video wall Archives | Vision One

March 5, 2019

NEC Display Announces New Platform for Video Walls

The following article has been re-posted from displaydaily.com

NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading provider of commercial-grade digital signage displays and projectors, announced its new 46” and 49” UN Series displays designed to make installing and managing video walls easier than ever through commercial-grade features such as color control, easy content distribution, and enhanced software capabilities.

Backed by NEC Display’s known quality and expertise in the video wall market, the new 46” UN462A and UN462VA are designed for digital signage applications and feature professional-grade panels with high-haze, anti-glare panel technology, FHD resolution and uniformity control across the entire digital canvas thanks to its rigorous factory self-calibration. The 46” display sports an ultra-narrow cabinet with a 3.5mm bezel gap. Meanwhile, the 49” UN492S and UN492VS adds an S-IPS panel with an ultra-narrow cabinet featuring a bezel gap of 1.8mm, ideal for corporate, cinema, house of worship, and retail signage customers.

“With our new UN Series video wall displays, we’re elevating our customers’ video wall capabilities by enhancing ease of use and delivering the commercial-grade quality and features that NEC is known for,” said Ben Hardy, Senior Product Manager at NEC Display Solutions. “Each display is calibrated to produce a uniform image out of the box, and we’ve maintained a high-haze panel, enhanced our daisy chain functionality, and future-proofed the connectivity options by adding a DisplayPort and HDMI out connection.”

The 46” and 49” UN Series displays feature improved color management with the addition of NEC’s proprietary SpectraView Engine that allows for self-calibration by connecting a sensor directly to the display, as well as making significant adjustments via the on-screen display. In addition, the UN Series feature improved NDWC capabilities with corner adjustment and uniformity correction and quicker recalibration techniques. The displays also include both DisplayPort and HDMI out connections to daisy chain signals from the internal media player for easy video wall installation and management. Meanwhile, the new TileCut function ensures the image does not get cut off when displaying content on non-16:9 video walls – a must for customers who need to ensure their content is always properly displayed.

“We’ve designed our new UN Series video wall displays to directly address the needs of customers who need video walls for digital signage, presentation, entertainment, or informational applications,” Hardy said. “With an anti-glare panel and accurate color reproduction, the UN Series offers close-viewing ability, presenting a cost-efficient indoor video wall option in addition to direct view LED panels.”

The UN Series’ impressive commercial-grade feature set is rounded out with a full steel chassis, faster processing times, and TileMatrix functionality for complete control over image adjustments on the wall.

Among other key benefits of each display:

Full commercial build with steel chassis, commercial-grade cooling fans and temperature sensor with self-diagnostics for 24/7 operation
Brightness up to 700 cd/m²
Raspberry Pi and OPS/Expansion slots for added content management capability
Direct LED-backlighting, translating to improved brightness uniformity, reduced power consumption and mercury-free components
Auto ID, Auto IP Address and Auto TileMatrix, which ease the time necessary to set up control and image properties across the video walls
FrameComp, which compensates for content lag in larger video walls with horizontal moving objects
Expanded daisy chain options with DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI Out, which enables 4K UHD resolution pass through and TileMatrix capabilities across entire wall
NaViSet Administrator 2 software compatible, which allows asset management capabilities of the products as well as full control and task management
Uniformity calibration of each display for gamma, intensity, and RGB for color consistency from display to display

March 9, 2017

Userful is Your Easy & Powerful Custom Video Wall Solution

Userful turns a standard PC into a flexible and powerful video wall controller that delivers visually stunning video wall displays over the network with unparalleled simplicity and ease, at an affordable price. With Userful you can:

Deliver any layout including one of a kind artistic or mosaic-style video walls
With up to 8k source content in real time on up to 100 displays per video wall
All easily managed from a browser or smart phone

Using virtually unlimited simultaneous internal and external content sources
…on preset zones across a single video wall
…or onto a mix of video walls and digital signs
All controlled in real time through Userful’s API or with remote control tools which staff can use to invoke zone and content presets created by Administrators

Industry Standard Hardware

Userful video walls use standard, off-the-shelf server or PC hardware and network zero client devices connected over a standard gigabit Ethernet network. Single install setup turns a standard Intel Core i7 PC into a browser-managed video wall controller. Optionally add extra Nvidia video cards which are used by Userful software to offload video rendering thereby increasing the power of the PC and the number of screens and size of content supported.

Artistic and Grid Configurations

Arrange video walls in standard grid or artistic formats. Rotate individual displays to any angle to create a unique video wall.

Add virtually unlimited content inputs from just about any source: Local CMS player, Live TV, RTSP, RDP, VNC, an interactive desktop or full screen browser or just about any content using one or more HDMI or SDI capture cards.

Configuration Flexibility

Preset zone support allows for the display of simultaneous content streams on specified displays within the video wall which can be changed on the fly as needed.

With a single touch customers can instantly change the content playing on the video wall using a smart phone or tablet.

Powerful Control Features

Userful has a powerful suite of control tools. Administrator can preset zone and content options for all displays, and then staff are able to invoke those presets using a tablet or smartphone switching content and zones across all video walls and displays with a single touch. Userful also allows users to control the mouse and keyboard of an interactive video wall from a smartphone or tablet. Ths effectively turns every video wall into a touch video wall.

The Userful platform began as a virtual desktop solution, reducing the cost and simplifying desktop deployments around the world. Delivering cost effective centralized and virtualized desktops however was just the beginning for Userful. Since then, we’ve developed our software platform to do amazing things for displays of all kinds. Userful also supports high performance video walls, digital signs and locked down kiosks that are easy to manage, cost effective to deploy. From interactive video walls, to artistic, mosaic-style video walls, or simple control room applications, Userful is a high-end video wall controller that makes it easy to synchronize and add intelligence to displays.

March 1, 2016

Samsung’s Revolutionary New Digital Display Product Range

At ISE 2016, Samsung showcased a wide range of future-focused technologies, including the industry’s slimmest video wall, fine pixel-pitch LED signage, interactive mirror display and transparent OLED display.

Check out the video above for more information.

June 16, 2015

Rise of the Network Video Wall

Video walls are becoming increasingly visible in our world. They make big statements, capture attention and promote brands in a unique fashion. Sales and installations of video walls are experiencing record growth as customers seek a new, high-impact approach to digital signage.

This is driving companies to seek video wall solutions that are more powerful, more flexible and yet, like everyone else in the world, they don’t want to break the bank. Unfortunately, the current video wall market is hampered with costly and complicated solutions that all too often turn out to be limited in functionality. It’s time for new approaches to bring simplicity, flexibility and affordability to the video wall market.

The answer to this problem is leveraging standardized PC hardware instead of specialized AV hardware, and taking advantage of networks to simplify delivery. Deploying video walls using PC and LAN infrastructure means less specialized knowledge is required for setup, while also reducing the hardware and support staff needed to deploy large-scale video walls.

There are three different approaches to using the network to stream content to multiple displays within a video wall. The first way is to deliver the entire image to every display on the video wall and then have each display output only the appropriate cropped portion of the content. For example, with a 25-display video wall, all displays receive the entire image, but the player device located at each display crops and outputs only 1/25 of the total image. This approach works well for 1080p and lower resolution, but is not ideal for 4K and higher content because of its high-data requirements.

The second approach lets users pre-split and separately upload the cropped portions of the video. Player devices on each display talk to each other in order to maintain image synchronization. However, this method makes it time-consuming for customers to create content and upload portions to the video wall. It also eliminates many capabilities such as interactive content or real-time feeds.

The third approach to network video wall deployment involves content that is split, cropped, rotated, scaled at the server location. The server only sends the required section of the image to each display. It also uses network bandwidth much more efficiently, while also creating a high-performance and flexible video wall. This way, content is pre-split in real time and customers don’t have to waste valuable time preparing their video wall content.

More and more people are switching to network video walls, not only for cost-savings, but also for the flexibility benefits. Using the network allows for the PC or server to be placed anywhere in the building. Most other solutions require the server to be located right at the video wall, making it difficult to manage in high-traffic areas or hard-to-reach places.

Small zero-client devices can be placed at each display to connect over the network to significantly reduce downtime and allow the server to be located almost anywhere. Customers can even have displays in high-heat or greasy areas such as quick-service restaurants, without worrying about ruining the server.

Utilizing the network to power digital signage enables anyone to centralize the CPU and GPU processing. Previous approaches with network delivery required video walls to maximize the computing power at each display in order to support content and proper image synchronization. When done correctly, network-delivered video walls are more efficient and require much less hardware when computing power is centralized to one PC or server. The server connects to the client devices at each display, meaning all processing is centralized and easily supports stunning 4K content in a low-cost way.

Connecting video walls over the network provides a great range of capabilities for customers, while still remaining simple to manage and deploy. The amazing visual impact video walls have is undeniable. For those seeking simpler, more cost-effective video walls, the rise of solutions that leverage PCs and utilize the network is a very welcome improvement.

Userful Corp. is an industry provider of centralised, interactive display and virtualised desktop software designed to make it simple and affordable for organisations to implement and centrally manage interactive display infrastructure in the post-PC era.

April 7, 2015

A Video Wall With a Twist

Challenge

A cellular store in a Canadian mall wanted to catch the eyes of passing shoppers. The architect wanted more than a simple 5×5 video wall and designed it to fit into a corner with the last column on the adjacent surface. On top of that, the installer only had 3-4 days to get the job done.

“The challenge was the super narrow bezel, a 90 degree bend, and to maintain serviceability,” said Gil Gauthier, Certified Technology Design Specialist at Advance Pro in Winnipeg, Canada. Advance Pro is an electronic systems integrator for audio, video, communications, security and multimedia.

Solution

Gauthier said the biggest advantage of the ConnexSys system is the ability to hang the mount from standard strut channel, a common item for AV installers. “It’s kind of like the Lego block of the installer world,” he added.

Senior technician, Joe Premecz, expects to encounter imperfect walls on the job site, which makes lining up displays a challenge with individual mounts. The use of strut channel, though, to provide an even reference surface, allowed him to accommodate the distortions of the wall.

“By attaching the mounts to the steel, the panels were near proper alignment from the start,” he said.

The installer only had three days on site to put in the wall on top of working around the electrician, flooring and lighting installers. They were using ultra narrow NEC displays with no bezel and a total gap of 1 millimeter between displays. On top of that, the last column’s perpendicular placement would be a huge challenge.

To meet that challenge, Premecz said the ability to slide the displays horizontally and adjust the depth made it easy to line up the corner edges. They spent half a day making sure the strut channel was installed and square, then put up the 25 panels in about three hours.

“They were a huge time saver,” Premecz said.

Though there was a short turn around for delivery, Chief was able to ship the new mounts directly from the factory to arrive on site when needed.

“I know the installer kind of went white when he heard the 90 degree part,” Gauthier said. “It’s already a challenge to line up. If it wasn’t for those brackets, I don’t know how he would have done it.”

The micro adjustment allowed by the ConnexSys system to line up the screens safely before locking them in place, the quick leveling using strut channel to hang the main row of four screens, and the need for ultra precise alignment for the high definition content made the job possible.

“There’s no way it would have happened otherwise,” Gauthier said. “It keeps the installer happy. It keeps the job on track. And even if the customer doesn’t care about the bracket, they care that the wall works.”

Serviceability was also key. They needed front access to adjust and change content and software. The RapidDraw release system helped the installer pop out only the displays he needed to access at the time.

Results

The client is running live video, sporting events, and ads to draw people in to the store. Gauthier said any specs he does, he just puts Chief in now – that whatever extra price might be involved is more than covered by savings in installation costs, allowing the company to work tighter deadlines.

“Chief listened to installers,” Gauthier said. “This is a prime example of making life easier for installation guys. They said this makes life better and easier. It makes clients happier. The overall project was easier and smoother. It’s win win win. By looking after the installers, we are looking after everybody.”

October 13, 2014

Ave Maria College turns hall into video wall showpiece

Ave Maria College took a huge step in solidifying their status as an education leader over the New Year period with the unveiling of their state-of-the-art video wall solution, designed and implemented by Vision One Australia AV experts.

Check out this awesome new video, showing off the installation in all its glory.

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