Signal Splitters for Videowall-type Setups? 15
TwoHeadsAin'tGoodEnough asks: "For our current contract, my company needs to find video splitters which don't just replicate the same signal across all monitors. Googling isn't helping too much, because thousands of people are selling video splitters, but they're all the wrong kind. We need to split a signal onto 4 displays. (Each display is going to be a 52" plasma screen, *drool*). It doesn't matter whether we are splitting analog vga output or dvi output, so long as it works. Any suggestions?" These type of setups are commonly called "videowalls", and there is a library out there called VWLib that can be used to manipulate such systems. Some videowalls are custom affairs, but I'm sure there are commercial entites out there that build complete setups. Have any of you tried to put something like this together? If so, what were your experiences? Update: 03/12 9:15pm EDT by C :After digging thru the Slashdot Archives, this story was found that might also shed some light on the subject.
VW (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and for God's sake, whatever you do, PLEASE do not use the Goatse man as your test image. Thank you.
Yikes! (Score:3, Funny)
If the second hit doesn't mention the movie "Weapons of Ass Destruction", you've got your settings configured differently from mine...
What have you got so far? (Score:1)
Folsom Research makes such a thing (Score:2, Informative)
More information (Score:2, Informative)
Our application is a realtime 3d visualisation, running on high end graphics cards. Interactive frame rates are important.
Originally, we needed to display the 3d visualization on the top two monitors, and various charts/graphs on the bottom two. The client now wants the visualization to be fullscreen, with the charts/graphics popping up on request.
Currently, we have a geforce4 ti 4600 for the top two monitors, and two geforce 2 mx cards, 1 for each bottom monitor (this is the best card we could find for pci connection, allowing all the cards to be in the system).
We are required to use Windows, or I would just run a separate X display for each head, and probably be happy.
Using DirectX 9, we cannot control multiple heads on multiple cards in fullscreen simultaneously. At the GDC last week we spoke directly with Nvidia and they said it was impossible, "basically due to a DirectX issue".
We can bring up windowed (not fullscreen) displays on each monitor, and the current solution is to just "fake" fullscreen by setting the display resolutions and stretching a top-level window over each display. Windowed mode isn't as fast as fullscreen mode, however, and the application runs at disappointing speeds (even with the current setup which does simple charts/graphs on the bottom monitors).
It will probably not be acceptable when we try to do the whole shebang on all 4 monitors...
What I would like is to split a 1600x1200 into 4 800x600s, or a 2048x1536 (this is the highest resolution supported on the Nvidia card) into 4 1024x768s.
This would hopefully be a single piece of hardware which can do it automatically. Software solutions are probably not fast enough.
Re:More information (Score:2)
PCI GeForce 4 MX available at TigerDirect (Score:2)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtoo
Re:More information (Score:1)
that way you dont need 4 high end video cards, software tricks, hardware or any other crap.
Extron (Score:2)
They have something that will do what you want. Dig on their page, or give them a call and talk to one of their reps.
I used to be in that biz (Score:3, Informative)
The google string you want is "wall controller"
with the quote marks.
uxga "wall controller"
or
"data wall controller"
or
"video wall controller"
or
"videowall controller"
narrow it down a bit
http://www.rgb.com/Webpages/prodcats/commandapp
http://www.christiedigital.com/products/produ
Pioneer makes some great monitors for this application
BTW, this stuff is expensive. Thousands a day to rent, and priced for NASA to buy.
Two Dual-Head VGAs ? (Score:1)
You asked for VGA or DVI, not for composite video or similar. So please let me ask this: Have you considered using two Dual-Head VGA cards or maybe four Standard VGA cards and the Multi-Monitor Features of X11 or Winddows?
Barco videowalls (Score:2)
I am in no way associated with Barco, I only know of them from mutual customers.
Video walls (Score:1, Insightful)
high resolution, GL accelerated, tiled display (Score:1)