Digital Signage in Box Office Application
Phil Norris Director of Business Development for Retriever Software, Inc shares his story on how he utilizes the Mini-Cat UV1 in Movie Theaters.
"Retriever Software supplies Point-of-Sale software and hardware to Movie theatres throughoutNorth America. We recently developed signage software that reads the film schedule from the ticketing software and displays movie information on LCD screens in the Box Office area and above the Auditorium doors. The system displays the movie titles, ratings, and show times and updates in real time from the Point-of-Sale server. The software is loaded onto a Windows XP computer with multiple video outputs (up to 16 per computer) that usually resides in the theatre office.
The signs that display the movie information are spread throughout the theatre and are often hundreds of feet from the computer. The use of video cable between the computer and the signs is impractical and cumbersome, if not impossible. The Mini-Cat UV1 units are installed at the location of each sign and at the computer. The Mini-Cats eliminate the need for long VGA cable runs, simplifying installation and operation of the signs."
Huntington Beach, CA - City Council Wired
The city council of Huntington Beach, CA uses a Hall Research Video Solution and custom voting application.
"A few years ago, the city council of Huntington Beach came to Hall Research asking for a solution to their video presentation problem. Their problem was they wanted citizens/presenters to have the ability to show a presentation on a PC, that would be displayed by a large projector, but they could not have the PC in the meeting chambers. We provided them with a U97A which allows a presenter to drive their presentation from a workstation in the middle of the presentation room but the actual computer was remotely secured 100' away in the computer closet.
The second item they wanted was a custom voting solution for the city council to use. We built a custom voting application that allows each council member to cast their ballot secretly and securely. After the all the votes have been cast, the court recorder will reveal how each council member voted with just the push of a button."
Tuscon, AZ - US District Court uses a Hall Research Evidence Presentation System
The US District Court of Tuscon, AZ is using a Courtroom Evidence Presentation System from Hall Research.
"When the US District Court of Tuscon, AZ contacted us for a courtroom evidence presentation system, they had a big problem. They wanted to upgrade a very old courtroom so digital evidence could be presented to the judge, jury, and both litigating parties. The technology was no problem for us but the big obstacle was pulling VGA cable through very small conduits in this very old building.
When you pull VGA cable through a conduit you have 2 choices:
1) Use a very large conduit so you can pull pre-terminated VGA cables through it
2) Cut the connectors off the VGA cables, pull the cables, then re-terminate several dozen HD15 connectors.
As I am sure you have guessed by now, they had very little conduit space to work with and they were less than thrilled with option #2. So we suggested option #3. Use our VGA over UTP (Cat5/5e/6) video conversion solutions and pull pre-terminated UTP (Cat5/5e/6), which are much smaller than VGA cables. The US District Court was thrilled with option #3 so we build for them a complete Digital Evidence Presentation system that transmitted all the video over UTP (Cat5/5e/6) cables. This installation ended up using the following VGA over UTP (Cat5/5e/6) products: UVA-2 , UVA-8 , URA "
Flight Information System in Airports
Video over UTP (Cat5/5e/6) solution used in Mexico City Airport.
"Mexico City Airport wanted to upgrade it's information systems and provide flight infomation to their passengers throughout the airport. Contecnica was the vendor chosen to tackle this problem and the problem they were facing was the vast size of this airport. The airport spanned over 1 mile from gate 1 to gate 35. Sending identical video to over 50 locations spread out over a location of this size was a daunting task. Their previous system utilized a master PC which was updated by the flight controllers and 8 client PC's distributed throughout the aiport. Contecnica did not want to purchase 40+ PC's to act as clients to the master just to drive a video signal so we offered them a simpler and far less expensive solution.
What we proposed was to connect 1 UVA-8 to each client PC. The UVA-8 is an 8 port VGA to UTP (Cat5/5e/6) transmitter which can send a video signal to 8 seperate locations up to 1,000 feet each. At each location where there would be a remote display, a URA was used to convert the signal back into VGA and display it on the information kiosk.
The result was an identical, crystal clear image at each of the 50+ locations. This allowed the Mexico City airport to provide a consistent feel to the flight information that was displayed all around the airport. As a result of the overwhelming success of this installation and solution, this setup was replicated in 5 more airports in Mexico with 13 more to come. The beauty of this solution was the fact that each display did not require the purchase of a new expensive PC which would then have to be maintained and updated. Instead, just a simple extension of the video signal over very long distances with perfect image clarity provided a maintainance free solution at a much lower price tag."
