FEATURE: COMMAND AND CONTROL
certainly made good ground in control centres is in KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) solutions – because, according to John Halksworth, product manager at Adder Technology, the technology has made significant strides.
‘IP is quickly becoming the standard for
KVM control in control rooms’ Jed Deame,
RGB Spectrum
increased dramatically. Over the past couple of years, we’ve also experienced increasing demands for streaming sources of other types, such as computer desktops/applications and other types of visual information and data streams. Needs are clearly changing, so versatility is an important factor in system design – which is one of the reasons why Mitsubishi Electric based its Seventy Series display wall range around modular building blocks that can adapt as needs change.” Fredrik Sjostedt, vice
president, global product management and marketing, control rooms & simulation at Barco, isn’t seeing quite the same level of IP incursion. “The industry is still in transition, and in our experience, only around 30% of incoming signals are IP-based and need to be converted,” he says. “That said, there are very clear differences between markets, and we see emergency operations centres leading the conversion.” One area where IP has
KEEN ON KVM “Keyboard, video and mouse applications demand an ‘at the computer’ experience with very low latency, accurate video and operation,” he notes. “There is a misconception in the market that using IP means you must suffer compressed video artefacts, unresponsive updates or jerky mouse movements. This is undoubtedly due to the experience of older-style remote control and ‘KVM-over- IP’ technologies that exhibited some of these drawbacks. “However, modern IP
technologies using dedicated Gigabit networks deliver the same, often better, user experience as custom video matrix solutions, while having the advantage of much greater flexibility. The ubiquity and flexibility of IP solutions means they will eventually become the standard – it’s just a matter of proving the advantages and capabilities of KVM over IP to the customer.” Seeing things similarly is Jed Deame, vice president of marketing at RGB Spectrum. “IP is quickly becoming the standard for KVM control in control rooms,” he says. “It is also gaining ground for video applications in certain cases where image quality and/or frame rate is not important. It will be many years before IP will displace baseband DVI/ HDMI for video since its bandwidth is still an order of magnitude less. Once 10G networks and 100G switches become commonplace, IP will begin to displace baseband. In the meantime, it is tough to compete in terms of bandwidth.” Hadany also sees
bandwidth as an issue that is
slowing the march of IP into control rooms. “The update speed isn’t enough for the standard ‘real time’ of 24 frames per second – let alone the 60 frames per second that is preferred,” he says. IP bandwidth, then, remains an obstacle. It is also perceived not to be able to offer a sufficiently high level of image quality. And then there’s latency – an obstacle to the instantaneous responsiveness on which many control rooms depend. “In our Mura videowall
controller, processing – rescaling, compositing, switching and so on – is done locally on the card itself,” explains Rob Moodey, UK sales account manager at Matrox. “This will always be faster than attempting to move changed streams through the network. With Mura, dragging a window or switching a layout, for example, is instant – clearly contrasting with a latency dependent on the network in some other systems.” “Another important point is that if it is ‘your’ exclusive network, you can assign the bandwidth in the way you want, but if you are sharing it – a service provider’s network or even your own organisation’s private but multipurpose network – then you may be in contention for bandwidth with unknown other services,” he continues. “Murphy’s Law has a way of reminding you of this by degrading video quality at the most inconvenient time. A multipurpose network is clearly easiest, because it’s probably already in place. A single-purpose network is obviously better, but will come with the associated network architecture overhead costs.”
IP: PROS AND CONS
Deame can see a whole host of reasons why it will take IP some time to prevail. “Although IP systems using commodity network switches can bring significant cost
Controlled by eyevis Netpix graphics controllers, the videowall at Munich's Traffic Management Centre comprises a 17 x 3 configuration of eyevis EC-50-LSXT cubes
savings, particularly in larger systems, it does come at a price,” he says. “IP systems require computers and operating systems to be involved in the transmission of video whereas baseband systems do not. HDCP encryption is well established in baseband, but not so in IP – so baseband wins on security. In terms of reliability and fault tolerance, there’s no standout, since the benefits gained by the distributed nature of IP systems is lost by the ‘CPU in the loop’ factor. Baseband wins hands down on simple installation and integration with other systems. The DVI/HDMI standards are fully interoperable at the connector level, and network engineers are not required to connect systems together. There are no IP addresses to set; it is plug and play. Inline monitoring is as simple as connecting a display. IP systems have a long way to go here.” But: ‘prevail’ it probably will. Hénique has a positive view of the advantages that, potentially, IP can bring to control rooms. “IP-based systems are much more flexible in terms of integration, scalability, upgradability, and so on,” he believes. “In the past, the integration of new camera systems required an upgrade of the hardware in the control room, for example with a
DECISION POINTS In any discussion of the merits of IP in the control room environment, the following factors will be key:
Cost Reliability Resilience Security Latency Scalability/upgradability Video quality
larger controller with more video inputs. This is much more easily realised with an IP-based system. Redundancy can easily be achieved with a second network, for example. In terms of costs, the initial installation for the customer is not necessarily a lot cheaper, because the network infrastructure has to be installed to be able to handle the network load and the security issues in such networks. On the other hand, if you look at the hardware we provide, the system will become cheaper, because the number of input cards on the controllers can be reduced, installation works become cheaper, and upgrades are easier and less expensive.” Hadany is similarly enthusiastic – but realistic. “In terms of data security,
LUGANO POLICE RESPOND TO INCREASED OPERATIONAL COMPLEXITY WITH EYEVIS VIDEOWALL
Faced with new responsibilities and growing complexity, the police force in Lugano, Switzerland, turned to eyevis partner WEY to substantially upgrade its control room. For the large-scale screen, six WUXGA-LED 5in rear- projection cubes (in a 2 × 3 configuration) were put into operation. Currently, the
26 May 2013
large-scale video screen is used to display the 47 available video cameras. In the near future, it is expected that 200 more video cameras will be added for the surveillance of pedestrian zones and parking lots. The screen is controlled by
an eyevis Netpix graphic controller with five eyevis IP
Streaming-Video-Decoder- Boards. The IP-Decoder- Boards allow for the
simultaneous depiction of up to 40 video streams of different origin. The management of camera and computer video sources on the large-scale video screen is assumed by the eyecon wall management software. The WEY-IP-Remote-
Extenders are
completely integrated into the eyecon wall management software so that the signals from the WEY-IP-Remote-Transmitters can be used directly by the eyecon wall management software for controlling the large-scale video screen.
www.installation-international.com
STUDY CASE
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