Have a sports bar owner who is asking about a video wall/matrix wall, etc. Ive never done one. Came across a great site w lots of info, but the costs seem astronomical. [Link: 9xmedia.com]


Lets say I want to do a 90" area. With the specs on this webiste, I would use (9) 30" LCD panels, their PC server, etc. Total HARDWARE cost STARTS at 78 grand. Thats not including training , custom wall fabrication, or installation. Do ALL "video walls" have this costinvolved. or am I just looking in the wrong place?

Basically hes looking for a wall that can have differnet programming on all screens, OR the SAME program, using each panel as a "segment" of the "wall", similar to the walls in BB, CC, etc.

Is there a simpler way to do this with just a mulit-plexer, similar to what security cameras use? He currently has a FP screen, so I could evenuse that if needed.

TIA

Video walls are extremely expensive and ultimately a pain in the ass. Get creative and sell him on another design...with $78K he could have 25 50" HD plasmas!

Thats an understatement!

Is he going to hire someone to run it or expect the bartender to operate the 'wall'?

to do it on the cheap... there are a few plasma displays that allow built in quad splitting... you just tell the plasma which quadrant it is in and it scales/crops the image as appropriate. otherwise, yes, it is expensive.

3rd vote for plasma. Unsure of the other manufacturers, but NEC builds the processor for quad splitting into their sets (not all models though, last time I checked). Its the easiest and cheapest route. The largest drawback is the "mutton bars" you'll introduce into the image with the width of the display bezel. Modern (and I use that term loosely) rear projection cubes are built to minimize this effect, but the setup and harware cost is many times greater. Doing the reverse and displaying multiple windows on a single screen use to be really expensive, its not quite so bad now, but controlling it is. Crestron's C2N-DVP4DI makes that a bit easier by including a 1-4 window video processor and a control processor in one chassis. Extron makes the MVP104 which is similar but without the control capability. RGB Spectrum makes one too.

jcmitch

Check out www.auroramultimedia.com
They have some less costly matrix units.

Cool, thanks

[Link: rgb.com]

These guys are good - they do mostly commercial stuff. I don't have pricing - I spec'd them on commercial jobs in a previous life.

Here is a great idea may not be as much money. The Pro Line of NEC LCD/Plasmas have a built in matrix ability take a look.

-Pete

Looked briefly. About 5k for SD, and 10k for HD

Another cool option.

we did a matrix system this spring. I looked at the matrix switchers and decided they were too damn expensive to use so we engineered one.
Audio Authority makes a one in and four out component switcher and
someone else (I can't remember who) makes a four in and one out component switcher we combined these two devices with three lcd panels running three different HD Sat boxes and 1 DVD player. We can get any of the four sources to play on any of the three panels and that's all we were looking to do in the first place.

The segment wall is what's expensive. If they are all playing different or the even same source it isn't that expensive. Four plasmas sound like a good option.

Bob

If you don't mind a PC solution Matrox has a few cards that might be interesting. Look at the QID, QID pro and ASM cards depending on how many displays you need [Link: matrox.com]

don't know the difference between QID and QID Pro, they can each drive 4 monitors in different configs (all 4 the same, all 4 independent, image stretched to 4 or any subset), but it looks like the ASM only works with the pro (the ASM can drive up to 4 other video cards, so if you use it with a QID pro that means a total of 16 displays)

here is a demo of what 4QID PROs and an ASM can do [Link: matrox.com]

PS I only saw the QID on the site a long time ago and new what it can do, never used or saw any in real life, but have always asked for Matrox cards on my PCs and have never been disappointed. So can't vouch for these three cards, but do consider Matrox one of the best video card manufacturers around.