This will begin a series of posts leading to the launch of RPT Motion’s Portable PopUp Video Wall.
PopUp Kiosks, PopUp Boutiques and PopUp Stores are modern buzzwords and marketing tools. We’re also seeing growth in small private single supplier trade shows, training events and seasonal product launches. Usually self-managed, these events are popping up in more locations, at smaller venues, even local hotels.
Portable PopUp Video Walls would be a great marketing tool, but quality video wall arrays are difficult to PopUp. As a result, rental video walls are usually not available in smaller markets or hotels where lower potential volumes make local supply either inaccessible or very expensive. Even in larger markets Rental Video Walls are usually expensive to deliver, set-up and configure. With high set-up costs, smaller or shorter events just can’t afford a video wall. As a result, conventional Video Walls are expensive to rent and unavailable in many smaller markets.
Portable Video Walls are difficult to deploy multiple times quickly and usually difficult to reconfigure to different array sizes and inputs. This is largely because there has been no available fully integrated Portable Video Wall deployment solution that is flexible, cost effective and convenient. As well, the deployed quality and ease of content presentation varies widely from horrible to acceptable.
RPT Motion Inc. has been in the industrial automation business for 37+ years and has built custom modular portable video wall mounting systems for close to a decade. These have generally been custom built for customer trade shows and corporate road shows. Some of these systems have been deployed hundreds of times since new and are still in use. When we’ve attended trade shows with our custom modular video walls, we consistently have the fastest installed and best aligned wall in the show. But our first generation modular video walls were aimed at single layouts, rectangular or artistic and were excellent free-standing mounting systems without full integration.
Integrating a complete plug and play, high quality portable video wall system is a complex multi-disciplinary task that takes time, money, knowledge and risk beyond what most Video Wall end users are willing to invest and usually beyond their level of technical competence. Often the solution chosen is expensive and more often it’s a tinkerer’s nightmare to set-up and configure late into the night before the show.
What if you could walk in and confidently PopUp an aligned and configured video wall and display content in under an hour? Then anytime you needed to move that wall, even through people sized doorways, down hallways, into passenger elevators and again have content up in an hour or less at the next location? What if, using the same hardware you could configure a 2 x 2 wall today, a 3 x 3 wall tomorrow and even a 3 x 30 wall or any other combination of walls if you had enough monitors, space and content?
An example of RPT PopUp flexibility adding value would be a small Video Wall rental operation owning 18 monitors, usually deployed as two 3 x 3 arrays. Each 3 x 3 array could also be deployed as two 2 x 2 arrays, so you could service one large (3 x 3) and two small (2 x 2) rentals from the same pool of monitors, or deploy a single super wide array of 3 high x 6 wide at the CEO’s mansion for a March Madness Bash or Superbowl Party displaying multiple feeds from 4K and 1080P sources? With our top level PopMax series, you could deploy a 4 x 4 Array of 55″ monitors and output full resolution 8K content on a 220″ diagonal screen
In 2018 these scenarios are not just possible, it’s all easy and quick with RPT PopUp Video Walls.
RPT PopUp Video Wall: What’s Changed?
There needed to be a better way.
It’s the start of 2018 and we’re in the right place at the right time. Over the past few years a lot has changed in the technology of video walls to help enable RPT’s PopUp Video Wall Systems. The two major industry changes are Monitors and Controllers. One makes a video wall less expensive and one makes a video wall less expensive and easier to configure and implement.
Monitors: Video walls need a bunch of big monitors. You don’t need 4K monitors in Video walls because you don’t have content or display ability to benefit from all that increased resolution in an array. High quality 49” and 55” ultra-thin bezel 1080P video wall monitors, the sweet spot for RPT PopUp Video Wall Arrays, are now dropping significantly in price.
Controllers: The evolution of modern and flexible software video wall controllers with HDMI over Ethernet Zero Clients, such as Userful’s Software Video Wall Controller is advancing rapidly. The configuration of video walls and connections of content and inputs to video walls is now easier and more flexible than ever. In the simplest deployment a mid-range Userful Server can be configured as a simple appliance directing a single user output (4K or 1080P) to one or more video walls networked with Gigabit Ethernet. Extended to maximum, a high end Userful server can configure one huge or multiple smaller video walls, can use 4K and multiple 1080P inputs, Ethernet cameras, web and locally stored content all configured, scaled, scheduled and looped as needed.
A high end Userful Software Video Wall Server can handle one hundred monitors. If you needed a 2 high x 50 wide, 3 high x 33 wide, 4 high x 25 wide or multiple arrays of some random mix of heights and widths, Userful can deliver content to it. The RPT PopUp Video Wall System is 100% ready to deploy in that or any other configuration. A more likely real world example is that a 20 wide foot trade show booth rear wall can be completely filled with a 2 or 3 high x 5 wide array of 55” monitors.
Ask us for more information on RPT PopUp Portable Video Walls