Sometimes walking around the convention floor can be serendipitous. As the owner of a
Roland Fantom X8 keyboard/sequencer/synthesizer I was intrigued when I saw that Roland was exhibiting at CEDIA this year an a small booth tucked into a corner of the show. I wondered what this company was doing at what is essentially a Home Theater show. Could it be something to do with equalization?
I was pleasantly surprised to see a prototype of their upcoming product, the
VIMA - which they term their "Recreational Keyboard." (No, I'm not exactly sure what the acronym "VIMA" stands for). Imagine a keyboard with links to video sources (DVDs, video iPods, cameras, etc.) and interfaces to video displays. Add a bit of Karaoke taken to the extreme and you might get a rough idea of what this unique device is all about. This is one of those "have to see it to believe it" devices and it goes way beyond the player piano attachments that have been shown for many years at these shows. The capabilities of this device that were demonstrated to me are hard to put into words.
The representatives told me that a lot of people who are interested in home theater are also musicians and/or performers (or closet performers) and the VIMA lets you use your HT in an entirely new way. They claim that many came through their booth with interest in the product.
Roland has set up a website
HERE to provide additional information. Right now they are being a little coy about the entire project but if we learn more, so will you in this hard to place category of Home Entertainment.
