The flexibility and quality of Atlona AV technology means that the company’s products are always at the forefront of the industry. So, when a Polish Government ministry requested the installation of a large video wall, the result was the world’s first 5×4 AV over IP video wall to be powered by Atlona’s OmniStream™ distribution platform.

The video wall is located in the main conference room at Poland’s Ministry of Development. Used for major conferences and governmental meetings, it comprises a 5×4 matrix of 42-inch NEC displays, with allowance for a fifth horizontal row. Three 55-inch NEC monitors are also an integral part of the system.

“We became involved thanks to our partner, Perfect Displays, who had previously installed the HDBaseT™ system for the Ministry’s complex of conference rooms,” says Krzysztof Bocian, product manager for Wroclaw-based SimpleAV, which specified all equipment. “They had been required to keep an older analog system based on VGA and extend it with HDBaseT. This complicated matters, but they knew using Atlona CLSO-824 matrix switchers and HDVS-200 transmitters meant they could install a system that was guaranteed to work.

“Having used Atlona products for the HDBaseT installation, they trusted them,” he continued. “So, when it came to the video wall project, there was no question of using anything else.” SimpleAV showed Perfect Displays the OmniStream distribution platform and took them to a training session at Atlona’s Zurich premises, which demonstrated that OmniStream was the ideal solution for the video wall.

“We discussed the project with Reto Spöerri, Atlona’s senior sales engineer in Zurich, and they sent us a demo kit to do a presentation to the Ministry. The Ministry especially liked the idea of OmniStream’s built-in redundancy capability because, during important government meetings, it must be completely fail-safe. They were very impressed when we unplugged one of the patch cords from the switch to the decoder and the signal was still there,” says Krzysztof.

“The Ministry also really liked having the ability to easily swap the encoder and decoder units out, if necessary. Also, if they wanted to expand the system, they could just add encoders and decoders, instead of replacing the whole matrix or chassis. It has actually been planned to add the extra row to the video wall within a few weeks, so this will make the process very straightforward.”

With six distinct video sources simultaneously routed to the main HDBaseT rack, the signal is sent from the output of the matrix to the OmniStream AT-OMNI-112 dual-channel encoder before arriving at the video wall and the three NEC monitors. The encoders were split among three different areas to optimize flexibility with video sources: one is located in the technical room, one in a central signal processing rack, and a third in the main conference room mounted beneath a table.

OmniStream AT-OMNI-122 dual-channel decoders helped to minimize costs and integration footprint, as each decoder feeds two NEC monitors on the video wall. The CLSO-824 switcher feeds audio directly to a Bose audio matrix and loudspeaker system
surrounding the video wall.

“Its ease of installation, configuration and reliability really have made a big difference to us, as well as satisfying a very high-profile client.”
– Krzysztof Bocian, product manager for Wroclaw-based SimpleAV