American life has grown increasingly saturated with telecommunication media year after year since the mid-20th century. The advent of in-home televisual broadcasts would re-shape our culture in ways both profound and unpredictable, with the medium ultimately serving as an entertainment source, as a news reporting conduit, and as an ever-changing (if not always reliable) window to the outside world. Just as print media had once ceded a large swath of its proverbial ground to radio broadcasting, so too would that strictly auditory medium forfeit much of its market share to the audio-visual double-threat of television only a couple of decades following its own ascendance.
And while the remainder of the 20th century would see in-home televisions morph into a sort honorary family member in households across the country, the seeds of its own displacement would themselves be planted by century’s end, this in the form of home computing and, eventually, Internet connection to incalculable quantities of raw media. All of which leads us (indirectly) to those 4 topics to consider when adding a video wall to your office, as video walls are, of course, televisual heirs to an ancestral legacy stemming from those first shaky black-and-white images of a bygone era.
Video Walls for Offices
For its part, the corporate sector has remained largely unchanged in one particular sense throughout American business history: it is relentlessly competitive. What has changed, however, is the way in which telecommunications have been brought to bear upon the white-collar and professional services arena. Financial firms looking to keep their employees engaged with the market’s goings-on, defense contractors monitoring geopolitical happenings, and media conglomerates working to keep their clients in the limelight—all such operations rely upon close engagement with the outside world as it pertains to their respective industries.
And upon the terrain of a dynamic cultural-economic landscape, a similarly dynamic media interface is essential to the accurate tracking and assessing of commercial/financial/political developments as they unfold.
Thus, among the 4 topics to consider when adding a video wall to your office is an understanding as to your operation’s specific information needs.
1. Controller: Hardware vs. Software
A properly constructed video wall requires the seamless managing of images across a panoply of monitor interfaces. Here there are essentially two options from which to choose: a fixed hardware-based controller which splits a video input across various display mediums and a software operating system. Though lacking the flexibility which comes with a fluid operating system, hardware controllers are prized for the sturdy, high-quality performance they ensure. Software controllers are essentially operating systems housed within a server of some sort. This route will prove less cost-effective in most cases, but the benefits include accessibility of various system/interfacing applications, none of which are achievable within a hardware set-up.
2. Size
The question of one’s monitor surface area depends very much upon the physical space in which one’s video wall be arranged and one’s specific visual interfacing/presenting needs. While a relatively modestly-sized room may require a large single-screen video wall, a larger space may employ multiple screens in an integrated or optionally integrated layout. Give some thought to the specific nature of one’s desired visual interface, as multiple-screen arrangements allow for considerable variation in terms of the screen sizes themselves.
3. Configuration
The modern video wall is enormously configurable. Whether deciding where best to position a single large-screen monitor, or arranging the placement of a dozen smaller screens, the configuring of one’s video wall is subject only to the limits of one’s imagination, and is particularly important on the list of 4 topics to consider when adding a video wall to your office.
4. Installation
The installing of technological hardware carries with it a number of challenges, even for the more handy among us. Between electrical knowledge, owning the necessary tools, and understanding the fundamentals of wall-mounting, setting-up a video wall is nothing if not a bit daunting.
Fortunately, clients of 21st Century Network Cabling may trust that our installation experts are possessed of both supreme skill and a commitment to doing right by our clients. The process is highly collaborative and takes shape precisely as the customer envisions. Of the 4 topics to consider when adding a video wall to your office, let this one worry you not at all.
Ready to add a video wall to your office? Connect with our team today to learn more!