Multiple Display Setup over long distances Options

[jallen]

I don't know if it is appropriate to discuss this here, but I was hoping to being to throw around ideas with other Omnivex customers on what they have found to be the best solution for their physical display setup. I'll start off by describing our setup, and throw in a question or two on some things I would like to improve if anyone has a better way.

So we currently have several Player PCs setup across our building, with 5 different content rotations. Several of our players display the same content, but due to the distance between the monitors we have opted to go with multiple players.

From the players we go into a video extender that converts the video to CAT5, then back into a video signal that gets daisy chained between displays. Currently we are using VGA extenders then converting into our old BNC displays. We are in the process of upgrading everything to HDMI to work with some new displays we are getting.

The video extenders only work from about 150-200 feet. Does anyone know of a way to transmit video across longer distances, say 2000 feet or more?

[Scott McDowell]

Hi Joseph,

I don't think anyone at Omnivex would consider themselves an "expert" when dealing with video extension, but we certainly have experience with projects involving hardware/cabling solutions. Based on this experience, I can point you to a few vendors that some of our customers have used and they'll be much better equipped to provide suggestions for your environment. Here are a few names that come to mind:

Magenta Research - Magenta's primary focus is on switching and extending video signals. We have their hardware installed in our office for our own internal signage system and many of our customers have used their products.
http://www.magenta-research.com/

We also have experience with the following companies, though their product offerings are not strictly focused on video extension.
Black Box - http://www.blackbox.com/
Extron - http://www.extron.com/
Kramer - http://www.kramerelectronics.com/
Minicom - http://www.minicom.com/

By no means am I trying to exclude anyone in this list. I encourage any of our customers and partners who are reading this thread to add their own suggestions based on their experience. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[jallen]

Thanks for the references!