Coming soon to a screen near you: Brady O. Bruce and John Stark of Jupiter Systems discuss trends in control room technologies. Perhaps the single most important trend in the control room environment over the last 12-18 months has been the accelerated move towards the adoption of flat-screen Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology. Having made their presence felt in the home environment, where they continue to replace outdated cathode ray tube-based technology, LCDs have reached the point where their perfor
The 98-cube (14 x 7 array) display wall in the Beijing Olympic Traffic Command Center covered some 194 square miles and all transportation services including bus, subway, railway, highway and civil aviation.
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In addition, total lifecycle costs are making an impression. These have now reached the point where LCD technology is starting to edge out traditional cube-based display solutions in some control room projects. The downward pressure on unit price also means that smaller control rooms (or, more specifically in the ITS sector, Traffic Management Centres (TMCs)) can now benefit from the kinds of display technologies which were once considered to be out of reach.
"Until very recently you'd have seen cube-based solutions at US$15,000-30,000 each being used to provide a video wall in a major TMC but now we're seeing LCD screens costing perhaps $5,000 each taking their place," says Brady O. Bruce, Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Alliances with80 Jupiter Systems. "Given that a typical display wall is composed of four to six display panels, that's a reduction in cost from about $60,000-180,000 to about $20,000-30,000. It's stimulating interest from an entirely different class of user as even the smaller municipal agencies start to look again at what's now possible. At the same time, government economic stimulus funding, much of which emphasises infrastructure improvement and increased intelligence, is driving increased demand for video walls in all kinds of vertical markets, of which transportation management is one of the most significant."
"Another factor which perhaps isn't considered often enough is space; cubes are very space-hungry and there is an ongoing cost associated with that. Flat-screen LCDs are exactly that: they take up very little real estate. By comparison, LCDs are also very easy to set up and maintain. That's a further cost consideration."
"That in turn drives a need to be interoperable and intuitively share information back and forth. Desktop displays are becoming too restrictive as a result and there's a trend towards bigger displays which more people can see at once. That makes control room staff more operationally effective, as they no longer have to navigate through several levels of a system to get at the information they need.
"All this creates a need for more effective information management."
IP video - the great enabler
The hardware-based decoders in Jupiter's Streaming Video Server (SVS), meanwhile, can process MPEG-1, -2 and -4 formatted streams for a wide variety of encoder manufacturers. Using the video processing capability in a Jupiter Fusion display wall processor, as many as 160 streaming video windows can be supported in a single system.
"We've put a great deal of time and energy into developing the ability to acquire IP-based camera signals and distribute them to the control room environment," Stark continues. "The SVS features eight decoders in a cost-effective and compact enclosure. That means we can offer a dense decoder stack for relatively little cost and space and, in combination with Ethernet it means we're agnostic to camera brand. It means we can decode side-by-side and present as a homogenised whole. It also means, by comparison with a chip-based solution, that as we discover new camera companies and techniques we can adapt more readily."
"We supply many vertical markets. ITS is one of the most vibrant but the power generation, military and many other sectors all have cause to buy our products. Pretty much every TMC that we see seems to have it own operating strategies. That means that we have to present a very flexible interface and the ability to interoperate with, for instance, third-party applications such as automated incident detection and so on. Open architectures are a must in this environment as control room system suppliers have to avoid pigeonholing users. Almost invariably we can work with any software package with which we're presented.
"With stimulus funding coming on stream, transport is one of the markets which continues to remain buoyant in the face of global economic recession. Technological development and proliferation make for especially strong prospects in the control room sector.
"It's hard to imagine a future without more video monitoring and the sheer numbers of new prospects make for buoyancy. China alone, for example, has stated that it will be funding 140 new airports over the coming years. Two to five years out, stimulus funding will still be flowing, while technology costs will continue to moderate."
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Coming soon to a screen near you: Brady O. Bruce and John Stark of Jupiter Systems discuss trends in control room technologies.
Perhaps the single most important trend in the control room environment over the last 12-18 months has been the accelerated move towards the adoption of flat-screen Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology. Having made their presence felt in the home environment, where they continue to replace outdated cathode ray tube-based technology, LCDs have reached the point where their performance and robustness are allowing them to migrate into the 24/7 control room environment.In addition, total lifecycle costs are making an impression. These have now reached the point where LCD technology is starting to edge out traditional cube-based display solutions in some control room projects. The downward pressure on unit price also means that smaller control rooms (or, more specifically in the ITS sector, Traffic Management Centres (TMCs)) can now benefit from the kinds of display technologies which were once considered to be out of reach.
"Until very recently you'd have seen cube-based solutions at US$15,000-30,000 each being used to provide a video wall in a major TMC but now we're seeing LCD screens costing perhaps $5,000 each taking their place," says Brady O. Bruce, Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Alliances with
Different by nature
"The shift in the cost-benefit equation also highlights the different natures of LCD and cube technologies," says John Stark, Jupiter's Director of Product Management & Technical Services. "LCDs will have an operational life of perhaps two to three years but when it comes to swapping out old equipment there's very little other than the screen to consider. Cubes have an operational life of perhaps five to seven years but more replaceable parts - lamps and so on. Over that operational life, it's perceivable that you might effectively replace the whole of the cube-based system two or three times. In the professional audio-visual setting, that's what's tipping the balance."Another factor which perhaps isn't considered often enough is space; cubes are very space-hungry and there is an ongoing cost associated with that. Flat-screen LCDs are exactly that: they take up very little real estate. By comparison, LCDs are also very easy to set up and maintain. That's a further cost consideration."
Screen performance
As well as having cost advantages, LCDs are considered by many to offer superior performance. Unit size might typically be smaller than for an equivalent cube but resolutions tend to be much higher. LCDs also benefit from higher contrast ratios and less susceptibility to ambient light. And with the emergence of very thin bezels, down to just 7.3mm between live screen areas, there is the opportunity to present a virtually seamless display area.Behind the scenes
That has effects beyond the merely cosmetic, says Stark: "From the technical and operational points of view there is a desire and a trend to have what were once isolated pools of control become better connected and coordinated. That means different entities, be it for traffic management or emergency/disaster response, being collocated either in reality or virtually."That in turn drives a need to be interoperable and intuitively share information back and forth. Desktop displays are becoming too restrictive as a result and there's a trend towards bigger displays which more people can see at once. That makes control room staff more operationally effective, as they no longer have to navigate through several levels of a system to get at the information they need.
"All this creates a need for more effective information management."
IP video - the great enabler
Streaming video is becoming much more of a commodity than it once was and the shift to IP-based video is the enabler.
The hardware-based decoders in Jupiter's Streaming Video Server (SVS), meanwhile, can process MPEG-1, -2 and -4 formatted streams for a wide variety of encoder manufacturers. Using the video processing capability in a Jupiter Fusion display wall processor, as many as 160 streaming video windows can be supported in a single system.
"We've put a great deal of time and energy into developing the ability to acquire IP-based camera signals and distribute them to the control room environment," Stark continues. "The SVS features eight decoders in a cost-effective and compact enclosure. That means we can offer a dense decoder stack for relatively little cost and space and, in combination with Ethernet it means we're agnostic to camera brand. It means we can decode side-by-side and present as a homogenised whole. It also means, by comparison with a chip-based solution, that as we discover new camera companies and techniques we can adapt more readily."
The view from here
As a control room systems supplier, Jupiter concentrates on providing a mechanism rather than a policy, says Bruce."We supply many vertical markets. ITS is one of the most vibrant but the power generation, military and many other sectors all have cause to buy our products. Pretty much every TMC that we see seems to have it own operating strategies. That means that we have to present a very flexible interface and the ability to interoperate with, for instance, third-party applications such as automated incident detection and so on. Open architectures are a must in this environment as control room system suppliers have to avoid pigeonholing users. Almost invariably we can work with any software package with which we're presented.
"With stimulus funding coming on stream, transport is one of the markets which continues to remain buoyant in the face of global economic recession. Technological development and proliferation make for especially strong prospects in the control room sector.
"It's hard to imagine a future without more video monitoring and the sheer numbers of new prospects make for buoyancy. China alone, for example, has stated that it will be funding 140 new airports over the coming years. Two to five years out, stimulus funding will still be flowing, while technology costs will continue to moderate."
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