- AV Support Technician. Typically a High School graduate who can’t find work, answered an ad for “technicians wanted” and has received two weeks of training about not being afraid of using unnecessarily confusing touchpanel interfaces.
- Ceiling Microphones. Devices that are hung from a meeting room’s ceiling to pick up all the sounds the air vents produce.
- Control Processor. The component that all other devices in an integrated AV room are connected to and controlled from, requiring complex, custom programming and graphics that typically need to be updated at a significant cost every time a device or graphic needs changing. Also see AV Integration Firm’s Control Programmer.
- Custom Touchpanel Interface / Control System. A device sold to the client (for about twice its actual cost) that is used to show the client the logo of the firm where they work. Its secondary function is to attempt to control the overly-complex mix of devices that make up an integrated AV room in a manner so unnecessarily confusing that typical users will be afraid to use it — thus requiring additional personnel. Also see AV Support Technician.
- Echo Cancellation Circuit. A sub-system within room audio processors that identifies audio sent to and coming back from a remote location and reacts by muting all audio so no one can hear anything.
- Engineering Review. The process through which some market-leading AV integrators ensure that appropriate cost has been baked into every project, i.e. “That Off-the-Shelf Videoconferencing System won’t pass our engineering review unless we add a control processor, audio processor, ceiling microphones, touchpanel interface and other unnecessary and expensive points of failure.”
- Hang and Bang. An AV integrator’s description of a client installation that requires no hard work or intelligence to complete, often sold by the integrator to the client under the guise of requiring a skilled team that “really knows” the technology to get it right.
- Integrated AV Room. multiple definitions: 1) A meeting room containing an AV system comprised of enough hardware and software from so many different manufacturers that (amazingly) a technician site visit is actually required to even figure out which one of them might be broken. 2) A room with AV gear that is rarely used. 3) A conference room containing a bunch of AV components that are either so unreliable or so complex to use that end users just point to the gear and say, “Oh that never works right.” Also see Custom Touchpanel Interface / Control System.
- Off-the-Shelf Video Systems. One piece, complete videoconferencing systems for AV rooms that are simple to install and work great in about 85% of applications, but won’t pass the “engineering review” of many top AV integrators. Also see Engineering Review.
- Room Audio Processor. A device with multiple DSP circuits that produce echo, clipping, noise and a myriad other artifacts slightly resembling conference room audio. (This device requires expert programming to perform adequately. There are tens of thousands of them installed around the world and maybe four people who can truly program them well. You do the math.)
- Staging. The blatant admission that an integrated AV room is so unnecessarily complicated that AV consultants and AV integrators actually have to get together in advance, off-site and try to put it together to see if it will even work as designed. Often times this event precipitates both a complete redesign and finger pointing between the consultant, integrator and programmer.
- Your IT Guys. The team that an AV integrator blames for failures of systems they didn’t have the skills to put in correctly in the first place, i.e. “As far as we can tell the video machine is working just right — ask your IT guys if you’re having a network failure right now.”
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.
