by cjones on July 30, 2010
Interesting new product to help older schools connect PC’s and Projectors wirelessly.
July 21, 2010 | Posted At: 06:55 AM | Author: Brian Nadel
Cut the Classroom Cord
Schools attempting to wire older classrooms for projectors or large screen monitors over the summer are faced with one big problem: the cables for video and audio never seem to be where they need to be. Rewiring a classroom can easily dwarf the cost of the projector, but Warpia lets you unwire it by connecting any recent PC with a projector or TV with no fuss, muss or wires.
Warpia’s USB PC to TV Audio/Video Display Adapter SWP100a is a little long-winded but can link a PC to a monitor, TV or projector in a classroom wirelessly. Based on the USB Wireless 1.0 standard, Warpia takes advantage of Wisair’s WSR 601 chip to stream high-quality audio and video over thin air.
Warpia comes with a small USB radio that’s the size of a memory key and transmits whatever is on the host PC’s screen. The larger receiver goes near the projector and its radio can be aimed the received vertically or horizontally. There’s also an AC adapter for the receiver and a CD of software.
The system can handle resolutions up to 1,400 by 1,050 in 32-bit color and CD-quality audio. On the downside, At the moment Warpia is for PCs only and will work on neither Macs nor Linux computers. There is beta software for Macs that can be downloaded.
The way it works is that the teacher’s computer uses Warpia to send an audio-video stream over a wireless link in the 3.2- to 4.8GHz range. With 128-bit AES encrypted security, adjacent classrooms won’t interfere with each other. As data moves through the system, a green light blinks on both the sender and receiver.
Read more…
Tagged as:
educational technology,
Educational Video,
technology in the classroom,
technology migration,
video in the classroom,
video projector
by cjones on July 28, 2010
Without fanfare Sony has quietly discontinued their AIT line of data storage products according to a message on their storage website. This announcement impacts thousands of Sony customers and quite a few of our own who have used AIT as a video archive and back-up system to back up video content from a broadcast automation system, video on demand library, an archive of public meetings or other unique local content.
AIT, known as Advanced Intelligent Tape, was first launched in 1996. New generations of drives and tape cartridges were introduced over the years that provided faster back-ups and larger video storage capacities with each iteration. One of the key advantages Sony provided was backward and forward compatibility which enabled users to upgrade their drives without having to convert existing archives to a new generation to 
maintain access and continuity. This feature saved countless hours and money because content stored on an early version of AIT did not have to be moved to a newer version.
Unfortunately the archive and backup industry has faced this problem many times before as multiple tape and optical disc formats have come and gone over the last 20 years and every time this happens it starts a process of identifying the next best format and every user of a discontinued format must migrate all of their content from the dead format to the new format.
If a migration from the old format to a new format is not done it produces a condition called DataRot. DataRot occurs when a format changes and through the attrition of equipment (i.e. the drives are no longer available) the data becomes useless, an orphan on a dead format with no way to transition to a new home. The millions of VHS tapes in homes, schools and cable access stations across the county will become victim to DataRot as VCR’s are no longer being manufactured. Once the existing supply of VCR’s disappears anything remaining on tape is lost forever because there will be no equipment with which to play the tapes.
Now that Sony has discontinued AIT every existing user must determine how and when to move the data from their existing AIT tapes to a new home. Key considerations include:
- Estimating the future growth of your video content over the next few years for planning purposes,
- Determining what archive route to take for the future and,
- When to begin the migration process…the longer the delay the more risky the proposition.
Because there are many areas to include we will devote several more articles to this process over the next few weeks as a way to sort out the issues and explore the various options available to anyone who might be caught in a potential DataRot situation.
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Tagged as:
Announcements,
archiving,
back-up,
data rot,
digital video storage
by cjones on July 21, 2010
