Hi Tom,
I do this in my church, with things bought 5-10 years ago.
If I were doing this today, I would try something like the following. Disclaimer: I have not actually used the current models any of the equipment mentioned, though I have used older models of many of the items. (Our equipment is from Sony, Extron, Kramer, and Panasonic, so I mention those sources below. There are many other good choices.)
Camera choices:
- A 720p or 1080i camcorder with hdmi output, on a tripod.
Make sure the hdmi output is active even when not recording.
- SD PTZ camera, such as Sony EVI-D80
- HD PTZ camera, such as Sony EVI-H100V or BRC-Z330
- To control a PTZ camera, anything
- from the IR remote that comes with the camera
- to expensive remote control devices from Sony, Vadeo, ...
Computer to display presentations:
- Some old Windows XP computer, with a $20 video card capable of some 16x9 resolution
- Anything better
Video switch:
- Kramer VP-728, if to be located in sound booth or controlled over RS-232
- Kramer VP-729, if to be located elsewhere and controlled over LAN
Feed the camera to the video switch:
- HDMI if camera is camcorder
- s-video if SD PTZ camera
- 720p HD component or 1080i HD component if HD PTZ camera
Feed the computer to the video switch
Provide control of the video switch from the sound booth:
- If the switch is in the sound booth, you are already done
- Otherwise, use RS-232 or your building LAN
Distribute video from video switch to TVs:
- This is the hard part
- Set video switch to output 720p or 1080i HD component
- For short runs, you could use standard analog computer cables and distribution amplifiers.
Examples:
http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=mmvgamoldconc&subtype=55&s=4 http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=mmvgabsllconcplnm&subtype=55&s=4 http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=p2da6xi&subtype=32&s=4 Other sources, such as Kramer
Kramer C-GM/3RVM at TV
Carefully check specifications for max run length at 720p/1080i
- For longer runs, or if you have lots of plenum runs, analog over UTP might be cheaper
Examples:
http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=mtpt15hdaret&subtype=216&s=4 http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=mtpr15hda&subtype=216&s=4 http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=mtpda4&subtype=216&item=1&s=3 http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=enskewfreeavutpc&subtype=261&s=4 Many other sources, such as Kramer
Carefully check specifications for max run length at 720p/1080i
Some of these products can transmit audio along with the video, if you need that.
- I have no experience with them, but there are analog video to HD RF signal converters
HD RF is ATSC (over the air) or QAM (cable) format
Distribute to TVs with RG-6 cable, spliters, amplifiers
- There are ways to send video over LAN
I have no experience with this
- BlackMagic (and other sources) have converters from analog to HD-SDI and back
HD-SDI distributes over (high quality) coax
TVs:
- Any current LCD, LED, or Plasma TV will work
- Use the component input
- The HD15 input might not support 16x9 resolutions
(this is why the video switch should output HD component)
- Professional displays (made for constant use) are available for higher cost
e.g Panasonic TH series
Software for computer
- Prepare presentations with PowerPoint (or something equivalent)
- Format presentations for 16/9 aspect ratio
- Use lan to get presentations to computer
- Run powerpoint or powerpoint viewer or whatever on the computer
- We run a simple program I wrote
- the presentations are placed in a shared drive on the computer
- only desired people have access
- the presentations are called sunday.ppt, monday.ppt, ...
- the program finds the presentation for the current day and
launches powerpoint to display it
- the program checks every 30 seconds to see if the presentation
for the current day has changed. If so, powerpoint is restarted
with the new presentation
regards,
craig