Several trends are causing a significant evolution in the video/audio marketplace. The video/audio user community is adopting new ways to use emerging technologies that is expanding the number of installations and that are now becoming cost effective and manageable for more users to benefit from their adoption. We are actively planning our product development to ride this wave.

Flat displays are becoming cheap enough to be mounted anywhere. Retailers, businesses, home owners and educators, and the government, are coming up with more and more reasons to use displays and send things to be displayed, all generated from many sources including computers, satellite feeds, DVD’s and cameras.

There is a requirement to feed these high definition displays from any source that is available. The display manufacturers attempt to simulate or “scale” regular definition pictures to look good on high definition displays. The display manufacturers minimally adopt scaling technology. It is up to the providers of the other components in the video/audio stream ahead of the display to incorporate high quality scaling capabilities into the system. We must provide the ability to connect video sources of varying resolutions to video displays of high resolution in an aesthetic way.

Everyone would like to have easy control of all the boxes in the system- the video/audio source, the switchers, and the displays- without having to have a handful of remote controls to deal with. No one wants to rewire his house and business to accommodate the specialized cabling that’s required to carry high definition signals. Technology is emerging that is providing “plug and play” capability so that all of the audio/video sources and displays can communicate with each other the same way that computer peripherals do now- creating the ability to achieve a “universal remote” that teaches itself to control whatever you have connected.

We are right now actively defining, specifying and designing the integration of these capabilities into our product lines. We will be able to accept any source and scale it up to feed high definition displays, we are providing the ability to distribute the video and audio signals over normal computer wiring and we are incorporating plug and play compatibility into our products. These actions will keep us in the mainstream of the video/audio industry, keep our product lines fresh and exciting, and allow us to expand into present and up to now untapped markets.

By Ted Neiman