Yesterday, NASA and JPL released a magnificent panoramic image of Mars taken by the Curiosity Rover. This 1.8 billion pixel image is made up of over 1000 images stitched together. More info can be found here.
I imported the image to the Hiperwall system in our Customer Experience Center, because I love enormous images. It took a couple minutes to import and store such an enormous file, but once imported, Hiperwall software allowed me to move and zoom the image in real-time.
In order to take a video of it, I used Hiperwall’s animation feature to start with the fully zoomed-out image (so we can see all of it), then had it slowly zoom in to an area with lots of detail until one pixel in the image was one pixel on the screen. It then held that position for a bit, then zoomed back out and repeated. All of this took just a few seconds to set up, then I shot the video on my iPhone. The video was taken at 4K/60 FPS, but I’m not sure YouTube will offer it with that quality.
This video shows our unprecedented ability to handle enormous imagery, but it also shows how easy it is to animate content on a Hiperwall. While Hiperwall is commonly known for Command and Control video walls, many of our customers use Hiperwall systems for corporate communications, live presentations, and collaboration, often in addition to their control room Hiperwalls!
If you’re planning to order a Tesla, each Tesla owner (or orderer, in my case) is given a referral link that others can use to get some goodies. At the moment, when someone uses a referral link, both parties get 1000 supercharger miles, so win-win!
My link is below in case anyone would like to use it when you order a Tesla:
I recently wrote a blog post for the Hiperwall website on the value and quality of video wall controller solutions. I wrote the post because one of our potential customers was comparing Hiperwall to a very cheap bundled “solution” and they were being told the bundled product was comparable and good enough for what they needed. In almost no scenario was that true, so I made a list of questions at the end of the blog post that any video wall customer should ask as they are evaluating solutions.
I wrote a white paper about why resolution matters in control rooms and other environments where information density and content are important. I wrote it in response to the increasing popularity of Direct View LED (dvLED) in digital signage. Because dvLED is bright and beautiful and almost seamless, there is temptation to use it for control room video walls rather than the tiled LCD panels normally used. dvLED is quite costly, so some integrators may push it to increase their profit, but for the moment, control room customers will likely be unhappy with the result.
The problem with today’s dvLED tiles is that their pixel pitch is quite coarse. For digital signage and concert venues, this is fine, but if detailed information is to be displayed or for close viewing, it is not ideal. The pixel pitch (the distance between pixels) for some of the best currently available dvLED systems is more than 4 times worse than ordinary commercial LCD monitors. That means for the same size display, every 4 pixels on an LCD display are equivalent to 1 pixel on the dvLED tile. So essentially, buying a top-quality dvLED system costs a lot more and gives a quarter the resolution. (For this example, the assumptions are 1.3mm pitch for the dvLED and 0.6mm pitch for the LCD panel – I know 0.9mm LED is coming, but it’ll be expensive).
If we revisit this in 2 years, costs for dvLED will be down and the pixel pitch will be much closer to the 0.6mm that a common commercial LCD panel can do. Until then, for detailed information display, avoid paying a lot more for much coarser resolution.
I wrote a blog post for the Hiperwall web site about how we can put content anywhere and at pretty much any size. This was prompted by one of our competitors claiming they could do Picture-In-Picture, while we couldn’t. Well that’s absurd, because we can put anything anywhere, so if you want a video stream in front of another video stream, just move it there. Heck, put 2 or 3 in front – that’s OK. I even made the video shown in the blog post of an animated video stream becoming partially transparent as it flies over another video stream that is in front of a very high-resolution live data feed of the air traffic map around LAX.
This capability has been part of Hiperwall for years, so we don’t really think about how powerful and different it is until we’re reminded of exactly how limited our competitors are. Picture-in-Picture is an amusing thing for a competitor to think is great, because it has fallen out of favor – the TVs I bought in the first decade of this century all had it as a feature, but modern TVs don’t bother, because it is a hassle and most people don’t use it. Now I’m not saying it isn’t a useful concept for a video wall, but I think flexible object positioning is far more capable and powerful than very limiting Picture-in-Picture features.
Our smart devices have lots of problems, including security and privacy, but I ran into an annoying one today, and a similar one has been in the news: functionality can be removed from these devices by the manufacturer and there’s nothing we can do about it. The case that’s been in the news is Apple slowing down older iPhones without telling anyone. Personally, I’d prefer to have a slightly slower, reliable iPhone than a speedy one that resets itself if a particularly taxing game is playing (and, let’s face it, it’s really only games that would do that, I’d guess).
The issue I ran into today is with my Withings (now Nokia) Smart Body Analyzer (essentially a smart scale with lots of nice features). They’re removing one of the features with the excuse that it may require additional regulation, because it is a health-related feature. Of course, that feature is one of the reasons I bought the scale, because I thought it would be neat to know. Well, it’ll be gone in the next day or so.
As compensation, Nokia has offered $30 towards their store. Well, that’s pretty useless to me, because I’m not buying anything more from them in the foreseeable future. I wonder if there will be a class action suit against them like there was for Sony when they took away the Other OS option from the Playstation 3? That did affect me, because I used Linux on the PS3 for Cell programming, but I felt I got my money’s worth, so I didn’t participate in the compensation for that. I don’t feel the same way about my scale – they took away functionality that I was using and enjoying, so I don’t think $30 towards more of their stuff is adequate compensation.
So this is a problem – what can we do about it? Since the manufacturers already have our money, we can’t do much. If we bought such a device at Costco, which has unlimited warranty for most things, perhaps taking it back would be the right answer, as that would directly hurt the manufacturer.
As much as I hate to suggest a government fix for it, perhaps laws and regulations need to be put into place to prevent or compensate for functionality removal from devices, particularly when there’s no choice (the smart scale will update itself and there’s nothing I can do about it). The problem could become more and more widespread, and I’m particularly concerned about connected automobiles. What happens when they pull your favorite feature from the infotainment system? Or reduce the top speed and acceleration to save gas? Since they already have our money, we have little leverage. I don’t claim to have the answers, but we have a problem that will continue to get worse.
I wrote a post for the Hiperwall blog comparing the traditional A/V technology to circuit switching in networks, while the newer IT-based visualization approaches are more like packet switching. Click for more.
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