Not Far From It Now

A strong majority of people have seen a video wall or know what a video wall is, but just might not know how to describe it. Some of the other terms you might be more familiar with are seamless video walls, frameless video walls, video grids, plasma walls, etc. For the purpose of this article I will refer to them as plasma video walls as that is the most common industry term and the one most people will recognize.

What is a video wall?
A plasma video wall is a series of plasma screen monitors that arranged together to form one large screen. It might be easier to think of it as putting a bunch of TV's together to form one giant TV. The plasma monitors used to create a video wall however have very small borders or edges (often referred to as frameless). This allows each individual monitor that makes up a video wall to get very close to the other monitors and creates a more seamless picture. Typically when looking at a video wall you can notice where the individual plasma screens come together, although the overall impact on the video or picture being displayed is minor.

Video walls are a popular rental at trade shows, exhibitions and other business type conventions for drawing a crowd and presenting a 'larger than life' video experience. The individual plasmas can be configured in a variety of ways to create a horizontal, vertical, or grid like pattern depending on the intention. Since a video wall is made up of individual plasma monitors there really is no limit on the size of a video wall, although the most common seem to be 3x3 grids comprised of nine 42" plasma monitors. These monitors can display video independently or act as one giant monitor and display video across all the screens as if it were one monitor. Most of the time you will see a combination of different ways video is presented on them.

Travis M. blogs about technology. Most companies choose to rent video walls or plasma monitors for conventions, expos and trade shows.

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