and then steering within the, censored frame there. it's happening invisibly. And when you ask them for feedback, they're like, oh, I didn't even know it did that.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: So are they. Do you find maybe this could be anecdotal? Are they just delivering classes the same way they always have? >> Chris Dechter: So this. Yes. Okay. M. I'm going to say yes, but no. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That I'm going to tease it out because I think that's the key here, is that.
>> Chris Dechter: Yes, but because this is also part of a parallel project with our center for Teaching and Learning and our vice Provost for Distance and Online Education, who are really driving to like, look, yes, we all recognize we need to be better at. And if Larry was here, he would yell at us for it. But distance and hybrid learning, which I'm going to use very generically, and he hates that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Intentional.
>> Chris Dechter: But we need to be intentional about it. We need to build our curriculum towards it. We need to build our teaching methodology, styles, modalities towards that. So these are baby steps. So what we did is we removed, at least initially, we can't go rebuild the building. This is an existing building from 1960 something or other. So, you know, whatever. We can improve the technology so it supports those things better. Not
perfectly, but better. So we've removed that hurdle because that was one of the things we heard from Feedback through our center for Teaching and Learning was, well, we can't do that because m. The rooms I'm in don't do that. The rooms I'm in just have a webcam or just like you said, a doc cam, just kind of aimed at me. So yes, I can be seen online, but it's not really what we need to do, what we want to do. And so that they were. That was kind of a hurdle for them. So we're like, well, great.
Now the rooms have these capabilities in this building that is owned by nobody. So everyone can teach in that room, regardless of size of class, from the smallest to the largest class. So we remove that deliberately. So now it's kind of like that hurdle has been removed. And now the. The online assistance education group and the center, for Teaching Learning are working on the curriculum side. So it is intentional. And that is like phase two of this.
So. So to answer your question, yes, but they're still teaching the same way they were, but. But with the eye on the future that they're working on being more intentional about including classes that are built for distance or hybrid capability are built intentionally for that, not slapped on there because. >> Justin Rexing: Of COVID So it sounds like you're going to keep doing it. >> Chris Dechter: Oh, yeah. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So.
>> Chris Dechter: So initially I. I did like 20. Some of these rooms, 27 rooms, I think this way. since then I've done another 60 or 70. So yes. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And. And do you have the. An enrollment piece that is different, so. Or does every class automatically have a distance piece? Or is it. >> Chris Dechter: You mean as far as like getting like a canvas shell and all that stuff.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: So if I'm just Whatever, whatever 101 class I'm in, I'm teaching, can a student choose to either come into the room or can I take it remotely? Do they have an option? Or is it. Is there a separate enrollment? Is it, is it a different product? >> Chris Dechter: My understand. So short answer is I don't know because that's a different group who's figuring that stuff out?
my understanding is they're working very specifically with the departments and the colleges to identify which classes are hybrid back, you know, both modalities and which are not. Because some faculty don't want to and some things don't work towards that. But I don't know the answer to the question about how they can enroll. Do they have that open choice? I'm not sure of that answer. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And that's always an interesting question. Piece of it, but going to like
the technical bits here. In doing it now we kind of have this, this reason reasoning for wanting to move this way. I think everybody has that, that. Cause in the back of their mind, oh, we're gonna do this. It's gonna, it's gonna enable all these pieces. And so then you kind of go through the process, you deploy, you integrate you all these things, but then you are kind of left wondering, well, was it worth it? Was it the
experience that we were hoping for? Did we get out of it what we thought we wanted to? >> Chris Dechter: So to that point, I will say that there is a non insubstantial, unsubstantial, monetary value associated with this. In the rooms where I've gone, the most fancy schmancy, for lack of a better term, I will say at the outset I have zero of the dedicated appliances that drive the cameras through AI stuff, you know, you. Crestron One beyond, yeah, those big multi
rack, I have zero of those. I see very little utility for those on my campus. For some people on their campuses, they put those everywhere and it's great. Fantastic. If that works for you, if that works for your institution, by all means. >> Justin Rexing: A lot of money. >> Chris Dechter: Well, there's that too. the, the highest end solution I'm using is the, the camera preset, recall based on either audio information or control
environmental. What I like about that is even when the cameras, they go to a shot that we set up, we identify anything over in this side, you get this shot so you're kind of more in control of it. I kind of like that. But then even within that, it'll Auto frame within that to, to look at, you know, hey, I went to this medium shot. There's only eight people on that side of the auditorium. So to steer in, it actually works very well. And we did
one where we went a little nuts. and kudos to one of my guys, Curtis, who did this a couple years ago, where he, he took an auditorium and took the two shots of the auditorium and did it down to like every group of like four seats. He spent way too much time on that. And we recognize that that's not going to happen. But the effect of it was actually very, very well done from
like, it moving around to different people during events and things like that. So when that room is full and people are asking questions, it's. It's really interactive to the point where. Not quite, but it's almost a level of like, is there like a student there, like with a tripod kind of aiming this around because it's almost to that level if you really dial it in. So to that extent, again, the goal being if you're remote, it's a much more interactive experience.
You feel like you're much more involved and you're much more part of the conversation. So in that sense, I would give it a qualified, not an unqualified, but a qualified. Yes, it has been an improvement to things. So. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And we use some. Some of this. Right. And so, but I think primarily it's. It's in that conference room environment. We do some different room systems and those room systems, integrate well with some of that auto tracking. And you
do get the ability to put them in manual and override that. And so we've had mixed success with those. the takeaway being, I think it's kind of in the user. Some people really like it and some people just do not. They don't want to go anywhere near it. And that's. It's left us kind of wondering, like, which way is the best way and that can it. >> Chris Dechter: So for you again, is it on by default or off by default? >> Marc Cholewczynski: it's on by default.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Okay. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And so. And in the conference room, those who want it, that's kind of what they expect. And then those who like, don't. They're like, no, can we just turn this off? And we. And we do. but it's weird because we don't know if it has made it to need to have or it's still in the neat to have phase of things. Right. It's. Nobody's been so adamant about it. we've lightly put it out there. if I, if I call
it AI, people seem to be intrigued by it. And then they're like, oh, yeah, we want that, right? And it's, oh, cool. And then they play with it. They're like, well, you know, it's almost what we want. It's close. And like, ah, it works a lot of times, but sometimes we just don't want it to be so busy so we turn it off. That's fine. but. >> Chris Dechter: And it can at time get lost and kind of get confused and whatnot. And so it.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: And yes, the way that I often ask people, when I'm doing a consult around it, I ask people, have you been on the far end of it before? Do you. Have you been the person who's not in the room? >> Justin Rexing: And they always say a lot. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And you're absolutely. A lot of times like, well, no, I haven't. I don't really know what it's like. I'm like, well, do you want to, do you want to set a meeting.
>> Justin Rexing: On an okay, right? And a lot I've never seen. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You do see a lot of it in the. Okay. Is that people like, oh, they think they want the alkam. I ask them, have you been on the far end of that? And they're like, well, no, I've just been in the room when it's being used. I'm like, well, do you have no idea what it does? And so I think I would like to set up
a call with you and let's walk through it. And I want to get your reaction because I can build all this stuff out in the room. It's not for you in that room. It's for the people who are not in the room. Right. So we want to understand. And so we're actually catering to that experience, not your experience, talking to the person who across from you in the table. And so we try to do a lot of that, like taste testing with this so people can understand it.
and it's been mixed. I don't know if one camp is kind of winning this war, so to speak, or the other, but. And maybe we're not the best at doing it. That could be a possibility. I will say that. But, we're kind of following all the instructions, doing everything we're supposed to be doing. But. But we haven't done the full fledged giant room, multi camera ACPR type deployments. most of them are more in your large seminar room slash conference room. And it's been like 50, 50 for.
>> Justin Rexing: Us we're doing two or three of those right now. So we'll see how that conference rooms. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Or the bigger rooms like Conference Seminar which is like that weird new style. >> Justin Rexing: Room automatic Q sys. >> Chris Dechter: So I will say at the outset, I mean it's not limited qsis. I do want to say before we get too far into this that there's multiple types out there in the last say like two years.
The, the auto framing, auto auto tracking. Sorry I get these mixed up. The auto presets, auto framing, auto tracking. I just call them automatic or I think we call them auto cameras. >> Justin Rexing: I think on the just AI cameras it's just all AI. >> Chris Dechter: Then it says owl depending on the font. These OWL cameras. not that OWL camera, the other OWL camera. >> Justin Rexing: The owl. >> Chris Dechter: The owl. >> Justin Rexing: Not anyway letters.
>> Chris Dechter: the, the. The basic cameras, the non automatic tracking cameras, auto preset cameras that we use are generally from ptzoptics and ptzoptics has enabled like across the board. They're like here's basic auto auto tracking based on a. The visual input. Hey look, there's a weird. And it actually does a pretty decent job. I will say depending on the the space you're in it
can get lost and confused and things like that. But like that front, you know that traditional classroom front of shot there's generally one person up there walking back and forth. It's pretty good at following that person around. So for like your thousand dollar camera it's not a bad way to go. So we've started, we started picking a couple of rooms where we've enabled that and we. The interface is identical.
>> Chris Dechter: And again faculty don't care. Is that a fancy schmancy true AI enabled auto tracking camera up there or is it kind of those more basic one that's just looking at the human shaped blob and sort of following around as best it can. Faculty don't care. And the button says automatic and they just hit the automatic thing and it just works and they're like it's good enough.
>> Jamie Rinehart: So when you're putting. Okay I. So I you know I'm in this, the, the camp that Mark was talking about earlier. I have a few of the Even though we okay the auto cameras in the conference rooms, you know that will move around software based things but once I get to a classroom, my experience past previous I haven't done this in the last couple years so things have progressed. I think we can all agree on that. But it was just a better experience
to do it. The quote ah, hard Way, the old way. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Drive it. >> Jamie Rinehart: yeah, drive it somehow with some kind of external cue. Whether it was audio, whether it's motion sensors, whether it's something. Right. Drive it some other way. So Chris, my question to you is this. These recent deployments, are they the software based auto movements or are they external cued movements? You may not be doing it the whole time.
>> Chris Dechter: When you say software based, you mean internal to the camera itself? >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, like the ptzoptics thing you just described. Okay, great. >> Chris Dechter: So the short answer, am I doing it one way or the other? The answer is yes. so I'm actually doing it four different ways on campus. And we're using the same generic term of just auto automatic cameras or auto cameras because I don't want people to think about the
technology. I've even had to caution some of my guys like don't use. We use all Q sys and Q sys calls. There's acpr, automatic camera presets. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: I tell them don't use that phrase that confuses people. They don't know what ACPR is. They hate that. Don't call it automatic cameras because they don't care. To your point, they don't care what technology is actually driving it. They just want
that end result, if that's something they want. So to your question, we're using a lot of different options on it and some are auto EPTZ within, you know, the camera frame and it steers within that. Some are physically moving based on presets that we have set up. And I like that because it allows you that level of kind of the finished product is kind of better because you're ensuring that even when it does its own thing. Yeah. You're in control of what that's going to look like.
The, the more basic automatic ones and you know, lumens and aver and ptzoptics and all these provide that and it's very affordable these days. Has gotten good enough that I'm thinking of like widely starting to deploy those because the delta, like I said, there's a not insignificant delta there and it's roughly about five grand per room. So do your math on that. For five grand, is it worth that? Maybe not everywhere. It's worth that in certain spaces it do things depends. It depends on that.
Well, and it depends on that the client in the space, the college of business may say we want the best because we, our students are paying more and we want to make sure that they are getting the best possible experience. So five grand to them on a room that costs 30 grand is not a huge deal. For others, five grand on top of 30 grand, that's a big ask. And we can take that out and get them. Can we get them 80%, 75% of the way there with more affordable solutions? Probably. And we're doing that.
>> Justin Rexing: And that's rarely. >> Jamie Rinehart: That's why I wanted to ask that question and you answered it the way I assumed you were going to. I just wanted to kind of clarify internally because I'm doing like, I don't like using the ACPR because it's kind of become a branded thing. even though when you break it out to the full definition, that's the old school way of doing it. Whether you're using an auto mixer, whether you're using whatever.
So that's the way I've been deploying. >> Chris Dechter: It by the way. You are exactly right. There is, yes, it's software driven and there's process difference. But from the end result it's very similar to the thing that everyone was doing 20 years ago. I pushed the push to talk button on the desk and the camera goes to that shot of this side of the room. It's very similar to that. So if you understand that process, it's the same kind of general operation.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, they just made it easier to deploy and kudos to them. I just, I, I, even though the phrase is correct, I, I don't, I don't like to make it sound like it's, I'm using the branded thing correct. But, but I do, I find that to be like the tried and true. I know I can make this work. >> Chris Dechter: Yep. >> Jamie Rinehart: somehow. But I am intrigued. I have not used some of the newer software based solutions, and you know,
are they better? is it worth looking at again? And can you kind, can you hybrid it? Can you have like a pre, like a preset recall and then let the, the camera's brains take over from there. So if you had five people in the. Let's, let's go back to that. well you know my pharmacy program. Right. So I have these, these auditoriums that they do this in all the time and I've had to go through the push to talk or the auto mixer bs but I can usually get down to about six to eight
reliably students. if I'm m using clusters of students. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Jamie Rinehart: but if I could trigger that 6 to 8 and then allow the camera's brains to take over and narrow that down to one or two because usually they have a better way. of Zooming in and making it look like it was a person. An intentional slow pan, slow zoom instead of the. The jerkiness sometimes you get with the older cameras. And I just haven't
done it. So some of this conversation within the last two years. So some of this conversation is interesting because I badmouth auto cameras all the time because I think like OWL cam, you know, owl like the actual one we usually make fun of. >> Chris Dechter: which to be fair has its place. It's just not place.
>> Jamie Rinehart: but we see. We see them put in the wrong place too often and have a terrible experience or the wrong ptzoptics camera with the right pts camera with the right software package that's actually doing its job correctly was put in the wrong way. And I see that a lot. >> Justin Rexing: How does that happen? Like I'm. I'm so put it on side of the room.
>> Jamie Rinehart: They'll put it on the side of the room or they'll make it so that it's pointing at the instructor's area but the doors next to it or they'll catch. >> Justin Rexing: That's just design. >> Jamie Rinehart: Like, okay, they did it wrong. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah. >> Jamie Rinehart: And so the experience from. To your guys's points earlier, the experience from the end user from the person on the other side of this lens, it is terrible and I
avoided at all cost. Maybe I need to look into it again. You guys sound like you've done a little bit more with it. >> Justin Rexing: Well, it's just weird because I'm listening to this conversation and maybe it's just the culture I live in, but 100% of the cameras that I put in anymore are automatic following moving tracking AI bullshit. Because. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And it's on by default. >> Justin Rexing: Yeah, we, yeah, we rarely. We don't
put cameras in classrooms everywhere. Number one. So when we're asked for a classroom that needs a camera and zoom capable, you're like, okay, let's talk about what that experience looks like and going through the needs analysis. Yeah, of course. I want to try the automatic moving camera for the same price. Yeah. And you're. Okay, so you just throw it in. Now we. Then there's that higher level where we're doing a few rooms right now with you know, you talk with the person and
they're. We want a production level the best you can get. And that's where we're using the ACPR stuff because it's going to be a little bit better than just buying a ptz optics. >> Chris Dechter: Right. >> Justin Rexing: So that's. And I think we don't really. I mean all our conference rooms has auto framing none of them don't. And we've turned them off in a
couple places. But. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, yeah. And I think when I were to like, for us we, we deploy them everywhere and mostly for lecture capture. But I don't care what they use them for. Right. We're trying to enable something and if they're brave enough to try something with it, then at least if they complain, I know they tried it and we can try to fix it. Right.
But we put them everywhere. So that's where I'm with our faculty preferences, are kind of like Chris's where they would prefer it off and turn it on rather than have it on automatically. They get annoyed and frustrated that it's doing things they didn't want it to do. now that was also kind of a curious thing is because my, like, I get a lot of complaints because they are watching themselves more than they're watching the students when they have a call like
this. So they notice the camera moving around and hopping around. Weird because they see themselves. They're not looking at themselves. >> Justin Rexing: Yeah, I know how to solve that. >> Chris Dechter: Turn off that self view thing. >> Justin Rexing: Just don't put in a confidence display and they won't know. >> Jamie Rinehart: Well, it's just right there in the self view of >> Justin Rexing: Oh, they're standing.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, I have no control over any of that. But. But they prefer to have it off first and then have the option to enable same with student microph. They prefer to have them muted first and have the option to enable them. Mostly because they got tired of recording everybody making fun of them. but no, this is ah. You know. So every now and then you guys intrigued me to try something different. >> Chris Dechter: Thanks for that rousing, endorsement there.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. So the ones we we play with also like BL ones Odley's and stuff like that. We've used those in our conference. >> Chris Dechter: Biamp, Crestron. Well, Crestron doesn't. It's all Headley stuff. who's the. Who's the. The 361 Panacast, whatever. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah, that thing's. >> Chris Dechter: I do want to say there's kind of a new generation of these coming out, by the way. Lumens. I saw a demo of that. I think they announced it.
Infocom. They have a little processor that does like the And it's based on audio cues so the microphones pick it up. It's very straightforward and it's. They are driving that price down. It looks very intriguing. So take a look at the Lumens cameras and the Lumens processor that's a very cool way to do it. but all the big manufacturers I think are doing something along these lines, Logitech and all the rest. But, there's kind of a new
generation of those. And Mark, I know you've used some of these, where they do the auto framing stuff and then it like will split up the view to even more specifically show people to give like. >> Jamie Rinehart: A more, I don't know, like a multi window thing. >> Chris Dechter: Yes, a multi window view of what's going on. And that's also very cool because in most cases, like all conversations, it's done entirely in software
and there's not like more stuff you have to buy. So in a lot of cases, like hey, that thing, you already have got an update. Now does this or now has the ability to enable that. And so you can see this sort of thing happening and to the point where now some of them. And just free plug for the folks at Neat who were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, they
now have. You can put multiple cameras that can do that internally in the same system and the cameras then share those streams back and forth to change up that multi view. So some of these views are from this camera and some are from that camera. So regardless of where you are in the room or Justin, as you just said, people having a conversation get framed differently. So again, it's not for people in the room, it's for people remote. They have a more interactive
and more, involved experience. They feel like they're more part of the conversation going on in the room. >> Justin Rexing: Quick switch. You have two people on each side of the room having a conversation in one frame.
>> Chris Dechter: Or in most cases, most of our conference rooms are just like, here's a long view of the room and the person who's driving is usually the, you know, the dean, the chair, the department who head, whoever at the far end, who is now, if you think about it, they're the smallest person on the view and it's tough to see. >> Jamie Rinehart: I thought it was really interesting because I sat on through a demo of like that. What's the instant, the action cam thing?
Instant360 or. Sure, there's an action cam camera out there. >> Justin Rexing: That action cam like by Mattel or. >> Jamie Rinehart: Like GoPro, like a GoPro thing. But I think it's Insta360 but they have a sound bar with the multiple camera thing. And this is all built into the software and it's a single USB stream and you can enact it and dissect and it Basically breaks it down like our video here. Right. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You get the multi frame.
>> Jamie Rinehart: And then it also had the whiteboard feature on. Was really interesting. And it was from off the shelf, Best Buy special kind of thing. And I was. >> Chris Dechter: And you know their name so we can tell people no. >> Jamie Rinehart: And what's really bad is like I do know their name and I know the company. But yeah, right now it's not coming to me. >> Chris Dechter: So go to your browser window and start doing this thing until you can find it.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: We've done not going. >> Jamie Rinehart: Hold on a minute. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So in our Zoom Room deployments, we've done like the big. We'll do a PDZ and we'll do an L1 instant. We get the multi stream thing. >> Jamie Rinehart: Insta, Insta, 360. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Insta 360 sounds like a kitchen appliance. >> Jamie Rinehart: yes. >> Chris Dechter: Okay. Yeah. Insta360.com Fair enough. So, yeah,
Jamie says looks cool. Maybe take a look at one. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So cool. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah. And again they, they make Action Cam. So they're a GoPro competitor. because that's where I know that's where I know them from. And then they had this thing and I was like, okay, I'll sit in your five minute demo. And I actually drug Larry over there. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Is this kind of like the soccer replay world kind of stuff.
That's. I think we may have actually discussed this. >> Justin Rexing: Look at this comment. Conference bar. >> Jamie Rinehart: That's the one. See? >> Marc Cholewczynski: Cool. >> Jamie Rinehart: Just took me a little bit of time to get you there. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So AutoCAD. >> Chris Dechter: Zoom room's doing the processing for this. That's an added feature, right?
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yes. For those who have Zoom, there is M Multi stream. If you have not played with that, if, you have two of your AI magical driven cameras, one front, one back, you can enable multi stream in your Zoom Room and have that multi frame thing set up for you, which is great. Neat to try. Give it a shot. Maybe you like it. Mileage may vary, but yeah, we have folks who do leverage that in some specific spaces to create that more
engaging look for the foreign participants. And it does work. It's I think if you have an intentionally designed space and the things are in the right location, you can get the better version of that OWL kind of thing. with the Zoom Room, it does do it. >> Jamie Rinehart: This whole episode should be called the Hypocrites. Yeah, the Hypocrite hour. We've chatted about these things for years and we come on here and say, yeah, maybe they're not.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: So they're maturing. They're maturing, things are changing and it's a matter of time and then we'll get there. >> Jamie Rinehart: They're growing up, they're losing some of their teenage. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I mean, everything's moving towards automation. It is, a march. Right. And so we will obviously be doing more
automation and more auto magic things. Whether it be microphones, cameras or whatever it is, even just basic room automation, how things work for you. I think the days of needing to press all these buttons and do the tap dance and all this other stuff are coming to an end. We'll start to leverage and lean into more of this automation. >> Jamie Rinehart: Stop. If I can't put seven different joysticks on my touch panel, I don't want it.
>> Chris Dechter: Joystick, like physically on the front of it. >> Jamie Rinehart: Well, I mean, most people just put the little icons, but I like to put them physical. >> Chris Dechter: Joystick Jamie has a tactile haptic touch panels with physical joysticks on them now. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And feel around. >> Chris Dechter: I do want to share one, one quick anecdote that we had. I may have mentioned this, guys. I can't remember if I did on the show. I just. It
cracks me up. So I'm going to mention it. We did get a ticket where somebody said, your automatic cameras have stopped working. Can you, you look into these, can make them work again? And looked up the room and looked at that, went, that room doesn't have automatic cameras. And they went, no, no, no. Yeah, it does. It. They're in here because it used to. They used to look at us all the time, move around all the time. Like, no, they. Those are not automatic cameras.
Seriously, those are not. There's no way that happened. And then in talking with someone, in the department about it, and this was a historical thing because I wasn't there, they pointed out, oh, you know what, that was one of the old distance education rooms. And they were, they were used to teaching in that space where there was an hourly student sitting on the other side of the wall driving the cameras around. And then when they were scheduled in that room, a
few. It's. It had been a few years, but they were scheduling that room long after that system had been deprecated and removed and there weren't students in there. They noted the cameras weren't moving and they knew we were doing automatic cameras. So they simply assumed that the automatic cameras, which had worked so well for so many years, had suddenly stopped working. So that was a. >> Jamie Rinehart: You had a version of AI in there?
>> Chris Dechter: Yeah, we did. His name was Steve and he got Paid six bucks an hour to sit there and drive cameras around. So I know a lot of still do that. Yeah. >> Jamie Rinehart: M Intelligence. >> Chris Dechter: There's a lot of schools out there who still do that. That the model is to have an hourly student or somebody driving those because they want that kind of white glove level of service. And that's fine if that fits for. >> Justin Rexing: Your model wants that.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Justin Rexing: But I mean, do they though? Well, yeah, every. What teacher wouldn't want somebody running the tech in their class. But I mean the feasibility of that is just not there anymore. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah. so if, you know, if that's, that's something you're, you're interested in or if you're interested. To your point, Justin, you're interested in maybe providing close to that level of,
of capability but you know, it may be fraction of the cost. You're not paying people to it then. Yeah, there's a lot of automatic cameras out there. >> Justin Rexing: You should just do automatic cameras and then scale it up depending on how important that is. Like if somebody doesn't care about the automatic camera, like I wouldn't buy a camera that doesn't do it for the same price as one that does. M is my point. Right. I mean, it's a feature that's the same. It's
there. Every camera is going to have it eventually. If I mean the market's pushing that way. >> Chris Dechter: Not every camera, but most of them are getting to that point. >> Justin Rexing: Every camera is going to have that. >> Chris Dechter: Event once you get to a threshold. If nothing else, they'll do it in software. Is it? >> Justin Rexing: They're doing it on 100, 150 webcams now. >> Chris Dechter: True. You're not going to be more expensive.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: To get the camera without it. Just like displays. >> Justin Rexing: Exactly. Like I want a car without cruise control. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It's like, oh, you more. >> Jamie Rinehart: Have I got a deal for you. >> Justin Rexing: So Mark, I'm not buying your. >> Chris Dechter: You had mentioned, displays and the challenges with them. Some of those getting cheaper, but maybe not with the features we want. so we're
going to talk about that here in a moment. But first we're going to take a quick break and Jamie's going tell us why you need to send us emails, more often. It's not playing. Hold on. >> Jamie Rinehart: As many of you know, the Super Friends have always been better received when we have more input from you. So here's your chance. Send us a note at mailbagvsuperfriends.com
and get involved with the show. We're looking for some topics to discuss some fellow Nerds to talk to or just general AV awesomeness to brag about. But remember, we'll probably steal your ideas. And I suppose we'd take some criticism, but that wouldn't be very nice. Anyway, drop us a Note@mailbag absuperfriends.com and find out how quickly we ask you to join this nonsense. >> Chris Dechter: Sorry, that was a full misfire. That, that, that Q did not go.
>> Justin Rexing: You just fat finger it or the computer gets stuck. >> Chris Dechter: did not want to launch Weird Al, didn't I? Need more Al driving this. So let's see if this one launches. >> Justin Rexing: Wait, did Larry just say something and he's not here? >> Chris Dechter: Larry is joking that Al is just doing work. >> Justin Rexing: He can watch and listen and interact, but he can't.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yes, it's quality control watching the whole thing. >> Justin Rexing: Discussion. >> Chris Dechter: All right, so for our, our final little segment here, our final topic, we, we want to talk about commercial displays which we all like to recommend. If you're going to get a display, get a commercial display. For XYZ reasons we all know we don't need to hash that out. Sure,
displays are getting much cheaper now. Commercial displays to the point where they're even. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I think all displays are getting cheaper. >> Chris Dechter: We even have the same companies now pitching commercial TVs but with the same warranty and arguably the same quality panel and all that. With the caveat that that means in most cases it comes with smart TV features. So these, ah, these things that are getting way cheaper are arguably getting worse.
>> Jamie Rinehart: The reason they're cheaper is because it's. >> Chris Dechter: Not any different well than the ones you can buy at Best Buy. You mean Walmart in some cases. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Well, it's like race to the middle. Right. And so yeah, the smart ones are ubiquitous. They're everywhere. And I think it's just more cost effective for them to just slap that OS on there and call it a day versus them having to write their own
thing from the ground up and do it. So that's everything just becomes the same thing. >> Jamie Rinehart: What sucks is that they still write the back end. Yeah, I mean like the TV still has a running firmware hardware on it or the display, but it's the fancy front end that has to run on this Android or something equivalent os. And like Jesus, just let us go right to the display. >> Marc Cholewczynski: No, you can't do it. >> Jamie Rinehart: No, you can't.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Not for $700. You get, you want to go right to it. That's time saving. That's cost you money. >> Chris Dechter: And I've had people Push back. When I point out like, look, if this, you're talking about a science display or whatever and this is going to cost you 12 or 14 hundred dollars and they're like, what? It seems like it's a thousand dollars
too high. And yes, we can go through all the reasons why you want that, but it also means it doesn't have the smart front end because you don't inadvertently want it showing up on that. And then people getting into that menu and then it's a whole mess of things.
>> Jamie Rinehart: But well, I'm, I'm continually having problems with like, I. Like we have what we thought were dumb displays and they weren't and they do require their touch displays and they do require an extra step to get them to click over how to smart into dumb. But that's a good point. On the, done locally, yes. >> Chris Dechter: On the interactives, that's a critical point that they will,
they love to. Even if you can bypass that programmatically in some cases you can invariably at some point it boots back to the giant icon screen and then they call because our conference room, whatever is not working because we're on this thing and something didn't go and they, they want you to go touch the like input three button, which is intuitive to nobody. >> Jamie Rinehart: I even had a series of, well, a very
large company we may have spoken about earlier. I bought some of the 90 inch ducane inch. Yeah, close to that, 98 inch displays from them. They're dumb displays. There are no interactivity in them at. >> Marc Cholewczynski: All until you turn them on. >> Jamie Rinehart: Until you turn them on. But you can't get out of the. Again, to Chris's point, the large icon of choose your input. You can't get past that with the API. Oddly enough, CEC works
flawlessly. You send it to CEC to go to input one damn thing just works. But if try to throw it at API to go to input one and it wants to fight. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. I want to play a little game called devil's advocate here. >> Jamie Rinehart: Oh, do we? >> Marc Cholewczynski: And are we guilty of caring too much about this kind of?
>> Chris Dechter: Yes, in some scenarios, yes. Because I will buy the ones that are smart displays for specific scenarios where I know it's not going to be a, And it's not going to cause any. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Did you mention like, oh, I'm going to do a signage display, whatever. I'm going to slap this thing up and I found some loose change in my department. I'm going to put a sign on the wall and blah, blah, blah. It's Going to be a directory and I have a couple hundred
bucks, whatever. And then you come back, he's like, oh, you need a commercial grade display. It's going to burn out. Blah blah. Has that person already come to the fact that they don't give a if this thing lasts longer than a year anyway? M. And so are we like by like getting hung up on all this little minutiae. >> Justin Rexing: I use the security aspect. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Well, I'm not saying put it online. I'm not saying put the WI fi.
>> Justin Rexing: On or any of that stuff. No, you don't have a choice on some of these. So what what I talk about is the supportability and reliability. You're putting up digital
signage in a hallway in a public space. A lot of these TVs that I've experienced from random ass manufacturers that you can't pronounce that you find at Best Buy, Walmart now, they have access points built in and sometimes you can't turn those off and sometimes near field communication can't be turned off and you can just walk up with your iPhone and publish any kind of content you want to without permissions. >> Chris Dechter: Oh, I've not seen that, but that's kind of cool.
>> Justin Rexing: Oh yeah. And so you. >> Chris Dechter: Where are those on your campus so. >> Justin Rexing: I can stop by so we, we don't worry about warranty anymore. No one cares about warranty. Okay. what we care about and what the clients care about is perception of some bad content. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It's brand control. You want to make sure that everything looks the way it. That it should look as day one as it does.
>> Justin Rexing: And so the 181 monitor is the less risky it is to put up for digital signage. >> Chris Dechter: No pictures of naked people on it. >> Jamie Rinehart: I. I think we care more. >> Justin Rexing: Well, I'm not saying there's not. >> Jamie Rinehart: We get to take it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Sure.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Right. That's why our audience cares. It's because we're the ones tasked with making sure that it works for the dummy all the time. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And I think in that environment when you have control mechanisms and all that, like that's a little bit different. Different thing. But just on a wall as digital sign.
I will take it even further. Maybe it's not in a public hallway. Maybe it's just going to be in an office where it's just sitting in this controlled environment. >> Chris Dechter: So. And exactly right. In places say it's in a. And even in a conference room. >> Justin Rexing: I don't really care. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Steadfast. Nope. >> Chris Dechter: I do. So recently in the last year I've. >> Justin Rexing: Started doing like what do you mean by allow?
>> Chris Dechter: If this is in your conference room and it's only like the same 12 people who are going to go in a user. It. Okay, great. It can be a smart display because you can go in and you know which giant icon to press to actually switch over to the computer to have yourself. >> Justin Rexing: Let me, let me ask you that. How are you procuring these? >> Marc Cholewczynski: I. In terms hands full of penny. I go.
>> Justin Rexing: I just mean Internet. So like your university, you can just buy from Walmart or Costco anywhere you want. >> Jamie Rinehart: Theoretically, some do. I mean, we get some. Some staying. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Let me, let me, let me withdraw. Let me withdraw the term allow and say. Would you recommend. Let me change that to allow. >> Justin Rexing: Never recommend a smart display or consumer grade unless.
>> Chris Dechter: Wait, wait, I didn't say consumer grade. >> Jamie Rinehart: I did. >> Chris Dechter: Oh, I'm playing devil's out here. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm saying. Yes, I'm. Is there a time. >> Chris Dechter: Oh, see? Okay, yeah, I get a. I retract everything I said for myself. >> Justin Rexing: No, no, that's why I was, I was like, hold on, what are we talking about? >> Jamie Rinehart: There's.
>> Chris Dechter: Soon. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Are there times when your client knows that this thing's gonna die in two years and they don't care. They don't want to pay the full markup for the commercial grade and okay, I'm gonna buy this thing for 500 bucks. I'm gonna run it for two years and I'm gonna throw it in the trash like the. >> Justin Rexing: Well, so the only people that you've just described, our E waste program, are athletics.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: They'll go down to Costco and load a whole truck up, full TVs and come. >> Justin Rexing: No, no, no, no. So, so athletics, we. So this was a couple of years ago. they wanted outdoor TVs in the stadium. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Just bought TVs. Outdoor TVs. >> Justin Rexing: okay, so you, you all probably don't have the money for this, but this is what that looks like. And you have under canopy and full sun and all that crap, right?
And they're like, well, what if we just take them down after the season and then put them up at the beginning of the season? I'm like, who's they? >> Marc Cholewczynski: I want to talk about they real quick. Who is that? >> Chris Dechter: They'll just call it in, putting a ticket real quick. >> Justin Rexing: Just. >> Chris Dechter: Just runs over there. >> Justin Rexing: Not done with the story. Still in the middle of the story.
So we said, if you guys want to go out and buy consumer grade TVs and mounts and install them yourselves and take them down yourself, go for it. So we have These tents down at the end zone, just, just regular tents. They started hanging tv. >> Chris Dechter: This story's intense inside of the tents with cities.
>> Justin Rexing: Zip ties. They're hanging up by zip ties. And then around the stadium, they have the student workers hang the TVs at the beginning of the season and then take them down and then they reevaluate which one's broke and then they go out and buy new ones. I'm like, who, who is calculating total cost of ownership?
Because by the time you bought the pro grades for five, ten grand a piece, you have paid for labor like three years ago, and you're still doing the labor and you're still dealing with broken TVs. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Justin, we're talking about. This is priceless. >> Justin Rexing: So, yes, we do have some clients that say, I just. Oh, that's too expensive. Just 500 special.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm not saying. Don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying. I'm out here recommending part of their. >> Justin Rexing: Standard operating procedure and their labor. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, I get you. >> Justin Rexing: Whatever they do internally every year, it's a like, oh, we got to go put up graphics at the stadium. We have to go and make sure that everything's cleaned up.
You got to make sure, you know, everything. The field is all clean. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Right. Solution? >> Justin Rexing: We have to put up TVs. That's right. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Like, and I get you. I'm not, I'm not saying you should be out there just doing all your shopping at Walmart for all your weekends. >> Justin Rexing: Consumer grade TVs. So when a client says, we want you to provide a consumer grade TV that's cheap, we're like, we
can't even do that. Because what happens is we, we contact our procurement people and they buy it off Walmart and then upcharge us anyway. Like, so we're not going to do that. If you want a consumer grade tv. >> Chris Dechter: Wait, procurement takes a cut. >> Justin Rexing: No, the procurement. So we buy it from an integrator. Diversified has to go and buy one from Walmart, upcharge it, and then ship it to us if we wanted to do that.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Oh, this is not in their channel. >> Chris Dechter: We're not. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I gotcha. >> Justin Rexing: We can't buy consumer grade TVs. We can't buy from Amazon, though. There's only certain things that we can buy from Amazon. There's only certain things. Things that we can buy from certain places. And it's all regulated, so. >> Jamie Rinehart: Sure. >> Marc Cholewczynski: In red tape. >> Justin Rexing: Yeah.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Anyway, the. I'm just curious. I was just. They were just playing a game and so is there A place sounds like maybe Jamie has some scenarios where it's. And maybe in myself, I think there's office spaces and things that are not. I'm not having a process for controlling things. I'm not asking. You know what, you're gonna soften around the stuff. >> Chris Dechter: Standard or those times are called digital signings.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, exactly, exactly. >> Chris Dechter: Well, those people don't care either. >> Jamie Rinehart: Every so often you get us like a student organization where they have a small huddle table inside of their little office inside of their little thing. And I'm like, they only have 200 bucks. I give them the warning, like, look, you call us, we show up. This is broke. It's broke. There's nothing. I'm not replacing it.
>> Chris Dechter: It's. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You ask them when it breaks. >> Justin Rexing: I don't understand that. Like you're not. You're gonna put it in for him originally, but you're not gonna replace it when it dies? >> Jamie Rinehart: No, normally it's. >> Chris Dechter: He means replace it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: He's not gonna pay to replace it. Yeah, they would be free to buy their own thing again.
>> Justin Rexing: You all have your own budget. We don't. We operate off everybody else's budget. So everybody has to pay for their own thing. >> Marc Cholewczynski: But if, if you bought, most of. >> Jamie Rinehart: The time, hung it up, these people are taking it out of the box on its stupid cheap stand and literally setting it on the end of the table. There's no wall mount. There's nothing. At some point I just don't care.
But if it's anywhere where I have to actually deal with it. No, I want. I'm much more picky. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Okay, well, yeah, deal for you. >> Chris Dechter: So just to run the, run the gamut here, on Monday we have a building where. I think I've talked with this only on Monday offline. Anyway, we have a
building where. Based on when the building was designed, there are multiple LCD based video walls that have all crapped out in three or four years because you know, hey, high quality, from our favorite manufacturer who makes fantastic LCD panels that die immediately. I am replacing three of the video walls on Monday with just big old giant 100 inch. And it's a straight up. It is sold as a professional, grade smart tv. because A, they're putting smart. Yes, there's
a huge cost savings on that. B, I'm willing to try it because it is in a not limited access building sort of thing. But it's just running signage and someone goes around every, every morning at the, turns them on and turns them off. So. Hey, Here you go. Here's your remote. It's just running the PC stuck behind it. There's nothing fancy going on there. I'm not doing any automation. I don't care about any of that. >> Justin Rexing: Schedule those to go.
>> Chris Dechter: No, because here's the problem with scheduling. I never schedule digital science. Because here's the problem. >> Justin Rexing: We always do that. >> Chris Dechter: That clock drifts and suddenly it's 3:00am. >> Justin Rexing: put in the NTP. I mean, you gotta put it. >> Chris Dechter: They will all drift eventually. >> Justin Rexing: No. >> Chris Dechter: Yes. >> Justin Rexing: They will sink.
>> Chris Dechter: Every single. No, every single one will drift. >> Jamie Rinehart: The only thing that works correctly at your campus. >> Justin Rexing: Opti signs. And that's, We have three years of deploying those. We haven't had a clock problem at all. That's more on the Crestron side. Because none of our Crestron systems are connected to the Internet.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Wait, your processors are free balling. And you're. You. But you're putting your digital signage online. >> Justin Rexing: How do you not put your digital signage online? How do you like. What are you guys doing for digital signage? We need to have a digital signage. >> Chris Dechter: Little appliance there that runs all that. That. That display is a dumb display.
>> Justin Rexing: How have people are. Are people dragging USB sticks to your signage because they're not online? >> Chris Dechter: The appliance, the little thing behind it is running all that which is connected. >> Justin Rexing: To the Internet so that people can upload content to it. >> Jamie Rinehart: Correct. With the USB stick. >> Justin Rexing: So therefore, turn on your clock. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm with you. >> Justin Rexing: Sync.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm with you for clock. I am all for like, time automation on display. So I'm with you on this. Just. >> Chris Dechter: No, I don't trust it. >> Justin Rexing: I don't understand. >> Chris Dechter: Just like Jamie said about the automatic cameras, I don't trust it. They may have fixed that 10 years ago. Don't care. >> Justin Rexing: 30 minutes selling them. Tell everybody. Listen to this damn show.
>> Chris Dechter: Automatic display control. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Automated stuff. Cool. >> Chris Dechter: Well, all that to be said, we'll see how it goes. But yes, displays are cheaper. Sort of better make sure you get a good warranty. Or buy them from Walmart and throw them away when they're done. So. Right. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Disposable displays. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, they're all disposable. Just throw them away. >> Justin Rexing: Just buy E Ink.
>> Chris Dechter: Dang it. Why didn't I run the analog digital signage? >> Marc Cholewczynski: Well, that's okay. Get us out of here. >> Chris Dechter: Chris Eink. Speaking of which, we saw that cool E Ink display at Infocom that. That company doesn't know how to sell that. >> Justin Rexing: No, they didn't know what. >> Chris Dechter: They had no clue on how to sell that. >> Justin Rexing: They're like, look, it changes. I was like, I.
I know. Just talk to. Yeah, all right. >> Jamie Rinehart: There's. There's a mini show some other day. >> Marc Cholewczynski: All right. >> Chris Dechter: All right. We'll be back on Friday with some sort of stream. Well, we've managed to ruin yet another episode of AV Super Friends off the rails. You can contact us with questions, topic ideas, or General complaints@mailbagvsuperfriends.com if you complain loud enough, we might just invite you on the show.
Nice work, everyone. Sharp broadcast. Really good. Good. Everyone on the floor as well. Really a lot of hustle. I liked it. The opinions expressed by the AV Super Friends are solely those of the individuals and do not represent their respective institutions, organizations, companies or clients.