by David Keene

The results of our first survey addressing displays and display signal routing–with some business/market trend questions also– call out several patterns, and point to some interesting market developments. While brief (as good surveys should be), our survey–Sponsored by Magenta Research– attempted to find out some trends in HD video for commercial AV, and find out how widespread HD is becoming, and how HD content is getting from point A to point B.

The trends we see here:

• The biggest inhibitor to ubiquitous HD in commercial AV is not the display costs, or routing issues, but the lack of HD content. This is pretty much the opposite of CEDIA market, or CES market dynamics, where there is lots of HD content (after all, the cheapest digital camera creates HD image, more high resolution than 1080P). But the cost of distribution of HD is a factor in the market–much more than the cost of 1080P displays themselves.


• In many commercial AV applications, player placement is more than 300 feet away from the display. This means that UTP (twisted pair) video distribution and transmission has gained significant popularity, and in response to this acceptance of high performance UTP video signal management solutions, the cable and wire industry, including companies like Magenta Research, is offering alternative UTP designs that are optimized for video applications. It also means that integration of HDCP compliant sources is becoming an increasing requirement in installations, and extension of HDCP-compliant HDMI signals up to 300 feet is now common.

• Regarding market growth, digital signage ranks high for where many of our readers see the most potential. Of course this trend dovetails with the above trends. And most of our readers see the non-ad revenue model as the most promising (digital signage for education, corporate lobbies and training, transportation, wait-time messaging, and wayfinding.)