Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/458437
36 | FEBRUA RY 2015 Audio Visual Systems "With a standard flipchart, when you're finished your meeting, you have these many unwieldy pages of notes to deal with," says Tim St. Louis, executive VP, sales and marketing at Sharp's. At best, people use their smartphones to take pictures of the pages and then send the images by email. With its real-time stroke-capturing capability – and its ability to save content as an easily shared PDF or upload material to a cloud service such as Evernote – kapp does away with such information management headaches. It's easy to install, too. "You don't have to connect it to your internal network, so you don't necessarily need your IT team involved," St. Louis says. "You use your iOS or Android device to connect it to the Internet. That's how you transfer the information in real time to distant users." Kapp has won numerous industry awards, including Best Presentation Product at AV technology conference InfoComm 2014 and the 2014 New Product Innovation Award from technology consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. St. Louis sees a wide range of users: "It's for anyone. I've had people order them for their homes, for K to 12 schools, higher education, Fortune 500 and small to mid-sized companies." Quick, hide the TV! Other new AV options are not for everyone. Consider the exclusive audiovisual plat- forms that La Scala Home Cinema + Integrated Media installs. "In Vancouver, we have a lot of high-end properties being built," says company president Mike Chorney. "People want to take advantage of the views from their properties. It's not uncommon to see a master bedroom with floor-to-ceiling glass looking out to the mountainside or the water. Putting a large-screen TV in front of that view defeats the purpose." For these customers, La Scala designs a system that can hide the TV in furniture. For instance, when turned off, a TV may be hidden under a bed; a motorized lift brings the screen out and up when needed and then hides it under the bed again when not in use. "They're articulated as well," Chorney says. "In one of our client's applications, it can turn toward the soaker tub in the ensuite, or it can turn to the other side of the room where there's a desk." Likewise, La Scala installs covert sound systems for style-conscious custom- ers. Small aperture loudspeakers look not unlike the types of recessed ceiling light fixtures that are now en vogue in interior design. Yet what the speakers lack in size, they more than make up for in terms quality. "The fidelity of small aperture speakers has steadily increased," Chorney says. "They're not just for background sound anymore." Motorized hideaway TVs, digital flipcharts and truly sound-augmenting audio equipment – these are some of the touchstones of modern AV. But change happens fast. Rest assured that companies like La Scala, Sharp's, GAVmgmt and Sight N Sound will have even more innovative products and services to offer in the near future. As they used to say in the early days of TV broadcasting – back when the screens were small and the speakers, tinny – "stay tuned" to learn about the next frontier in AV technology. A Video presentation system install by Sharp's Audio Visual Ltd. in the ATB Offices, Calgary.