CTO Blog

Hi Sean, you hit on something quite fundamental: even in 2008 the technology doesn’t allow us to collaborate as easy and flexible as we would like. In the consumer electronics arena the benefits of collaborative features have been clear for a long time, but industry standards failed to emerge above the battlefield. The more virtual the easier it is. On Internet, i.e. application level, many solutions exist: chatting, desktop sharing, conference calls. Yes, these exist for mobile devices and for PC like devices. But bringing that to the level of interaction needed for beamers, personal video recorders (these are usually not personal), displays, remote controls, … Who remembers the promises of Interactive television, or the HAVi standard for interoperability between camcorders, TV’s, video recorders on top of firewire, … There are some fundamental bridges to cross: the broadcasting industry fails to implement the feedback loop, device manufacturers fail to standardise the control level interoperability (my DVB-T tuner can not trigger the PVR to record my favourite program unless I buy an integrated one) and the service providers only just started to see other participating devices beyond the smartphone and PC. We also need a standard for aggregating video content (picture in picture, mixing stills and video, overlaying video content, tagging, hyperlinks in video).

Back to the conference room this means that beamer suppliers should acknowledge that content originates from possibly every participant of the meeting from any device, that the role of facilitator should be well supported and that there are multiple displays to feed with possibly multiple source streams per display. And yes that this all should work wirelessly.

I wonder if beamer developers ever observed how beamers are used. Why on earth there is only one video cable supplied and why does the cable not help in optimizing the resolution (PC’s know little about the capabilities of the connected beamer)? Make it wireless and let the input devices subscribe to it. Then you could rotate through the subscribed devices and adopt to the best resolution of the combination projecting device and sending device (laptop, smartphone, …). Your smartphone is the remote controller of the beamer for selecting the input source and controlling the input source (forward/backward and so on).

Years ago we developed an interactive brown paper tool, which allowed us to have a virtual session where every body could create yellow post-its and place these on the brown paper. Only the appointed session leader could move them around. It worked amazingly well, because it implement the sharing of control over the objects. In the same period we develop and application that allowed us to control browsers remotely. All participating browsers subscribed to a broadcasting service and followed its directions. It felt like a magician to make al the browsers flip to another webpage.

So on application level you need to have an orchestrator. On infrastructure level you need services that can both be controlled as well as shared. Take for example the picture in picture feature: where would the controlling entity reside that circumvents cluttering up the screen. Probably at the same location as where the displays would subscribe for content. The underlying feeds can go point to point, but the aggregation function should be in control. Of course you can handover this role to another participant.

OK, the subject triggered a lot and I apologize for the length of this comment. It was fuelled by the remembrance of the irritation I felt a zillion times in conference rooms. Fixing that video is displayed on the beamer instead of the PC. But it was truly set on fire by my current struggle to create a simple, user-friendly, low maintenance home entertainment system. Trying to sell the solution to my wife and hope that she can operate it: it’s not fair to be exposed to such challenges. I must admit she has a university degree in psychology.

Sean, Mile
You might like to check out the network attached beamers from vendors such as Barco. These claim to be able to do more or less what you want, I think.

Not sure if this has any relevance, but I would suggest looking into DD-WRT for routers. It is an open source firmware for several standard routers which adds several neat and useful features. There is a feature called Milkfish SIP router - which may have some relevance to the ideas you mentioned above.

Hope this helps!

-Sunil