Thursday, September 07, 2006

Avocent announces point-to-multipoint HD extender

Here's something for all those people wanting to show the same channel of high-definition content across multiple screens in a digital signage network (in the same physical location, of course): their HD extender will let one source signal repeat to multiple endpoint destinations, supposedly running all the way up to 1080i resolution. From the press release:

The Avocent Emerge MPX1000 HD multipoint extender includes a transmitter and receiver that provide feature rich, high-definition media support for use in professional audio-visual applications. The Emerge MPX1000 extension product extends video and audio over standard 10/100 Ethernet wiring up to 3000 feet and wirelessly through walls up to 150 feet, or up to 1000 feet line of sight with optional directional antenna. Audio-video synchronization is maintained at each display and all wirelessly connected receivers remain in lock step with each other. The Avocent MPX1000 HD multipoint extender has interchangeable modules for input of analog VGA signals or digital HDMI/DVI signals. The Avocent MPX1000 HD multipoint extender solution provides two primary user interfaces: an intuitive menu system that lets you access multiple web pages and a front panel display to control and configure the system. The extender also allows for several methods to control external A/V equipment through RS-232 serial and infrared connections.
While I'd be extremely excited to see this thing work, our past experiments with video-over-wireless have not worked too well, with frequent quality and interference issues. Additionally, some products in the past that have claimed to do real HD have actually downsampled the video only to re-upsample it later.

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