Video wall controller or also called video wall processor is a device that manages the selection from one or many inputs to be displayed onto one or multiple groups of displays either projector, LED or LCD screen. It usually comes with software either web-based or applications on windows or tablets that can choose which inputs you wish to select and project to which display and how you wish to size or arrange it. However, a compact video wall controller also comes a button on the front of the device which you can set a preset directly without the need for additional software.
All video wall controller should be able to “stretch” the content source such as image or video from a single HDMI/DVI input across all the displays within the whole video wall screen or assign a different content from different sources on the video wall screen depending on the requirement and able to change accordingly.
Type of Videowall Technology
Currently, there are 2 types of technologies being used for videowall controller; Hardware-based controllers or software-based PC controllers. The hardware-based video wall controllers are appliance-based processors and built on a proprietary FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) hardware platform, designed with a dedicated processor, high-speed cross-point video bus, and a customized and embedded operating system. Each has its own set of advantages and a few shortcomings, depending on the project, so you may want to do some research before picking one over the other. Additionally, the new IP-based video wall controller is a different method of deploying a video wall system typically in a complex control room or network operation center.
While a software-based software-based PC controller uses a Windows operating system, a hardware-based video wall controller has a built on an array of video processing chipsets and do not have an operating system. The advantage of using a hardware-based video wall controller is high performance and reliability. With modular videowall controller type, the hardware-based video wall controllers include Chassis with dedicated slots and the cross-point motherboard, input cards (or capture cards), output cards, cooling fans, PSUs (Power Supply Unit) and control cards (to provide control IP, wireless or RS232, etc.). With such a highly configurable chassis, this controller consists of a multiple I/O interface: HDMI, DVI, SDI, VGA, DisplayPort, IP, HDBaseT, Fiber, and composite or component formats in HD (High Definition) or 4K UHD (Ultra-High Definition) resolutions.
With high-speed cross-point structure, the hardware-based controller has up to more than 18Gbps dedicated and independent input/output channel bandwidth, which contributes to the high-speed video processing and switching with very low latency.
