ViewSonic joins Hiperwall’s OEM Program for a video wall software and collaboration platform. This move ensures maximum synergy and product roadmap alignment between ViewSonic professional-grade video wall displays and media players, and Hiperwall’s leading-edge software portfolio of unified visualization and collaboration solutions.

Hiperwall is a software platform and provides a suite of intuitive tools that help businesses collaborate and investigate issues in real time from IP browser data streams. ViewSonic displays come in a variety of sizes and offer an assortment of features including 4K resolution and next-gen connectivity options. This flexibility and variety provided by the two companies ensures that businesses are able to procure a tailored solution customized for their unique presentation and collaboration needs.

“ViewSonic is one of the industry’s leading display manufacturers and has a proven track record of delivering high quality professional grade products,” says Steve Woo, vice president of sales and business development at Hiperwall. “All of us at Hiperwall are excited to be working with the ViewSonic team and looking forward to supporting its partners with our exceptional customer service and our robust portfolio of solutions that help businesses thrive.”

ViewSonic vice president of product marketing, Sally Wang, comments that the Hiperwall agreement adds depth and diversification to the ViewSonic portfolio of solutions for the video wall market. “We’re further encouraged by Hiperwall’s successes in IP-driven software solutions for the command and control verticals. These solutions will help to drive our business in these key areas.”

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Leading video platform company Echo360 announced today the launch of its new Universal Capture software in response to higher education demand for an intuitive video capture solution that functions identically on Mac and Windows computers, both inside and outside of the classroom. Instructors can now record and share high-quality video from any device using the same software – without the extensive training from IT staff often required by other video platforms with disjointed solutions for Mac, Windows, classroom and personal recording. More than 120 colleges and universities around the world participated in the recent Universal Capture beta program and can now benefit from the general availability of the software.

“Students today want 24/7 access to high-quality course content – making it easier to review content on-the-go or revisit it before and after class. Echo360’s Universal Capture software makes it easy for faculty to create that important content and then see how effectively it is reaching students,” says Jason Sitek, Instructional Online Technologies & Support Specialist at Wilkes Community College. “Both students and faculty benefit. Students get more high-quality video of course content, and faculty get an easier way to record without the headaches of complicated software training.”

With Universal Capture, instructors and administrators can use Mac devices for scheduled and on-demand lecture capture. But, regardless of which devices are used – whether Mac or Windows – instructors, students, and administrators reap the benefit of a single, highly-intuitive interface for recording the screen of their personal device, as well as for lecture capture. No dedicated hardware is required to run the new Universal Capture software, although the application also runs on optional Echo360 capture appliances. Features such as one-click capture ensure that faculty can use the application without additional training, freeing up their time to support students directly.

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The new capabilities in 3D capture are made possible by the advancements in Matterport’s AI-powered image-processing technology, known as Cortex. Cortex is trained on Matterport’s world-leading dataset comprising billions of 3D data points, and can construct stunning 3D models from two-dimensional images captured with spherical lens cameras, including Ricoh Theta V and Insta360 ONE X.

This new class of cameras, which start at under $400, provides a low-cost, entry-level solution for the capture, creation and publishing of 3D experiences. Matterport Cloud 3.0 expands Matterport’s ecosystem of professional 3D capture – adding to Matterport’s Pro2 camera line and the Leica Geosystems BLK360 laser scanner – making its revolutionary 3D experiences accessible to a significantly wider market. The new offering is for customers who don’t require the accuracy, performance and image quality of Matterport’s professional products.

“Today marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Matterport, our customers, partners and service providers. With Matterport Cloud 3.0 and Cortex, we are taking an important step in our evolution to better serve new and existing customers and partners with more choices to get started and grow with 3D capture,” says RJ Pittman, CEO of Matterport. “The power of our new software platform brings us one step closer to camera ubiquity. The versatility enables us to deliver a compelling entry-level solution for simple, smaller projects, while we continue to innovate and extend our industry-leading Pro2 capture experience for professional users.”

Matterport Cloud 3.0 Highlights

• Cortex, Matterport’s industry-leading AI engine, has the unique ability to transform 360-degree images from spherical cameras into immersive 3D experiences using machine learning algorithms based on Matterport’s unique dataset comprising billions of 3D data points.
• Cortex includes three-dimensional intelligence that can understand objects, rooms and the detailed characteristics of a space; automatically choose well-composed photos; and label specific rooms on a floor plan.

Availability and Pricing

Matterport’s new suite of 3.0 software: Cloud, Workshop, Showcase and Capture, are all available to Matterport’s existing customers in beta starting today.

Matterport will be releasing a new feature-packed free trial option and a $9.99 “Starter” subscription tier for supported 360 cameras beginning in March 2019. Early adopters and existing users of supported 360 cameras can request access now at matterport.com/register.

Pro 2 and Pro 2 Lite cameras are available at a discounted price for a limited time in celebration of the major announcements this week.

Pro2 3D Camera – Originally $3,395, will be available for $2,995
Pro2 Lite 3D Camera – Originally $2,495, will be available for $1,995

The post How to Transform Surveillance Camera Footage into 3D Content appeared first on My TechDecisions.

“In today’s digital classroom, there can be many technology barriers for educators to be effective and help students be successful,” says Bob Wudeck, senior director, business, education and CinePro solutions at BenQ America Corp. “With the RP7501K, we designed a panel from the ground up that incorporates BenQ’s leadership in display technology with innovations that allow educators to get started with digital collaboration right away and create enjoyable lessons. To be honored with Tech & Learning’s TCEA Best of Show Award is great recognition of our commitment to engineering purpose-built technology for tomorrow’s educators and learners.”

The cloud-enabled RP7501K is a 75-inch 4K UHD IFP boasting classroom-ready features, a user-friendly interface, and advanced fine IR touch technology for collaboration purposes. When it comes to effective learning, health matters. That’s why the RP7501K incorporates an air-quality sensor to monitor the carbon dioxide concentration level in classrooms, and Smart Eye-Care technology eliminating the health effects associated with blue light and glare. Certified by TÜV Rheinland, the IFP intuitively senses when someone is close to the screen and automatically activates Flicker-Free and Low Blue Light features. In addition, a germ-resistant screen made up of a multilayer coating of the nontoxic, enduring nano ionic silver agent kills most germs accumulating on screen surfaces and prevents cross-infection or epidemic in classrooms. The RP7501K adds device control through voice assistant, allowing teachers to easily control and access display capabilities through voice commands, such as starting a timer or searching the internet from wherever they are in the classroom.

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“This is our smallest player yet, and it can fit anywhere,” says Trey Hicks, chief sales officer for Visix. “Our customers are looking for compact, economical solutions for their signage installations. This is a perfect player for less video-intensive applications that still demand highly reliable performance.”

The Nano player is Visix’s smallest and most affordable media player, with robust features like 64GB eMMC storage, 4GB LPDDR4 memory for performance, and support for wired and wireless networking. It is powered by the Intel Apollo Lake Celeron N3350 Processor, and comes with a Kensington security port.

The Nano joins the full portfolio of digital signage players from Visix, including the HDn Media Player which handles 4K video, and the Micro Media Player which provides both HDMI and VGA output options.

All Visix players have built-in security, including Windows Firewall, to ensure your data is protected at all times.

Digital signage players support both static and dynamic IP addresses, and remote updates and diagnostics allow maximum accessibility to deliver information quickly. All of our players are quality tested – OS, chip set compatibility, playback, etc. – so they’re highly reliable for signage systems.

All of the Visix players have an integrated backup and recovery software application that allows you to restore your media player back to its factory OS and software configuration, if ever needed.  You can also easily set up additional recovery points.

The post Visix Introduces Ultra-Small Nano Digital Signage Player appeared first on My TechDecisions.

“Our 2019 QLED line is designed for users who want the best combination of picture quality, smart TV capabilities and design,” says Andrew Sivori, vice president, TV Product Marketing, Samsung Electronics America. “This year’s lineup represents our largest screen size offering ever. It brings together innovative feature enhancements and exciting content and service partnerships to deliver a truly groundbreaking viewing experience and unprecedented value.”

Including more ultra-large screen TVs in its lineup is part of a wider strategy at Samsung due to consumer demand. According to global business information provider IHS Markit, the market for 75-inch or bigger TVs recorded 2.1 million units in 2018 and is expected to grow by 43% to 3 million units this year and to 5.8 million units by 2022.

“We have witnessed our customers’ unfaltering confidence and affection towards Samsung QLED TVs within the past year,” adds Jongsuk Chu, executive vice president of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “This year, our 8K and 4K QLED line-ups are widening the gap in the market for ultra-large TVs. We are proud to deliver our most innovative and immersive lineup to date, and to give users more than they ever thought was possible before.”

The 2019 QLED 4K line spans four series—Q60, Q70, Q80 and Q90—that range from 43 to 82 inches. They join the 2019 QLED 8K line, which is available in five sizes ranging from 65 to 98 inches.

Samsung is also enhancing its design-focused lifestyle TVs: The Frame, which features the Samsung Art Store, the world’s largest art platform for TV, of 1,000+ works of art and interchangeable bezels for owners to customize to their aesthetic, and The Serif, which features a bold, post-modern design that makes a statement in any room. New for this year, The Frame and The Serif feature superb QLED picture quality along with new Smart features in a variety of sizes.

The 2019 Q80 and Q90 feature ‘Ultra Viewing Angle’ technology, which restructures the TV’s panels so the backlight passes through the panel with lights evenly onto the screen. Engineered to reduce glare and enhance color, Ultra Viewing Angle provides a vibrant picture regardless of the viewing position.

In addition, Q70, Q80, and Q90 models offer Direct Full Array technology that uses a panel featuring concentrated zones of precision-controlled LEDs. These LEDs adjust automatically to display deeper blacks and purer whites, delivering stunning images with pristine contrast.

A More Intelligent Quantum Processor

Q900 Series 8K TVs incorporate Samsung’s proprietary Quantum Processor 8K, which upscales lower resolution content to stunningly crisp 8K while also allowing for playback of native 8K content. This year’s models also utilize the Quantum Processor 8K that optimizes audio and video to the specific content on the screen. It can also create an even more detailed sound experience by tailoring the audio settings to the specific layout of the room.

Samsung’s new QLED 4K models also feature their own proprietary Quantum Processor 4K. No matter the resolution of the source content, the Quantum Processor 4K can use AI upscaling to deliver improved brightness, picture quality and sound optimized for each scene.

A More Customizable Ambient Mode

Introduced in 2018, Samsung’s award-winning Ambient Mode returns to Samsung’s 2019 QLED 4K and 8K TV models. For the first time ever, Ambient Mode is also available on the Serif TV.

Ambient Mode complements any space by turning a blank screen into a decorative or informational display when the TV is not in active use. It can provide useful daily information, like the time, weather forecast, or that day’s headlines. It can also display artistic content like photos and works of art.

This year, Ambient Mode offers users an even greater variety of artistic and decorative pieces for the home, through new decorative patterns, photos, and artwork, and mattes, as well as new ways to display information on the TV.

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The new Mura IPX capture cards now allow OEMs and system integrators to mix and match a premium selection of 12G-SDI and 4K DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI options to capture, stream, and record desktop and video wall content to local and/or networked video walls.

Matrox Mura IPX 12G-SDI and IP encode/decode capture cards
Featuring SDI support from a single card, the _Matrox Mura IPX SDI cards boast two 12G-SDI and two 3G-SDI connectors to capture a wide range of SDI sources. These cards also include a dedicated onboard network interface controller (NIC) for high-density encoding and decoding of up to two 4Kp60, four 4Kp30, eight 1080p60, sixteen 1080p30, or exponentially more SD streams. The Mura IPX 12G-SDI cards are available in passive and active cooling options.

Matrox Mura IPX 4K DisplayPort capture and IP decode cards
The Matrox Mura IPX 4K DisplayPort _cards feature two full-size DisplayPort 1.2 connectors for native capture of 4Kp60 physical sources and full 4:4:4 color sampling support. The ability to capture and transfer multiple 4Kp60 channels over the bus without any color-quality degradation is essential to delivering both fast-moving video content and high-frequency desktop graphics and text. The cards also offer the same high-density decode capabilities as the Matrox Mura IPX SDI SKUs. The Mura IPX DisplayPort cards are also available in passive and active cooling options.

Software and APIs
The new Matrox Mura IPX capture cards include the complete range of video wall software, APIs, and libraries. These software toolkits allow OEMs and developers to deploy intuitive, ready-to-use software and build custom interfaces and applications.

“Matrox is thrilled to add new 12G-SDI and DisplayPort 1.2 products to what is already considered the market’s most complete range of capture and video wall cards,” says Fadhl Al-Bayaty, business development manager, Matrox Graphics Inc. “We proudly work closely with valued partners to help them broaden their deployment opportunities while streamlining their system development and integration process. When it comes to video wall flexibility, density, performance, and scalability, Matrox’s building blocks surpass anything currently available on the market.”

Availability
Matrox Mura IPX 4K DisplayPort capture and IP decode cards in both passive and active cooling versions will be available in Q1 2019, while the Matrox Mura IPX 12G-SDI capture and IP encode/decode cards in passive and active cooling SKUs will be available in Q2 2019.

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Both models come with an innovative ‘intelligent setting’ feature to simplify the installation process by automatically selecting the best configuration based on the projectors’ environment. The products’ four pre-set modes include: meeting/classrooms, museums, entertainment venues, and multi-screen setups.  These modes enable users to optimize the projectors’ performance in relation to each environment, whether it’s adapting to a well-lit meeting room where brightness is most important, quiet environments such as museums requiring low noise level, or multi-screen usage where color matching is essential.

compact, light-weight and unobtrusive, the VPL-FHZ75 and VPL-FHZ70 offer outstanding installation flexibility – even in buildings that may operate in imperfect ambient light settings, or that include unusually-shaped rooms. The projectors can also be placed in higher-positions than ever before thanks to their lens shift capability of Vertical +70%. This offers more options for where the projectors can be positioned, and it ensures that the presenter or visitors will not be distracted by the projector’s light source. In addition, without using keystone, there is virtually no distortion of the image nor digital noise ensuring continuous high picture quality with sharp focus and high brightness.

The VPL-FHZ75 and VPL-FHZ70 will be available in the spring, in both black and white finishes.

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Christie View was demonstrated at ISE 2019 recently with a high-performance Christie Mirage 304K projector, configured to run at 240Hz and split into four mono inputs at 60Hz each. In this configuration each user was able to view a single 60Hz output through shuttered 3D glasses that connect to an emitter and back to the projector.

“Christie View is a new way to view four outputs of 2K content or two outputs of 3D content simultaneously,” says Mike Garrido, senior product manager, Christie. “We believe our customers will see applications for Christie View in manufacturing design reviews, themed entertainment attractions, subtitles for museums or movie theaters and multi-person interactive content, like video games.”

Christie View is compatible with Christie 4K projectors with Christie TruLife electronics. TruLife electronics forms the basis for the latest generation of projectors capable of delivering ultra-high resolution, high frame rate video with unprecedented image fidelity. Christie TruLife supports a video-processing pipeline of up to 1.2 gigapixels per second, enabling 4K DLP at 120Hz performance.  Christie View is compatible with Christie Mirage 304K, Christie D4K40-RGB, Mirage SST and an upgrade path is available for Christie Boxer 4K20 and Boxer 4K30 projectors, and is slated to ship this spring.

The post Christie View Projection Technology Provides Multiscreen Viewing; Requires 3D Glasses appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The upgraded planetarium at USSRC will use the first E&S “ESX” cinema system installed in the world, which includes five Christie D4K40-RGB RealLaser projectors. The system will produce 8K images on the 67-foot, 30-degree tilt dome. Scheduled to re-open in spring 2019, the new system will replace the planetarium’s original IMAX equipment.  The remaining five Christie D4K40-RGB projectors will be installed in E&S’ Demonstration Center, located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“We are proud to integrate Christie D4K40-RGB pure laser projectors in demanding Evans & Sutherland venues worldwide. We purchased 10 of Christie’s first production units: five will be used for our facility to demonstrate the capabilities of our Digistar Planetarium and ESX Giant Dome Cinema products. The other five projectors will be installed in the reconditioned dome at USSRC in Huntsville, Alabama. Together with our world-class alignment and blending system, the image looks stunning. We are excited to be the first to offer this powerful new Christie RGB laser technology to the market,” says Kirk Johnson, president and COO, Evans & Sutherland.

The Christie D4K40-RGB projectors produce greater than 90 percent of the Rec. 2020 color space for rich, vibrant true-to-life visuals – all built into a projector weighing less than half that of its closest competitor, according to Christie. Delivering illumination performance of 20,000 hours to 60% brightness, 5000:1 contrast ratio, and up to 120 frames per second, the Christie D4K40-RGB also features a new, patented, sealed optical path. For typical installations, this translates into 8-plus years of stable, virtually maintenance-free operation.

“We’re pleased that E&S has selected the Christie D4K40-RGB projector for these installations,” says Mike Garrido, senior product manager, Christie. “Thanks to Christie’s engineering expertise, this 40,000 lumen RGB pure laser projector raises the bar for design, image quality, built-in processing, and connectivity. The all-in-one design makes it easier to bring a bright, vibrant, immersive, RGB laser experience to large venues, planetariums and domes.”

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