The future arrived years ago. The problem is, nobody noticed.
For decades, films and television promised us an extraordinary technological future. We would talk to people through screens, computers would respond to our voices, cameras would follow us around and enormous displays would cover entire walls. Buildings would know when we walked into them, information would travel instantly around the world and technology would automatically work out who was speaking.
It all sounded very futuristic. Then most of it happened, and within about five minutes we started complaining that it wasn’t fast enough.
Remember When Video Calls Were Futuristic?
Video calling used to be one of Hollywood’s favourite ways of telling us we’d arrived in the future. If somebody appeared on a screen and started talking to another person thousands of miles away, you knew immediately that the film wasn’t set in 1996.
Today, your mum can video call you from the supermarket. We’ve become remarkably difficult to impress. Captain Kirk had to sit on the bridge of the Enterprise to talk to someone on a screen. Dave from Accounts can do it from Pret and gets annoyed if it takes six seconds to connect.
1996 Called. It Wants Its VGA Cable Back.
When RTS started in 1996, the technology landscape looked rather different. CRT displays were everywhere, VGA was king and presentations frequently involved projectors that weighed about as much as a small child. Offices relied on fax machines, and the unmistakable noise of a dial-up modem meant somebody was attempting to access the internet.
Thirty years later, we carry astonishingly capable displays, cameras, microphones, computers and global communication devices around in our pockets. Professional AV has undergone an equally dramatic transformation.
Standard data networks can now carry video. Cameras can automatically find and frame whoever is speaking, while audio processing can identify voices, reduce unwanted noise and manage complex environments in real time. Displays have become thinner, larger and increasingly modular, while modern systems can produce, manage and distribute live video to audiences almost anywhere.
Even the humble cable has had quite the career. Yet somehow none of this feels particularly futuristic anymore.
Science Fiction Called
Think about a modern meeting room. Someone walks in and the room detects them. The display wakes up, a camera finds them and microphones determine who’s speaking.
Audio processing removes unwanted noise, remote participants appear on screen and users share content wirelessly. Someone joins from another country and, within seconds, everyone is talking as though they were sitting around the same table.
Twenty or thirty years ago, a demonstration of that system would probably have attracted a crowd. Today, the reaction is more likely to be, “Why can’t I see my PowerPoint?”
Welcome to the future.
We Get Used to Amazing Things Very Quickly
That’s perhaps the interesting part. Humans are exceptionally good at turning extraordinary technology into ordinary technology. The first time we see something new, it’s incredible. The tenth time, it’s useful. The hundredth time, it’s expected.
Then one day it takes three seconds longer than usual and apparently civilisation is collapsing.
That rising expectation has helped drive professional AV forward. People don’t want to understand what’s happening behind the screen anymore, and they shouldn’t have to.
They don’t want to think about signal paths, networks, audio processing, control systems, camera tracking or the dozens of technologies quietly working together behind the scenes. They simply want to walk into a room and use it.
And that’s exactly how it should be.
Thirty Years of What’s Next
RTS AV has had a front-row seat for much of this transformation. Since 1996, we’ve watched analogue become digital, standalone systems become connected and AV increasingly converge with IT. The technology we install today would have seemed extraordinary when RTS began.
Keeping up with that change requires more than simply buying the latest equipment. It requires continual learning, which is why our technical teams undertake vendor-specific training alongside recognised industry development.
Our technical staff hold AVIXA CTS certification, while our installation engineers hold the specialist CTS-I qualification. We also work to recognised professional standards because, while technology changes remarkably quickly, good engineering principles don’t.
Thirty years of experience shouldn’t mean doing things the way they were done thirty years ago. It means having thirty years of experience adapting to whatever came next.
So, Where Did the Future Go?
It didn’t go anywhere. It arrived quietly, then became reliable, affordable and useful enough that we stopped noticing how remarkable it actually was.
Perhaps that’s the real measure of successful technology. People don’t need to stand back and marvel at it. Something once considered impossible can become so dependable that nobody gives it a second thought.
Until the AV stops working, obviously. Then everybody notices.
We’ve spent 30 years watching the future arrive. Now we get to build what comes next.
That’s Rock Solid AV.