As the popularity of flat-screen plasma and LCD displays increases, so does the need to deliver high quality video. Conference rooms, courtrooms, hospitals, airports, command and control centers, sports bars, war rooms, sports and entertainment arenas are just a few of the applications where video displays are being used. How do we deliver video content from the source, whether from a DVD player or from a camera mounted on a precision pan/tilt, to the display? We could have a source driving the display at the display itself. But, imagine having to climb a ladder each time you needed to reboot a computer that was located next to the plasma display suspended 30 feet in the air. A better solution, and one that won’t break your back, is to centrally locate your source devices and run cabling directly to each monitor. Centrally locating the sources gives you access to power and cooling (if necessary) and also makes physical upgrades easier.

Placing an audio/video routing switcher with the source equipment, as you may recall from our previous articles, gives you an unlimited amount of flexibility in determining which monitor receives which source. The challenge is how to drive the video signal long distances- 100ft, 200ft…1500ft in a large facility such as an airport, keeping in mind that the higher resolution signals, such as PC/VGA signals can only be driven short distances of only 25-30 feet before signal skew, color fringing and equalization become major concerns. QuickSet has engineered a solution that can drive any video signal to 1500 feet at a resolution of 1600x1200MHz, to 1500 feet without sacrificing quality.

Introduced by Knox Video Technologies, in Las Vegas, at InfoComm 2005, the R-Cat500/1500 and T-Cat Universal receivers and transmitters deliver high-resolution video over inexpensive CAT5/UTP cable, up to 1500 feet without degradation, at a resolution of 1600x1200@60Hz. Even at this distance, it is virtually impossible to differentiate between the remote and local display.

The R-Cat 1500 provides continuously variable EQ and optional skew compensation of up to 32ns in 1ns precision increments, up to 1500 feet, and supports the following video signals: RGBHV/VGA, RGBS, RGB, Y/C and Composite.

Engineered to the same exacting specifications as the R-Cat1500, the R-Cat 500 delivers high resolution, full motion QXGA (2048x1536) video up to 500 feet utilizing continuous EQ for optimized image quality with built-in skew compensation of 10ns of delay for R, G and B.

Designed to be used exclusively with the R-Cat500/1500 receivers, the T-Cat Universal transmitters from Knox Video are essential ingredients in designing a high-resolution video distribution system. When placed at the video’s source, the T-Cat Universal utilizes a pulse-coding scheme to analyze and deconstruct the sync signal which is then reconstructed at the R-Cat receivers to preserve and maintain perfect signal integrity. As opposed to competing designs that are passive or that simply force the entire sync signal down the CAT5 cable when it was only designed to travel a few meters, our sync output is identical to the input and the robust drivers employed ensure that virtually any load can be driven.

By Stefan Seigel