July 2025

12 Findings From InfoComm 2025—An AV Tech Geek Show Report
And some 'modern breakthroughs' that are shaping the Future of your audio (and video).
InfoComm 2025 Show Report By Steven R. Rochlin

  Held within the Orange County Convention Center from June 7th through 13th, InfoComm 2025 was the largest professional audiovisual (AV) trade show in North America. While this is not an 'audiophile show' open to the public, it brings together industry leaders, cutting-edge immersive modern audio and video technologies, and immersive experiences. Attendees explored thousands of products related to audio, collaboration, display, audio / video streaming, control systems, enterprise IT, security, VR, higher education, and live events. For modern technology enthusiasts, the exhibit floor had several dynamic zones, with dedicated areas for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) innovations for immersivephiles, IP communications, and smart building systems.

Beyond the exhibits, InfoComm 2025 offers a robust education and networking program that caters to every facet of the industry. The conference schedule is packed with keynote speeches lead by industry leaders, panel discussions, technical workshops, and roundtable sessions led by experts. Topics will range from the integration of AI and automation in AV systems to sustainable design practices and the latest trends in hybrid collaboration — reflecting the industry's response to evolving market demands. So while this is not strictly 'audiophile', obviously this is next-gen electronics and technology for modern enthusiasts. This is where an Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) and the emerging standards in Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) is a factor. InfoComm 2025 not only serves as a showcase of the latest immersive audio and video technological marvels, but also as a collaborative melting pot where ideas are exchanged, and the future of the audiovisual industry is envisioned.

12 Point InfoComm 2025 Show Coverage
1. A Palpable Post-Pandemic Roar
For those walking into Orlando's West Hall, it surely felt like stepping into a global town square for Professional Audio / Video experts, distributors, retailers, installers, and enthusiasts. AVIXA verified 30,998 attendees from 97 countries—and there was a 35% slice of bona-fide human end-users and the highest such ratio in show history. Energy never sagged during the InfoComm 2025 show; the aisles buzzed with purchase orders as much as demos and storytelling (more on the later, later).

2. Scale You Could Feel Underfoot
There were 817 exhibitors that occupied 400,100 net ft², restoring the immense pre-2020 sprawl... and then some. Veteran integrators were reported to remark that the floor map once again required triage: "You can't cover it all; you curate or die." At least that's what I heard, though rest assured InfoComm 2025 is smaller than the monstrous CES.

3. Macro Theme #1 – Immersive, Lifelike, Collaboration
There's HP and Google's joint tête-à-tête stealing some headlines: "Dimension with Google Beam" is the first enterprise-scale 3-D, glasses-free telepresence that actually feels... human. A 65-inch 8K light-field panel, hidden bezel cameras, spatial audio that tracks head movement, and automatic halo lighting worked in concert to make Zoom look ancient mid-to-late 1900's technology. Integrators queued three-deep to feel genuine eye contact across 2,200 miles. But let us all remember that InfoComm is also for the very large installation companies. With that said, only elect enterprise customers starting in late 2025 can acquire it for $24,999, with the Google Beam software license sold separately.

4. Macro Theme #2 – AI Everywhere, But Finally Doing Work
Let AI do it! Xyte's press conference framed AI as plumbing rather than novelty. The new Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server lets ServiceNow or Salesforce agents remediate devices directly, while Connect⁺ Edge merges local-network gear with cloud dashboards—a Holy Grail(?) for campus tech managers juggling VLAN silos. Remember when DUN and 1200 baud BBS systems were all the rage, that was back in the late 1900s. Anyway.... Crowd takeaway: AI isn't a feature; it's a help-desk head-count reducer. AI can do many tasks and reduce the need for human resources.

5. Macro Theme #3 – Experiential Display Wizardry
Booths are always interesting, one way or another (for those who have attended hundreds of these exhibit things). At InfoComm 2025, it kinda felt like theme-park Tech Circus vignettes. Speaking of clowning around, Panasonic's "Iconic You" grafted attendee faces onto the Statue of Liberty via a 165-inch 1.9 mm LED and UE160 PTZ rig, proving AI-driven personalization scales to live events.

Yup, everything from get a 'special selfie' of you with (insert famous musician / politician / historic figure... living or dead, as AI will recreate them for you in 3-D). You are the Rock Starr as you're AI-inserted as a famous musician / singer on a stage. The fans will love you, guaranteed! Or the typical boring stuff like Optoma's short-throw golf sim pulled CEOs into bunker shots. I forgive them as  InfoComm is in Florida, home of many, many retired golfers. Golf carts are street legal in Florida(!). Anyway, meanwhile, MUXWAVE's invisible holographic screen hurled Mario across the aisle, turning passers-by into YouTubers on the spot. Every time you look into a mirror you think, "I should be one of those YouTubers," right?

6. LED Arms Race, Round Umpteen: Samsung's 'The Wall' (not Pink Floyd related) ceded shock-and-awe honors to Planar's flexible overhead ribbon and INFiLED's "stop-in-your-tracks" mosaic. Pitch sweet-spots clustered at 1.2 mm for premium lobbies and 1.9 mm for church budgets; fine-pitch microLED sat in the corner quietly dropping price by double-digits (even with tariffs?).

7. Audio Got Modular, And, Physical Acoustic Space Aware
HP's Poly Studio A2 table arrays paired beam-forming with software-selectable lobes, while Shure demoed IntelliMix 12 FW with built-in Teams / Zoom certification—no external DSP box required. The subtext here is clear: integrators will soon spec "software SKUs" more often than rack-mount steel.

Back in my day, the mid to late 1900s, us recording studios folks 'n' musicians used patch bays and hardware effects. You also got a nice stereo cassette tape to listen to your demo that evening, on your Apline or Nakamichi deck in the car on the way home from the studio.

8. Education Program = AI And Cloud
A Wednesday super-session with AWS and Universal Destinations dissected how Epic Universe's park streams real-time ride telemetry to cloud AI for adaptive storytelling. Audio geeks can only imagine the audio needed to create an immersive state-of-the-art amusement ride in 2025.

9. Real-Time AI-Created Music
Tailored to your lifestyle, mood, location, etc. AI music could become the norm for some. Ultra-high 24-bit/192kHz immersive resolution, created for you on-the-fly. So, who gets paid, the AI Company or the music business? Or, will the music business create a 'third-party' that provides AI music, you know, so it's the AI company to be blamed and surely not.... Ok, maybe this wasn't strictly an InfoComm 2025 thing, though it is food for thought imho.

10. Record End-User Presence To Manipulate / Curate Their Experience
With about one-third of badges said to belong to Fortune-500-like businesspeople, perhaps some manufacturers skipped the typical horse-and-pony shows filled with spec-sheet monologues, and (instead) wisely chose to pitch ROI dashboards instead. There is big business, and millions$ in opportunities, getting done here at InfoComm 2025. Exhibitors that spoke managed services and other high-profit areas, not kilohertz and nit counts. We must remember that these shows are also about harvesting the 'richest' badge scans.

11. For Professional Integrators, Narrative Sells
Classic "Sell the sizzle, not the steak." As we hear at many luxury events, luxury stores, and luxury consumer goods from Louis Vuitton and Lamborghini to the best high-end salesperson, you got to have great thematic storytelling. We love stories in hopes of finding validation for various life choices: booths that wove tech into myth of 'more happiness'. Or bad guys who repent and do good. Or something else, entirely. 

It's not a lossy data compression format, ok, actually it is a lossy data format, but it sounds pretty good, right? So what if it's lossy and we take money / earning from away from the musicians to pay for this lossy proprietary format scheme. Sure it may sound better in the widely accepted industry standard lossless FLAC, but this is an 'authentic' experience (only because this little LED is lit up).

12. My Takeaway
InfoComm 2025 didn't merely bounce back; it also pivoted in the right direction. Collaboration morphed into holographic presence, AI slipped under the hood discretely, and buyers now also walk the floor. For creatives and integrators willing to merge narrative, data, and the like, 2025's show floor at InfoComm 2025, perhaps, offered a single, resonant headline:

"The medium is the experience."

We could say that about reel-to-reel, or the vinyl LP, or cassette tape.... Humans simply continue doin' human things. Forget AI, sometimes you need to do something for yourself. As always in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the Music,

Steven R. Rochlin