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Since the mid-80s, videowalls have faded in and out of the professional video spotlight. But with a recent infusion of new technology, they are once again regarded as one of the most effective ways to fill a room with video.
It seems like I've been writing about electronic displays for most of my life. But the truth is my interest in largescreen images actually originated in the late 1970s with a process known as multi-- image slide projection.
Back then, video projectors were scarce, and directview monitors were strictly video-only beasts. For visual impact, multiple dissolving 35mm slide projectors were the way to go, throwing images of all sizes and shapes onto screens with 2:3, 3:1, and even wider aspect ratios. Slide presentations carried the throne until the mid1980s, when the tide definitely turned in favor of electronic imaging. Leading the way was a new hybrid technology, one that borrowed the concepts of multiple images and blended it with raster imaging. This gadget the videowall - allowed media producers to achieve the same effects they had with their slide shows, but without the film processing, glass mounting, and tray loading of past years.
Early videowalls were made of stacked, direct-view CRT video monitors, which were fed by tape and early laserdisc palyers, and controlled by unbelievably complex circuitry-remember everything was analog back then. The impetus to use videowalls was fueled largely by a German manufacturer, Gundermann AG. Other companies son followed; most notably Pioneer, which brought rear-projections CRT cubes to the market; and Electronic and ICT, both of which helped pioneer sophistoicated multi-image controllers. Stacks of slide projecttors and fast-fold screens soon gave way to square, rectagular, and even triangular-shaped arrays of videowall montors, as meeting producers and designers of entertainment envenues and tradeshows were quick to jump on this new, largerthan-life display technology.
The development of digital signal processing and higher-resolution projection cubes in the early 1990s provided another shot in the arm for videowalls, which were facing competition from high-brightness video and data projections at the time. Companies such as Toshiba, GVC, Sony, and Seleco joined the fray, showing lines of digitally controlled rear-projection and direct-view data/video monitors. Thanks to these advances, vidoewalls became so popular that they had their own...