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New Trends: Is it time your AV infrastructure moved from Analog to Digital?

Enterprise AV standards are transitioning away from analog to digital standards – and this switch is being driven largely by video applications.

Ensuring that digital video can be incorporated into your organisation’s or home’s digital AV infrastructure while continuing to support legacy equipment is a challenge system designers need to plan for. With a wide array of digital video ports (including DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, and HD-SDI) available today, its necessary to plan for presentation environments with a mix of analog and digital video products and technologies.

This article from Extron is a great read on the practical and some technical issues related to going digital.

The promise of digital is pixel-perfect, loss-less signal reconstruction (Image credit: www.Extron.com)
The promise of digital is pixel-perfect, loss-less signal reconstruction (Image credit: www.Extron.com)

It addresses the questions of whether you should…

Stick with a tried-and-true analog design for the time being?

Build an digital/analog hybrid system that incorporates a mix of technologies?

Or, build tomorrow’s system today with an all-digital design and some provision for legacy analog products?

Some useful takeaways…

“The bottom line is that, just as video replaced motion picture film and DVDs replaced VHS cassettes, digital technology in one or more forms will replace analog in the majority of applications over time.”

“…for the time being…a hybrid system design that supports both analog and digital signals takes into account a wide range of presentation needs and technologies and, in the long run, is the most prudent and cost-effective approach.”

 

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