THE TECHNOLOGY MANAGER’S GUIDE TO from the editors of HISTORY AND TRENDS OF AV CONTROL ELEMENTS OF AN IP-BASED AV CONTROL SYSTEM CLOUD CONTROL: IS IT HERE? IS IT COMING? WHO’S WHO PRODUCT COMPARISON CHART S HOW TO VERIFY AN IP ADDRESS

Unity begins with you. Your needs. Your skills. Your resources. Your technology. Your audience. Your environment. We help you put it all at your command. AMX has now combined best-of-class audio and visual solutions with IT managment allowing you the most simple and unied solution available.

EDITOR’S NOTE [Margot Douaihy, managing editor, AV Technology] TECH MANAGERS DO IT ALL IT and AV—what were once clearly dened industries are now blurred together. More and more tech managers are transporting AV information over their IP networks and using ethernet ports for system management and control. With digital video, the task of achieving synchronous network delivery of both video and audio from multiple sources to multiple displays in high denition is no small feat, as both AV and IT teams learns every day on the job. Facility directors and end-users hold critical roles in the IPbased...

THE ORIGINS OF ONLINE CONTROL The Ethernet’s original purpose was simply to nd a way to connect computers to printers. In the late 1990s, AV on the network became a reality. Suddenly, video projectors were sprouting RJ-45 connectors. In 1999, InFocus introduced the model LP 755, claimed to be the rst network projector. By 2005, nearly every major projector manufacturer was offering a network option. Lamp life could be monitored, projectors could be turned on or off, and theft could be minimized—all because the projector was on the network. Once the projector was allowed to join the network, AV...

AMX ENOVA DGX — WHERE AV AND IT MEET, AV CONTROL OVER IT INFRASTRUCTURE. AMX has unied the AV and IT worlds by allowing AV to be managed virtually the same way as IT services. The AMX DGX is a standards-based solution to distribute awless audio and video, control and Ethernet to multiple rooms throughout a building over standard twisted pair cable. The DGX’s embedded Ethernet switch, networkability, and centralized management capabilities make it the perfect command center to bring your environment to life.

THE STATE OF IP-BASED AV CONTROL SYSTEMS WHAT MAKES A GREAT ONLINE CONTROL SYSTEM? SIMPLICITY, CONSISTENCY, FLEXIBILITY AND SECURITY. True story: A company has three completely different control system touchpanels within a stone’s throw of one another. There’s one brand in the CEO’s ofce, another in the adjoining executive conference room and a third in the nearby boardroom. “This CEO of a Fortune 500 company has to deal with three completely different interfaces within 10 steps of his ofce,” says Scott Walker, president, CEO and a founding principal of Waveguide, an AV integrator and consultancy....

hardware choices. Touchpanels are the most common choice of UI, but control systems also can be run from PCs and VoIP deskphones. Twenty-six percent of enterprises are using or planning to use tablets such as the iPad, according to a recent Forrester survey of 2,300 IT executives in North America and Europe. That trend is a major reason why most control system vendors now offer apps that turn Android and Apple tablets into touchpanels. Most of those apps also can run on smartphones. Whether it’s a tablet, smartphone, PC or VoIP deskphone, using hardware that the enterprise already has is one...

“‘I’ll just set you up with a new touchpanel. You’ll like it,’” is how Walker describes what the new integrator/consultant often says. “CIOs should look at this and say, ‘We need one control platform.’ That’s taking a very IT approach to this, which is the good thing about IT taking over AV.” THE BRAINS OF THE OPERATION As with the UI, there’s a growing selection of choices for the IP control system processor—or processors, as is increasingly the case. Besides having the processors on premises, another option is to have them sitting in the cloud. (For an examination of the potential for cloud-based...

TYPES OF CONTROL SIGNALS HERE ARE SOME OF THE MOST COMMON AV CONTROL SIGNALS: Digital Data is usually transmitted using one of the EIA recommended standards. RS-232 is still the most common control signal type in AV. It’s bi-directional, so it can send signals from a control processor to an AV device, and return feedback from the device to the control processor. RS-232 needs to be congured for proper speed and other connection parameters. Another type of digital data is RS-422, which uses a balanced connection that allows increased distance capacity due to common mode rejection. RS-485 is the...

CLOUD-Y DAYS AHEAD IS AV CONTROL GOING TO THE CLOUD? by Mark Mayeld The denition of cloud computing has, until recently, been as translucent as the gaseous cluster of water vapor molecules after which it is named. To help add shape to the issue, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a draft document in January 2011, titled “The NIST Denition of Cloud Computing.” It begins with the denition: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, ondemand network access to a shared pool of congurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications,...

GENERATION CONFERENCE ROOM, technologies to automate and simplify the use of conference room equipment to ensure meetings and presentations run seamlessly. The Enova DVX All-ln-One Presentation Switcher combines audio/video switching, control, audio processing, amplification and category cable distri- bution in a single 3RU unit that can be supported and serviced remotely over your current IT infrastructure

video or other AV content controller, and it’s ready to go. that’s hosted on a server that But just as conguration moves you don’t own, that’s cloud AV to the cloud, is it feasible that the access. Cloud AV is already well control processor itself could disentrenched in the consumer AV appear as an on-premises piece world. Do you use NetFlix? That’s of hardware, and become a cloudIP Network cloud-based AV access. So is Youbased IaaS function? Tube. Apple’s iCloud allows users That’s what Oakland, CA-based to stream images and other types Cloud Systems is betting on. “We 3rd party server system...