Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark
00:02:29 · Florian Rotberg, Dave Haynes
[00:02:29] S1: That's yours. [00:02:30] S0: Yeah, okay. If you don't know who I am, my name is Dave Haynes. I write something called Sixteen:Nine. I've been doing that for about eighteen years now. I get emails every day, hundreds of them literally from PR companies, marketers and so on telling me about their products, telling me about their projects, everything else. And it gets so frustrating because there's so much fibbing going on about what they're doing. The one that's bothering me the most lately is micro LED. That's something that has been around for three or four years now. Different companies saying here's our micro LED display. Reality is almost none of those manufacturers is actually making micro LED displays. They're mini LED or there's some other technology. And there's a good argument to be made that like who cares and I'm kind of coming around to that but then I also think this is a specs driven industry. All these manufacturers give you a very long list of all their specifications. They talk about pixel pitch and everything else, but then they say it's something that it isn't actually. And I just find that frustrating. I don't know how you guys feel about it. [00:03:49] S1: There's even one more. You hate even more. I think it's holograms, [00:03:52] S0: right? Oh, [00:03:54] S1: Yes. It's rotor LEDs, you hate that, right?
00:03:54 · Florian Rotberg, Dave Haynes
[00:03:54] S1: Yes. It's rotor LEDs, you hate that, right? [00:04:00] S0: They have a point. Those little spinny wand things, I always worry about people walking up to them and losing a finger or the tip of their nose or something but all these companies and there was that little portal thing for the one of the early sessions today that's also not a hologram. There's so many companies saying what they have are holograms. They're not. They're transparent LCDs or they're spinning LED rotors with no depth to them. In order for it to be a hologram and there are very very very few companies that actually have something that you could equate to a hologram or light field display. So just like say what it is, say what it does. You don't need to call it something that it isn't. And the other one is like there's a Chinese company, Muxwave, that doubles down on it. They call their product a hologram and they call it invisible and it's neither. I actually think it's quite a good product, but just like sell it on what it is and what it can do, that's enough.
00:04:59 · Florian Rotberg
[00:04:59] S1: Stefan, I'm a little more relaxed with that. I know you hate that, but I think micro LED, mean, let's face it, it's below one millimeter or whatever pitch. And I know it's a different technology. I fully agree with you, but, you know, just for the purpose of having some standards, you know, it just, you know, people are having a hard time anyway to understand what LEDs and what's the difference between COB is and everything, so they need something which has some quality to it. So I understand where you're coming from. I totally support you, but I think, you know, at the end of the day, if everyone uses it, maybe people, like digital signage. That is an awful term. Mean, I it's really an awful term, you know, and people still, we still get everyday mailings, oh, do you want to write about our digital signature? Said, no, it's digital signage. So it's not ideal and it was called narrow casting in The Netherlands for many years. I still think they still use it today. So sometimes you have these terms which are not precise, know, and Stefan here, he's always, you know, he's a physicist, he knows everything about precision and data and everything and holograms, sometimes I think we can be a little bit more relaxed, but I understand where you're coming from.
00:05:57 · Dave Haynes, Stefan Schieker, Florian Rotberg
[00:05:57] S0: I think it's a bit of an evolution as well. When I was walking around Integrated Systems Europe back in late January, early February looking at all the LED displays out there and in particular I remember the one that Long, the German company had and it was actually i5 LEDs displayed. Amazing looking display and it was chip on board so not micro LED technology and at that point I just kind of came to the conclusion maybe the technical definition doesn't matter. Does it look good or not? And at some point everybody's thinking that we're all waiting for micro LED. That's gonna be the moment when these huge video walls are gonna look amazing. Fact is they already look amazing. We don't need to wait for micro LED to get to that point. [00:06:42] S2: I think I think Florian's making a marketing point [00:06:46] S1: of view or he's taking a marketing point of view [00:06:48] S2: in this case, and you need to call it something. Yep. That... That's the issue. And there there are also these nice terms and holograms and neutrality, but they are not precise. That's the issue and you should probably choose another term for that. But that's why you're relaxed, you're a marketing guy. [00:07:08] S0: Yeah, the company that kind of innovated on the whole idea of transparent LCDs to create these what they call holograms. It was portal and became proto. [00:07:20] S1: I
00:07:20 · Florian Rotberg, Dave Haynes
[00:07:20] S1: I [00:07:22] S0: talked to the founder and needled him a little bit about it and he was quite honest about it. He said, Look, we know it's not really a hologram, but we need to call it something and this is something that people can wrap their heads around. So when I write about it, I call it hologram ish. [00:07:36] S1: Dave, more relevance, less specs. [00:07:39] S0: Yeah. Same story, yeah? I went after somebody last week who sent me a press release and I said, you know what, I've read this four or five times. I still don't understand it. You've loaded the thing up with all of your technical details. It's this pixel pitch. It does this, it does that, but what I really want to know and what I encourage anybody who is a vendor, a manufacturer of some kind, is to push out marketing material that gives you an understanding of the relevance to use a Canadian term. Why should I give a crap? It's so important and it's so little done. I would say if I get a 100 press releases, 90 of them start with name of company, a leading supplier of X is proud to announce this and that. And then there's a quote from the CEO that says, we couldn't be more excited about this and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And for people like me who are in the business of trying to relate this to the readers and hopefully help them sell product, I need to understand what it does, what's different about it and everything else and I don't get that very often and it's just so important. I know our newsroom teams always cuts out
00:07:39 · Dave Haynes, Florian Rotberg
[00:07:39] S0: Yeah. Same story, yeah? I went after somebody last week who sent me a press release and I said, you know what, I've read this four or five times. I still don't understand it. You've loaded the thing up with all of your technical details. It's this pixel pitch. It does this, it does that, but what I really want to know and what I encourage anybody who is a vendor, a manufacturer of some kind, is to push out marketing material that gives you an understanding of the relevance to use a Canadian term. Why should I give a crap? It's so important and it's so little done. I would say if I get a 100 press releases, 90 of them start with name of company, a leading supplier of X is proud to announce this and that. And then there's a quote from the CEO that says, we couldn't be more excited about this and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And for people like me who are in the business of trying to relate this to the readers and hopefully help them sell product, I need to understand what it does, what's different about it and everything else and I don't get that very often and it's just so important. I know our newsroom teams always cuts out [00:08:59] S1: all the quotes because usually you can forget about them. They're not adding any value to it. [00:09:03] S0: I'm excited, I'm delighted. [00:09:05] S1: Yeah, exactly. So we're just taking them out, but I understand, and it's frustrating and sometimes, and if it's too complicated, we just throw it away. If we don't understand it, who else should understand it?