A local FESPA leaves little excuse for after-hours socialising if you're going back to your own bed at the end of the night. So it wasn't an excess of carousing that did for me, but a glut of new developments. That may make me a lightweight, but a significant trend of this show was the battle between the heavyweight vendors at the top end of the market.

HP pulled no punches with the launch of the Scitex FB10000, but it won't have it all its own way: EFI also commercialised the HS100 Pro, while Fujifilm and Inca updated the Onset S40i and Durst further developed the Rho 1000. At first glance each device delivers on its promise of high speed and high quality, with the output all looking solid to my eye – although it is only with time and feedback from early adopters that the truth will out.

What is a step change for large-format digital suppliers, though, is that they now compare their output with litho, rather than conceding that the quality doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. That sort of no-compromise performance chimes with what the market says it wants: a couple of hard-to-please printers serving high-end retail told me they have either already voted with their wallets, or are very close to so doing – and not necessarily with the vendor, or technology, they had initially expected.

And so to latex-land, to analyse the positioning of HP's LX3000 3.2m platform. While Agfa and EFI were bringing in UV-curable roll-to-roll machines to challenge its LX850 and LX600, the latex originator is eyeing more markets besides. Pushing the fight to the larger beasts in the same category, such as Durst's P10 roll-to-roll machines, it also aims to take out the final Lambdas and LightJets still out there, plus emerging applications in décor too new to have a dominant technology, and the fine art and photo print still the preserve of aqueous printers. If it stacks up, then that sort of application flexibility looks really appealing. A single printer capable of producing so many different types of work, it keeps capital expenditure low and utilisation high. The only roll-fed sector in which it doesn't see a space for latex is the bloodbath that is billboard, which is too cost-competitive and congested to be worth the effort.

There's another approach that's worth a look, though, if you want to keep a tight rein on capital expenditure. Ilford's strategy is to develop economical substrates under its Omnijet brand that can extend the application window of existing hardware. If you want higher quality from your solvent machine, Ilford claims its Nanosolvent coating will deliver quality previously the preserve of aqueous, but with the throughput and ink pricing advantages brought by solvent. Conversely, Aquablock has a weather resistant coating, meaning aqueous output can survive outside for a couple of months. Both should be of interest to smaller businesses that don't want to lose control, flexibility and margin by outsourcing work.

Meanwhile, Memjet came of age. In the year since Canon and Xerox showed concept machines at drupa, the two vendors have been busy collecting feedback in time to launch commercially at FESPA. In Düsseldorf, Fuji Xerox hid the prototype machine it had developed on partner Caldera's booth, trying to be uncharacteristically low-profile. Come London and the result was the Xerox Wide Format IJP 2000, centre-stage on its own stand. And lo, it seems to have made a decision on the wide-format graphics market – and it's in. The IJP 2000 is the first of a wave of devices for this market, expected to include flat-bed and outdoor-capable technologies too. It'll be interesting to see how Xerox applies its narrow-format digital expertise to this sector, and what impact it will have; it may well push other suppliers to up their game, especially in total solutions including workflow and business development.

Canon unveiled its Océ ColorWave 900, the final form of what was previously Project Velocity. Unlike the 0.91m (36") concept, the finished machine is a full 1.07 (42"), like the IJP 2000 and the Own-X/RTI Memjet-based platforms. Although these engines target a different sector to the high-end flat-beds, their launch underscores the same demand – for high speed and high quality at low production costs across the range of wide-format print applications.