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February 2015
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and the video wall mini player inside, while
maintaining easy access to the machines.
Power buttons, a USB hub and a HDMI cap-
ture-in cable have been integrated into the
table top to provide users with easy access
points to turn the systems on, play files from
USB thumb drives, or connect a laptop to
the video wall - while a wireless mouse and
keyboard allows anyone around the table to
take control. The 55” touch screen acts as the
stand-alone demo unit in the room, with a
compact VIA embedded PC attached to the
back of the panel through a VESA mount.
While most of this may seem simple, if time is
not taken to think beforehand how everything
will fit in and be accessed, problems will arise.
Keeping in mind that meetings and presenta-
tions are the primary use of the room, it is now
time to start looking at the software require-
ments for the video wall in order to configure
the multiple panels as a single screen. One
way of achieving this, is to install the VIA
MW series Video Wall controller. The solu-
tion comes together with the S3 Screen Toys
utility which is included in the driver package
for the VIA uH8 graphics card. It enables you
to configure all panels connected to be oper-
ated as a single screen. The operating system
which runs on the Video Wall controller is
an ordinary Windows 7, so it is easy to add
Microsoft Office to share Power Point presen-
tations, Excel files and Word documents in
the room - another essential requirement for
a successful meeting. This setup works well
as a stand-alone system, but what if someone
wants to project a laptop-based presentation
on the wall? For its own meeting room, VIA
Technologies has chosen to install the SM@
RT Vidi video conferencing platform, which
includes the SM@RT Viewer application. This
allows utilizing the capture-in capabilities
of the Video Wall through either HDMI or
VGA. Additionally users can install the app
on their own device to wirelessly share con-
tent between their computer and the wall.
Figure 3. Examples for screens and controller products for the meeting room of tomorrow
Figure 2. View into a traditional meeting room
