As the show madness started easing up, I had time for a nice chat with the always cheery Ron Johnson, director of sales and marketing for Adtec Digital (N6825) this afternoon. After regaling me for a while with tales from the early days of digital signage (“we called our product 13 years ago a multimedia player device, but it was digital signage back before most people knew that term,” Ron said), he spoke with pride about a cool little device from Adtec called mediaHUB HD–a 1080i and 720p encoder that made its InfoComm debut this week.

Ron was particularly pleased that the mediaHUB, checking in at a price point around $12,000, is more than a real-time encoder. It also has a hard drive and can play the role of a scheduling and management server, among other chores.

“It’s a convergence product with IP out and can be used for enterprise networks at colleges and businesses and things,” he says.

Ron also has lots of interesting thoughts about how the digital signage business is changing, and how the arrival of HD is having a major impact, especially with things like ad insertion.

“Now that HD is here, people don’t want their ads popping up in those little windows,” he suggests. “They want them full screen, in all their HD glory.”

–MG