Connessioni’s ISE 2020 opened immediately after Mike Blackman’s conference and the usual ribbon cutting, with the participation in the press event organised by Crestron. The US brand welcomed the international newspapers by organising two press-tours within its stand: a first path dedicated to residential technologies, the other focused on corporate solutions.
Just enough time to celebrate the ribbon cutting that kicked off the 2020 edition of ISE (11th February.) In the very first few bars of the fair, our editorial team rushed to the Crestron stand, for the first of the numerous press events that have marked our presence at the fair.
As we reached stand C-20 in Hall 2 of RAI, we joined the press-tour organised by the brand, and under the guidance of Josh Stene, Vice President of Marketing for Crestron, we then set off to discover the numerous innovations dedicated to the corporate world.
Crestron AV over IP solutions
The first stage of the tour focused entirely on the models of the AV over IP Digital Media NVX platform: a series of encoders / decoders capable of supporting the AES67 standard
– a standard published by the Audio Engineering Society in 2013 to ensure interoperability between the various existing audio networking systems such as Ravenna, Livewire, Q-Lan or Dante – and to distribute 4K60 signal also on a 1Gb network infrastructure, therefore without the need for complex and expensive network updating or restructuring procedures. These products are perfectly scalable on environments of all sizes and are controllable and configurable in a simple and intuitive way thanks to the new DM NVX Director switcher, also presented at the press tour.
The second stage concerned the products of the DMPS Lite series: a line of switcher / receiver which, for the 410 and 510 models, also includes audio amplification. The products in this line, dedicated to small spaces such as classrooms, waiting rooms or meeting rooms, are fully controllable and remotely monitored, through the Crestron XiO cloud service, providing system integrators with maximum control over the installed devices.
Crestron and Logitech: a ‘smart’ partnership
After the initial intervention, Josh Stene passed the baton to Nic Milani, Executive Director and Commercial Product Marketing of Crestron who, before introducing the solutions dedicated to meeting rooms and company rooms, officially announced to the press the new collaboration between Crestron and Logitech; a partnership that will not only provide advanced collaborative platforms but will help create increasingly integrated and ‘smart’ workspaces. Going into practical terms, this collaboration will allow you to integrate the Crestron Flex UC-C160-T video conference system with the Logitech MeetUp, Logitech Rally or Logitech Rally Plus video conference rooms. The C series is also already compatible with Microsoft Teams Rooms or Zoom Rooms thus offering a wide flexibility of choice to customers and end users. This series includes meeting room booking features supported by Crestron Room Scheduling, as well as a management portal based on Crestron XiO Cloud which, among its many capabilities, integrates the Logitech Sync video conference device management platform, creating the only integrated platform for managing the technologies present in a given collaborative space.
A step towards the future
Daniel Jackson, Senior Director of the Digital Workplace Products division, took the baton for the final part of the relay and literally took us into the future of Crestron for about ten minutes. Not on board a time machine but guiding us inside a section of the stand called Future Innovation: a wing entirely dedicated to projects under development and not yet marketed, where Unified Communications solutions, AV over IP and platforms were presented Cloud with a view to converge between UC and AV systems.
In the Future Innovation area, guests and the press were able to observe all the advantages of using platforms based on open standards and the partnerships that Crestron has made with the main world producers.
