Video Wall Processor

Video walls have so many different uses. The idea of using multiple screens that can display one picture or several at time is ingenious. The number of uses is practically infinite. You can use them for business or pleasure. You’ll find them in public and private. They are in corporate offices, airports, private homes, and many other locations. You see them at sporting events and concerts. Perhaps you have been to a wedding that featured a video wall. Here is a question that every video wall user has to answer for themselves. Which is better for my needs: to rent or to buy the video wall? There are many different factors that tie in to the decision making process. Let’s consider a few.

How long will you be using the video wall? This is a primary factor. One time use obviously doesn’t warrant spending tens of thousands of dollars. A wedding for example is not a great reason to buy a video wall. A rental company will set it up and take it down for you at the end of the day. Of course, if you’re a wedding planner, you may want to own a video wall and make its use part of the package that you sell to potential clients. Since you will likely use it for many weddings, it suddenly becomes a good investment. Now you will be the one renting the video wall basically. You let the happy couple use your video wall on their special day of video wall controller.

Corporations will want video walls for video conferencing and advertising purposes. They may also want to have one in the lobby of their corporate offices to welcome newcomers and show the world that they are on the cutting edge of technology. A small business, however, may wish to rent or lease their video wall. It may be too expensive to set up a video wall in your shop window. You may simply not have the capital. Knowing the benefits of a video wall, however, may move you to seek a rental company.

Do you need to constantly be on top of your game? If you’re a tech company, you can’t fall behind when it comes to technology. You need to stay in the forefront to have the confidence of your customers. Leasing may allow you the option to change out your equipment every few years for the latest model. You may be able to afford a video wall, but why buy one every few years when you can have it swapped out by the rental company.

These are just some examples of reasons to choose either buying or renting a video wall. See which one your circumstance warrant.

My architectural business needed something out in the main lobby to set us apart from some other competition. We’re a fairly new architectural firm in our area, but because of our niche we cater to a very expensive clientele. We needed to be able to impress and wow potential clients. After we changed buildings and moved into our current one, it was recommended to us that we invest in a video wall. So we looked into it and decided to go with Sharp on a 10×8 video wall display with their Ultra-Thin bezel gap technology.

We chose to ask for help from Sharp on the installation. We were impressed with the knowledge and work ethic that the installers from Sharp displayed. They kept the area clean and worked quickly and quietly. We weren’t bothered throughout the entire install, as it seemed that the team that was installing our video wall were competent enough to handle everything on their own. When they were done, they left the front lobby cleaner than when they arrived, and of course, our large video wall installed and hooked up ready to be programmed.

As for the programming, we were left software to install onto the computer dedicated to running our video wall, left in the front lobby. The installation went smoothly and easily, and the platform to program displays on our new video wall was intuitive and fun to use. Many members of our staff had a great time seeing photos and videos on such a large screen. Indeed, we had a good time that day learning how to use the new video wall.

We run a daily display that we create once a week, and change each morning. Most of what we display are photos of past work- finished projects, interesting plan photos, other impressive work and general photos that our staff shares. The display is in full HD, which makes the display look so realistic it’s uncanny. We’re certainly impressed with our display, and our clients are too- the ultimate goal of the whole project for video wall processor.

We’re glad that we went with Sharp for our video wall project. We knew that there were many other companies we could have gone with, but we felt that Sharp’s reputation for excellence would pay off, and it certainly did. Tried and true, Sharp came through with our investment, and we absolutely encourage anyone else in the same situation to go with them for your video wall and your needs. It’s a good choice.

What manufacturer should you look to for your video wall screens? There are many to choose from. Some big names like Samsung are where many look first ,and if you have the money they often can provide the best product. Sharp has delivered a fantastic screen as well in the PN-V601 model. Let’s look at some of the features that make this a perfect display for video wall use.

This Sharp has a 60 inch screen. It’s a nice big display, and it won’t take a whole lot of these to put together an impressive wall. The contrast ratio of 2400:1 makes for a nice sharp pictures (no pun intended).

The bezel is ultra slim. This allows you to place the screens within 7.1mm of each other. This is important in a video wall display. The slimmer that bezel the more your audience can focus on a seamless display. Your video wall software can make up the rest by adjusting the picture according to the size of the bezel.

An LED backlight is another important feature. It has a full array rather than just providing a backlit edge. This results in less heat generated and less energy used. It will save you money on the electric bill. It will also make your screens last longer. Less heat means that the screens will last longer as heat is the main enemy of electronics.

This 720p screen has a 1366 by 768 native resolution. In a 3 by 3 set up the total resolution is a fantastic 4098 by 2304 pixels. You can display one picture across up to 5 by 5 screens for a really impressive image.

This product includes a 3 year parts and labor limited warranty. It covers labor, parts and even the backlight.

There are many different inputs and outputs available on these screens. HDMI is obviously preferred. An expansion board allows you to have even further input and output types of video walls.

Sharp provides optional hardware bundles that will make setting up your video wall a cinch. Just select from one of the most popular configurations and Sharp will provide you with everything you need.

Sharp also has their own digital signage software that pairs perfectly with their screens.

These screens use an exceptionally small amount of energy and will be good on your budget as well as on the environment.

For all of these reasons, this screen by Sharp is one to look at for your video wall use.

You want your special event to be memorable, but you need to keep it within your price range. A video wall would be just perfect, but you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on something you only need for one day. Renting a video wall maybe be the perfect solution to your problem. There are several companies that rent video walls. You can find them easily with an online search. What are some events that may benefit from a video wall? How can they be used to make the event memorable? How can the rental company help you? Let’s answer those questions.

A wedding can certainly benefit from a video wall. You may want to show pictures or videos of the couple. Happy times from their courtship is always of interest to wedding guests. You can also display a video presentation to celebrate the couple’s love for one another. Pictures of them from their youth are sure to entertain older family members, and give friends something to rib them over for video wall.

Don’t worry about the complicated setup. That should be included in the cost of the rental. The experienced techs will setup and take down the system. You can control it simply from a laptop, allowing you complete creative control over what is viewed on the screens.

Weddings aren’t the only event that can use a video wall. You can throw a massive video game party. Invite all your friends and have tournaments using your favorite 2-4 player games. The video wall will immerse the contestants in the experience. Everyone will be clamoring for their next chance to give it a go.

If you’re having this kind of party then you are probably pretty tech savvy. You may be able to save some money by picking up the equipment from the rental company and setting it up yourself. Since your video game system is going to be the input, make sure that it has the right inputs to fully utilize the capabilities of your gaming console.

As you can see, video walls can help make a memorable experience even more memorable. Being able to rent the equipment makes it available for special events even if you are not super wealthy. Tech support makes it possible for video walls to be used even by novices. Yes, the video wall is a product that is now in reach for just about anyone. See if you can use one for your upcoming special event.

I wanted to install some kind of screen front area menu option that I could change daily from a computer instead of drawing or fuddling with paper signs in my coffee shop. I’m not very good at drawing with my hand, so those cute chalk boards you see in front of coffee shops and bistros are out of the option. I decided on looking to Panasonic for some kind of programmable system for a viewable electronic sign that was high-quality and that would last. I ended up purchasing the Panasonic TH-42PWD7UY 42” Widescreen Professional Series Plasma Display Panel and a separate computer to run it.

Initially I hooked up quickly and ran the demo that it came with to make sure everything worked fine before I began programming it. The panel comes with the entire system of hookups built into the back of the panel itself so you don’t need to purchase a switcher separately which is nice. This panel comes with one standard PC input, a PC audio input, serial control (RS-232c input, an RGB and audio video input, S-Video input, and I got the optional terminal board slot for video wall software.

The screen itself is like a souped up television screen panel, but with the images 10% brighter and a 4,000:1 contrast ratio, the display works well as display and advertising signage in my shop. When I turned on the screen I was blown away with the brightness and clarity of the display. I tested it with some photos in a heavily sunlit window, and everything was still easily readable and easy to see. One thing I notice heavily on this display is how black the blacks are. If you’re used to seeing blacks on a regular television set, than you’ll notice how deep the blacks are on a good panel like this. It makes the rest of the colors pop, and is fantastic for my shop’s menu display.

Everything was so straight forward and easy to set up and mount. I love my purchase of this Panasonic display. I encourage anyone who is looking for a change to the regular and typical signage in their shop to give a display like this a try. It’s a great buy. It’s a good panel to purchase because the value is great. You might pay a little more than typical panels for this kind of need, but the display and the quality makes up for the price. Highly recommended.

The latest from AMD’s Radeon 7900 series of GPUs is here, and it has a tremendous amount of power for its price tag. It is on par with Navidia’s GeForce GTX 580 and sports a $450 manufacturer suggested retail price (which is about $10 less than the GeForce). What are some of the technical features of this little powerhouse? Let’s take a gander of this video wall controller.

If you are a PC gamer then you want performance power. Unfortunately, like the rest of us, you are probably on a tight budget. How did AMD get the price down a little for this model?

A few things had to be dialed back a little. The number of shader cores has been reduced from 2048 to 1792 if you are comparing this graphics card to the 7970. The 7970′s 128 texture units have been reduced to 112 for this model. The core clock for the 7950 runs at 800MHz, but the 3 GB of DDR5 memory run at 1250MHz.

It’s not all shortcuts and cutbacks, however. There are 32 ROPs and it has the same 384-bit memory bus as the 7970. All in all, this is a pretty powerful graphics card for its $450 price tag. It may be able to meet both your gaming needs and your budget. It is nice to see some competition at the top helping to make prices a little more manageable.

It is unfortunate that in the lower price bracket we are losing a little ground. The Radeon 5500 and 5600 cards are pretty much no longer on the shelves. They have been replaced with an inferior product power-wise in the Radeon 6670. The price tag is still about $70, so if you like gaming but are short on cash your options are quite limited right now. Don’t get me wrong, the 6670 is actually faster than the 5670, however, memory bandwidth is where you lose processing power. Unfortunately at that price range there isn’t really any competition, so AMD sells the 6670 for whatever they want to.

The next level up is getting a little thin as well. Nividia’s 256-bit GeForce GTX 460 is being supplanted by a 192-bit version. It is comparable to the Radeon 6790 but for about $10-30 more.

It seems like graphics card companies are trying to cater to the big spenders at the cost of being able to produce more affordable cards that still perform. Gamers are being forced to save up for longer or take a substandard product.

A video wall is an array of screens placed in a tile layout. These arrays may be up to 20 screens and all these screens together provide images with an amalgamation of various components of the same image. In order for the video wall to display the images on these screens to produce the impact of a large screen, it requires software to operate the video wall, and even more important is the use of multiple display graphics cards. Every video wall requires a graphics card to buffer the image into different display screens.

So how does a graphic card work in a video wall? The general information about any image is the pixels. When this image is produced on the single screen, the pixels are reasonably low or of less resolution but are suitable for a single screen. However, when the image has to be scattered to multiple screens like that in a video wall, the pixels are increased and the resolution is higher depending on the number of screens used in a video wall. All this has to be decided by the centralized computer to which the other monitors or displays are connected, and this is only possible if a computer has graphics capability and that is provided by the graphics card.

The graphics card is present in the mother board, and it has the most complex job of deciding the modification of an image and displaying it on the multiple monitors as a viewable image. Its working begins from the CPU, which has the software installed in it. Through this software, the CPU sends information to the graphics card and the graphics card’s work is to use the pixels on the screen to create a larger image. This information is sent to the monitor by the graphic card through a cable connected to the monitor. All this is not so simple because the image on a small single screen does not require much adjustment compared to a higher resolution image. The larger the image, the greater are the modifications and that involves converting the image into 3D. Thus, the graphics card creates a wire frame from straight lines, fills the pixels accordingly, and adds additional lighting, texture, and color to produce the original quality. The same operation is carried out for games also, however; all these extensive procedures seem easy due to the fast-paced process of the software of the video wall processor.

The graphics card cannot individually accomplish this entire task. It requires some components which enable the graphics card to carry out this entire process. The main components which are required for a graphics card are the motherboard which provides the card information on the data and power available, a processor which helps the card to decide the pixels, memory to hold information about the data and store it, and ,lastly, a monitor connection to see the final output. All these components are essential for a multiple display graphics card to work out an image in a video wall.

Multi-monitor which is also known as multi-display or multi-head is a type of video wall which uses display devices such as monitors, televisions, or projectors on a large scale for computer programing or presentations. Video walls may have from 2 to 25 displays, and a multi-monitor helps in increasing the display area by operating more than a single screen in a cost effective way. Unlike a single monitor, use of multi-monitor helps in upgrading the configuration with respect to size and resolution. These multi-monitors are either LCD panels or plasma monitors. CRT monitors were also used at one time, but these are growing outdated. All these multi-monitors are connected to a single processor through which their resolution and configurations are managed simultaneously.

All these multi-monitors are run by a software which has the option of running multiple monitors. As a result, each monitor runs through the single software on its own. Hence, the transition of the data from one screen to the other screen is very simple. Though each machine does its own task yet they are synchronised to meet each other’s requirements. Another method to work with multiple monitors at one time is to use graphic cards. These graphic cards connect all the computers as a network and enhance their speed, stability, and work process. Though the graphic cards may or may not be compatible with all devices, they mostly cause problems with laptops. All additional displays are the clones, or the mirror images, of the main monitor. As a result, they can be operated through any computer connected to their network both wireless and hardwired.

The display mode for video wall or multi-monitor is usually span or extended desktop mode. That means each monitor is buffered across two monitors which results into a large rectangular desktop space. Thus all monitors operate with the same resolution and with the same settings. All these monitors are connected to each other giving the impact of a single screen but with multiple monitors. This technique is called spanning or extended desktop mode or in video walls mode.

However, even after so many uses of multiple monitors, the use of these is limited. The use of LCD panels with all monitors inter-connected leads to restriction in the usage because either all are to be operated or none. The working of multi-monitor may vary with that of a single monitor such as lack of using a mouse. Usually the multi-monitor video walls run by controllers and use of mouse is not required which leads to convenience for the user. The panels may not be effective or produce high definition picture quality if the picture is not programmed for high definition, however; any 3D version or graphics can be best observed in these multi-monitors.

With so many features, such as good clarity, resolution, and color, multi-monitors are finding their use in graphic design, architecture, engineering, video gaming, interior designing, and other professions where multi-monitors play a huge role. They are also used in conferences and meetings, and create a good impact to the overall business process.

A media wall, which is also known as a video wall or multi-monitor display, is a device in which a number of display units are interconnected and are synchronised to work as one single large screen. These display units may be television screens, monitors, projectors, and LCD or flat-screen panels. The media wall is used in many fields such as in conference halls, meeting,s or advertisements. These are available in almost every corporate building or office.

The history of media walls dates a long way back to the late twentieth century when the high programming languages were not yet developed and most of the technology was based on MS-DOS. However, MS-DOS was incapable of supporting multiple monitor system and hence media wall technology was not yet in demand. Even then, the software available for media walls was not compatible with the operating system. This caused much delay. It took some time to arrange the compatibility of the hardware and the software to run a media wall. The release of Macintosh II revolutionized the technological industry. The Macintosh not only supported multiple displays but was also compatible as a result. The world could see the dawn of media walls. Later on, many systems came on the market which had the feature for multi-monitors or media walls. Before the beginning of LCD-display screens or the flat-screens or plasma panels, CRT monitors, also known as cathode ray tube monitors, were used. Many arcade games were released which could be played on these media walls. The single screen consisting of multiple displays gave the same impact as that of a single large screen. Most media walls have the capacity for two to twenty-eight displays to be operated simultaneously. CRT rear projection displays are presently being replaced with flat-screen panels for better impact and clarity.

Initially media walls were run in clone mode which is a type of display mode. In this mode, all the screens operate like clones of the centralized computer to which the other computers or display screens are connected, hence, all display screens show the same program or presentation. However, this is not that helpful which led to the development of multi-mode. The multi-mode specialized in color and monochrome due to which all these other display screens were compatible with each other. Nowadays, spanning is used in which the centralized screen is buffered with software due to which each display unit acts individually yet performs for all together to provide a unified effect. There is also hybrid span mode which uses multiple GPUs to create a single screen effect of video wall.

Instead of using a large single screen, media walls or multiple monitors are being used for their compatibility with the software, user friendliness, and cost effectiveness. These media walls provide a high quality picture, a better viewing angle, good brightness, and clarity unlike a projector or a large screen. Also, it is easy to use since a controller is provided through which the display can be operated and no mouse is required. After a little practice, operating a media wall is a touch away. Thus, it is preferred in many fields for better convenience.

You have no doubt started to see them just about everywhere. LED boards are becoming extremely popular. You can’t walk into a fast food restaurant without an LED board trying to sell you some of the featured items using beautiful quality video. There are so many ways in which LED boards are used. Let’s discuss a few video wall software.

On the highway you may have seen LED boards. This is especially true on Interstates and around cities. The bright boards are perfect day and night because of the strong, bright backlight. That makes them optimal for highway use. There may be warnings about road construction or an accident up ahead. You may get a warning about traffic that will allow you to call home and let your family know you will be a little late. They may display the speed limit or other useful information. Whatever the case, LED boards are attractive and informational. Because of a high contrast ratio, text is crisp and clear. You won’t have to take your eyes of the road for very long to see what the sign has to say.

Airports are another place you see LED boards. In fact, they are often arranged into video walls with multiple screens. Sometimes these screens may work together to show an ad. At other times they may simply display departure and arrival times. Since LED boards can be updated quickly, you get up to the minute information about your flight and any delays or cancellations.

Hotels are another place that you may see LED boards. They can announce events going on at the hotel. They can also be used to list prices. This is convenient because it is simple to adjust as room rates fluctuate.

Interstate rest areas may also make use of LED boards. They can be used to display maps or as interactive displays that will help you to find a place to eat or spend the night. They can help you to plan your route, or see how close you are to your destination.

These are just a few of the places where you will run into LED boards. They are being frequently used in marketing. There are many LED billboards on the side of the road with eye catching ads. It has become a very important technology in the modern business world. Fortunately these screens are Earth friendly because they do not contain mercury, they are long lasting, and they are light on energy usage.