Wireless presentation and collaboration systems are ushering in a flexible new era
in working practices across the corporate and educational worlds. Reporter David
Davies profiles five of the leading solutions in the company of manufacturers,
distributors and integrators.

Christie Brio

“Simply connecting anything to everything from huddle spaces to multi-room
conferences.’

Models: Team, Team+ and Enterprise

“We had a control room platform called Phoenix that we realised could be adapted
to create a meeting room solution. That was the starting point for Brio, although the
electronics are now quite different from those contained in Phoenix,’ says Nick
Wheeler, EMEA sales and technical consultant for video processing, Christie Digital
Systems.

“What we wanted to achieve was the ability for people to walk into a meeting room,
use whatever device and operating system they wish, and then connect to and
display their content on the screen. Brio allows you to display any five of the
following five input types: two DVI-D HDCP sources (Team+ and Enterprise models
only), five Apple devices, five network connected PCs, five Android devices, all over
WiFi using full desktop mirroring – all this without cables or dongles.

“The fact that the system is essentially platform agnostic is a real advantage of
Brio, although I would also draw attention to the internal whiteboard feature, which
allows users to load a still into the whiteboard from their device and enable others
to participate from their device via a web page. We have also had very good
feedback about the annotation feature, which enables you to annotate any source
that is displayed on the main output and then save the result as a JPG to USB.

“In addition, the Enterprise version of Brio offers multisite capability that allows the
host to share content with any number of Brio Enterprise-equipped destinations. In
fact, we have been using Enterprise for just this kind of application between the
Christie offices.’

Future prospects: “We have only just started to ship Brio but are looking forward to
raising awareness of the system in 2015,’ says Wheeler.
Availability: TBA

Crestron AirMedia

“Complete wireless HD presentation from any mobile device and any platform.’

Model: AM-100 AirMedia Presentation Gateway

Corporate, military and educational facilities are among the key targets for Crestron
AirMedia, reports the company’s regional manager for South Africa, Rupert Denoon.

“Today you want to “Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) to meetings to present,
collaborate and share content wirelessly,’ says Denoon. “With Crestron AirMedia
you can, and it couldn’t be easier. Using AirMedia, you can walk into any meeting
space and wirelessly present PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents, PDFs, photos
and screen shots from your personal iOS or Android mobile device on the room
display. Mac and Windows notebooks also connect seamlessly, making
presentations and collaboration from almost any device incredibly fast and easy.

“Features that I would highlight include the Moderator Mode, in which presenters
and instructors can easily control the room and prevent “presentation chaos’. You
just need to select whose content to share and whose content to not share, all from
the Air Media web page or Crestron touch screen.

“Then for very large meeting spaces where the display can be difficult to see,
Remote View mode enables up to 40 participants – either at the back of the room or
in other locations – to log in from a web browser to view the presentation on their
mobile devices.’

Future prospects: “We believe that we will improve the frame rate and be more
efficient with bandwidth. Wireless technology is getting better every year and we
will see changes in the way people collaborate in meeting rooms,’ says Denoon.

Availability: Q2, 2013

Kramer VIA Collage / Connect PRO

’VIA Collage is a wireless presentation and collaboration hub; VIA Connect PRO is a
wireless collaboration hub.’

Corporate and educational facilities are chief priorities for these two wireless hub
systems, explains Jason Johnstone, Kramer product manager at the manufacturer’s
South African distributor, Electrosonic.

“The fact that these products would typically be installed on the user network
makes it possible to present wirelessly and stream video at 1080P/60Hz – without
frame loss or lip sync issues – and then collaborate while still having access to
Microsoft Outlook as there is no need to switch wireless networks,’ says Johnstone.
“In particular, the Collage unit is intended to serve as an all-in-one solution that will
save the end-user money while still allowing scope for features such as VC,
streaming, collaboration, interactive whiteboard, presentation and BYOD.

“I also believe that our unit is the best that I have seen in terms of sending video
wirelessly; the fact that there is no frame loss sets ours apart from other units out
there.’

Future prospects:
“My feeling is that – due to the global popularity of users trying to make use of
BYOD for meeting purposes – they will strive to make the interactivity between
these devices and what is shown on the main screen even easier and offer more
features across these devices. Typical AV installs as we know it with hard-wired
connections seem to have a limited lifespan and eventually all AV will go the way of
Ethernet and WiFi as encoding and decoding of video signals continue to improve.
Eventually all video will be compressed and the quality will be so high no one would
see the difference.’

Availability: From June 2014

Barco ClickShare

“Wireless presentation and collaboration system that allows any meeting participant
to share content on the central meeting room screen.’

“It’s all about the button!’ declares Dirk Schreuder from South African Barco
distributor Imago SA. “The Barco ClickShare USB button offers plug-and-play
wireless content sharing by simply plugging it into your laptop USB port and clicking
the button.

“Most wireless presentation solutions require the user to connect their laptop’s WiFi
to the wireless presentation access point, thereby making it overcomplicated to the
average user. In contrast, the Barco ClickShare USB button creates a WiFi
connection to the ClickShare base station, enabling the user to present wirelessly
and be on the corporate WiFi network to browse files and the internet.

“As a premium product, the Barco ClickShare solution also offers up to Full HD
1080P quality images as well as sturdy and attractive build quality.

“ClickShare is aimed towards medium-to-large corporate companies with multiple
presentation or multimedia facilities, although we have also enjoyed success in
most verticals including government and financial institutions.’

Future prospects:
“[In this market generally] we expect or hope to see complete wireless
transmission from source to destination in future, but of course one needs to be
cognisant of other factors when it comes to wireless transmission technologies with
regard to frequencies and licenses,’ says Schreuder.

Availability: From 2012

AMX Enzo

“A content-sharing platform built specifically for meeting rooms, classrooms and
other collaboration spaces, providing instant access to a wide variety of content and
conferencing services.’

First of all, it should be noted that the ENZO product was not originally conceived as
a wireless presentation device; the wireless presentation aspect was: “…added
later and uses the MirrorOp technology base, and as a result does a good job of
screen-sharing from devices/computers,’ says Wynand Langenhoven from South
Africa’s AMX distributor, Peripheral Vision.

“The main benefits of the system are that it allows content sharing and screen
mirroring between laptops, smart devices and tablets; facilitates integrated Skype
and Microsoft Lync videoconferencing when used in conjunction with AMX’s
forthcoming Serena Videoconferencing Camera; and provides an on-screen keypad-
based venue control interface when used in conjunction with AMX NX Room system
controller. There is also great strength in ENZO’s ability to connect presenters and
their content without them having arrived with any device or computer thanks to
Dropbox integration.

“The main markets for this system are presentation venues (primarily huddle
spaces) in the corporate and government market segment and within education
facilities for lecture spaces. Another market for which the product would be very
attractive is in government or parliamentary chambers.’

Future prospects:
“As hinted above, AMX is about to release support for videoconferencing on the
ENZO device. They will be releasing their own camera for ENZO and it will support
Skype and Lync videoconferencing. It’s a very exciting development that should
really help to ensure the popularity of the system.’
Availability: From July 2014

Integrator viewpoints:

“ClickShare’s brilliance lies in its utter simplicity.’ – Francois du Plessis, InchBrook
Audio Visual.

“The system delivers ease of installation and set-up from an installer’s point of
view; flexibility in terms of how to integrate the unit and what you want it to
achieve for your client; and ease of use from a client’s perspective,’ – Darryl Katz,
co-founder, managing member and technology consultant, 4Ward Design.