Company Update

American Gismo Makes Life Easier

Editorial in 'South East Business' November 2011 edition


For audio-visual experts Convergence AV, making the customer’s life easier is a mixture of experience, skill, technical know how - and investment.

The company, already well known for the its high-level technical skills, has now invested in a state of-the-art box of tricks that probably made the bank manager wince but will bring a smile to the face of hard-pressed events organisers across the south east.

Technical wizard Pete Metcalf described the desktop PC-sized gizmo as “a full HD broadcast production vision mixer and signal processor”, but while its name might be complicated, its role is to make life much simpler.

“It means we can feed in any kind of input, at any different resolution, and produce a high quality output to the screens at the conference, meeting or award ceremony venue,” he explained.

“Put even more simply, it means that it doesn’t matter if your guest speaker turns up with a DVD in an unexpected format, or the MD insists you play a piece of home video he shot on his phone. This gadget will take whatever you throw at it and output it all as a seamless presentation.”

The Christie Spyder X20, made in the USA, wasn’t cheap – to the extent that Pete thinks Epsom-based Convergence AV is the first production company in the region to have bought its own – but it will make life much easier for organisers.

“It also cuts down the amount of time it takes to set up, saving money for us and the customer,” said Pete. “This one box of tricks replaces racks and racks of other kit and the cabling that would normally go with it.”


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