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Making A Videowall
Ur@eus writes "Zeeshan Ali Khattak has made a videowall using Red Hat Linux, GStreamer and commodity hardware. The solution was made based on the need to create a flexible and cheap solution for use in Pakistani Schools and Universities using commodity hardware. To find out how this was done and some more details, and of course some cool pictures, check out the Video Whale project homepage."
Hmmm. 16 x 17" monitors @ $200.00 each is $3200.00... Hell, even if they were only $100.00 each you can get a very nice projector for less which will blow away the functionality of this system.
The whole idea behind a video wall is that you can display the same, different, or transitional information across the monitors. They (the monitors) can be ganged together for a single display, split into sub-displays, or data can be moving across them. The system that they describe has very limited use and will not be able to do what a videowall is meant to do.
Videowalls are quickly being killed these days by projectors except in the instance where you have limited installation depth and do not have room for the minimum throw of the projector. Or I guess where the ambient light is too high but even then you would want non-glare screens on your video wall for the same reason and the lamps in projectors are getting quite bright these days.
Even if you take into account the annual cost of lamps for the projectors you would have to balance this out against the maintentance cost in parts and man hours of the system he has built. bet it works out pretty close.. Just getting all 16 monitors to calibrate equally is going to be a nightmare.