Friday, January 29, 2010

Running on MicroTiles on Digital Signage EasyStart

As Andrew Neale posted on DailyDOOH yesterday, they decided to try and use our entry-level Digital Signage EasyStart system to power a Christie Digital MicroTiles 1×5 column that will be in the DailyDOOH Blogger Lounge at ISE2010 in Amsterdam next week. Since nobody on my team had yet seen or worked with MicroTiles, we were rather curious to see how easy (or hard) integration would be. And having worked with all sorts of weird display formats, video distribution systems, and matrix splitters for video walls, I was a little bit worried about hooking such a display up to a product who's driving design mantra is to hide all of the low-level tech stuff from the end user.

Still, Andrew and his team are experts, and perhaps more importantly, apparently Christie's MicroTiles just work. Configuration was literally as easy as plugging a DVI cable into the controller powering the stack of MicroTiles, clicking the "detect monitor and video card" button in EasyStart, and then picking the right resolution, which in this case was an improbable 720x2700.

While I don't normally bother expounding on every new whiz-bang technology that crosses my path (and as Andrew pointed out in his post), I am greatly impressed when you can just take something out of its box, plug it in, turn it on, and have it do what you expect. And that's precisely what happened with Christie's brand-new, high-end and (currently) low-volume offering, which is particularly remarkable since that combination of adjectives is like the unholy trifecta of excuses for why so much stuff in our industry (and the AV industry in general) doesn't just work when you plug it in and turn it on.

So, my hat goes off to Christie Digital.

If you are at ISE2010, a tower of MicroTiles powered by EasyStart will be on display at booth 10N118, so you can check it out for yourselves. Unfortunately I won't be there this time around, but I'm sure Andrew, Adrian and their cohorts will take good care of you :)

1 comment:

Tim warrington said...

These micro tiles are amazing. I was lucky enough to see them in action in Vegas and they stole the show. Cant wait to get my hands on some for the digital signage market in the UK.