By Robin Christopher Colclough, General Manager / Chief Engineer, OwnTV Business Television and Information Displays
SubscribeFor many years both experts and users have been saying that automated television-channel generation and information display systems should be much more flexible, capable of generating real-time video content with mixed media, text, html, video, audio, live local camera feeds, etc., without so many limitations.
This follows the long-term trend of the convergence of audio-visual and computing services, where all applications can freely exchange, manipulate and display data in any standard format.
There is no technical reason why such systems shouldn't be available with this level of flexibility yet with the specific features needed for a wide range of custom-TV channel and information display applications, covering the needs of industry and business.
Thinking along these lines, in 1995 we began investigating a wide-range of audio-visual authoring packages, including Microsoft´s PowerPoint, to see whether they were flexible enough for professional applications. None of the packages met professional expectations, and even Microsoft advised that PowerPoint wasn't suitable; PowerPoint hasn't the facilities or ease-of-use needed to generate TV and information displays linked to remote content sources.
We also needed an application that could automatically generate mixed content TV-channels with the smoothest animation of text and graphics, and that would be able to connect to live video streams, databases, and even translate messages in to a variety of languages automatically, but above all, be resilient and highly reliable.
Even today, a standard PC isn't capable of the real-time animation of complex 3D graphics and video at broadcast-resolution, and PCs are still far from perfect for largely unsupervised operation, especially as Windows® expects an operator to be available to click buttons when problems occur - even the 'embedded' versions are only modifications of a commercial product developed solely for supervised use.
In contrast, our first industrial video-overlay and display systems produced in the late 80´s, the IVC401 and 501, used our own hardware and operating system software, enabling us to guarantee reliability and performance, and many of these systems are still in use in industry and many airports today, however, to be future-compatible we needed to replace our proprietary systems with a reliable standards-based PC suitable for professional embedded applications - an enhanced PC - the ePC™.
Starting in December 1995, we began to develop both the ePC and a new Windows-based audio-visual and information authoring and control application based on our object-oriented MIDAS software, an acronym for Multi-application Information Display Automated System. That new system we called ViewPoint™. ViewPoint will operate on any modern Windows PC, but offers the proven performance and reliability needed when installed on an ePC due to the combination of proven hardware and software, including a modified version of Windows and device drivers.
The ePC units, as used by major international organisations, are price and feature competitive with standard PCs, however, ePCs have been designed for long-term reliability and performance using our embedded version of Windows. The system is also provided with a three-year extended warranty and 24-hour swap-out service.
ViewPoint is as easy to use as any Microsoft Office application - and much easier to use than PowerPoint, which requires coding work for many applications. Using ViewPoint, even the most inexperienced user can design attractive information displays and business television channels with all the features needed for almost any application within an hour from first use. You can also design interactive kiosk displays, with a library of ready-made applications supplied free.
ViewPoint is compatible with all file formats, including all the video and audio standards, Macromedia, PowerPoint and the MS Office suite. It is fully network compatible, allowing ePCs to be connected across a LAN or worldwide using the Internet - plug in an ePC anywhere in the world, and it can be managed remotely immediately.
Due to its object-oriented structure and professional back-buffer approach to screen rendering, ViewPoint™ provides the most professional synchronized display sequences and is much easier to use to design and modify pages. Pages can also contain HTML or Dynamic HTML/XML format when you need to Web-host your information display system, or they can be a mix of any types of audio-visual formats, and presentations.
To support ViewPoint our graphic designers have developed a wide-range of example libraries with templates and sample applications. It is also extremely easy to create new layouts, and many designers and non-technical people enjoy using ViewPoint because it gives them fast results.
Remote Management - ViewPoint offers a complete solution, from the tools needed to create simple or complex information screens to complete business TV channels with advanced scheduling, to the ability to monitor and manage those screens individually or by the thousands using a simple Windows application: it is all included with the Midas ViewPoint™ package.
Having spent many years developing Viewpoint and the ePC, we want to make people aware of the benefits that ViewPoint can offer. At demonstrations you immediately appreciate that once people see Viewpoint working for the first time, they can see how it can really change the way business television, information displays and interactive systems are created and managed, with benefits for many organizations.
Midas ViewPoint provides a complete solution, which we simply like to call Business Television with Vision™.
