The worlds of AV and IT are converging. More and more IT departments are taking responsibility for the strategic planning, deployment and management of audio and visual applications. The industry is also seeing a growing trend of products for AV applications relying on the network for their delivery.
This has created disruption in the AV world and occasional confusion amongst AV pros who have had to learn about IP networks, bandwidth, network security and more. At the same time it has given IT departments a learning curve as they enter the world of codecs, video resolution, compression related issues and more.
While many in the AV world have been discussing the various potential standards to be employed for AV-over-IP, the reality is that the important architecture has already been implemented by the enterprise using the IP standards that govern network traffic. All AV delivered using the network must work within the well-established IP networking infrastructure. For both system integrators and for operation leaders in enterprise organizations this means that if you’re going to deploy an AV application over the network, your IT team needs to be part of the conversation.
LG and Userful offer a combined solution for delivery of AV applications using an IT-familiar architecture: software, the network, standard commercially available off-the-shelf hardware and (optionally) servers in the cloud. By offering a solution with corporate IT standards in mind, Userful and LG make it virtually seamless for IT teams to deploy AV applications and easy for AV pros to integrate their applications onto departmental networks.
Userful is a software solution that is run either on a local server, inside the LAN, or from a server in the cloud. The server connects over the network to LG webOS displays, each of which runs the Userful uClient app. This eliminates the need for a PC or media player behind each screen. It also addresses key security concerns by minimizing hardware on site and eliminating proprietary or black box hardware. When run on premise, customers can use hardware from a variety of approved vendors such as Lenovo, HP and Dell and the Userful software appliance. Built on CentOS it allows IT departments to run all their standards security measures on the server.
With this IT-compliant infrastructure, Userful and LG support a wide variety of applications from video walls for operation centers and control rooms, to displays for digital signage and corporate communication, from data dashboards to customer demo walls. As long as content can be sent down or streamed via network, Userful and LG enable administrators to display any content source anywhere on any display at any time and in real time. The solution enables video walls of virtually unlimited size and resolution.
To make it easy for LG customers to get started with Userful’s Visual Networking Platform, Userful is offering free 1 year subscriptions to Userful Standard with purchases of select LG webOS displays, until December 31, 2020.
To learn more about Userful and this special offer, visit userful.com/lg