Reviewed by Stuart Taylor, technical sales at ATG Danmon UK
Where have you used this product?
Most of the interest in this product comes from higher education so universities and colleges, as well as large ï¬nancial, corporate clients like banks. It’s also good for the Ministry of Defence and surgical training facilities as these sort of environments rely on low latency and minimal delay. Overall the places we’ve installed it in are quite varied.
Why did you choose this product?
Obviously these sort of environments need high quality 4K distribution. The system also offers centralised control and monitoring and is great for when companies want to pool their resources together.
We’ve worked with the Evertz broadcast division for probably 25 years or so as a company, and although this product is from a division that broken off from that side of the business in to AV, they’ve really kept the broadcast quality there. We really chose the product because the MAA system is broadcast-quality equipment tailored for the pro-AV market. So when our clients demand the highest quality we bring them towards to the company’s AV range.
What do you like about using it?
One of the key beneï¬ts is that the platform allows multiple video, audio and control signals all to be controlled over a single 10GE port which saves on the infrastructure and overhead for clients. It’s really 100% scalable so will grow with a company’s business, so they don’t need to replace anything. They can just start with a single room and add connectivity as they require and grow.
It’s also been designed for intuitive ‘plug and play’ operation too so it really works pretty much out of the box, and is very quick and easy to put together.
The graphical user interface on it is a touchscreen – this drag and drop functionality means users of nearly any skill level can set up and control their environment in a few seconds.
It makes my life easier that high quality and performance is additionally backed up by the level of excellent customer service we’re used to working with the broadcast division too. They’ve got the most engineers waiting to take your call to be honest.
What would you change about it?
The cost is reasonable, but the only thing we’d probably change is the price of its vScribe capture and review hardware. It’s really powerful as it’s a self-contained box and it can simultaneously record multiple video sources while you can log time accurate log-in of every frame of video. It’s also great for playback of live interviews and lectures and things like that, but the price point is off-putting. That’s the only thing we would change, as a fully scalable switch fabric, everything else is great to be honest. We will deï¬nitely continue to use this product, and other offerings from Evertz in the future.