We've watched the analogue sunset now it's time to wake up to a digital dawn. However, Anna Mitchell finds there are still a few spots of darkness left on the proAV landscape.
The term analogue sunset was coined specifically to describe part of the Advance Access Content System (AACS) license agreement that limits a Blu-ray player’s ability to output analogue video. However, this is just one driver in a wider transition from analogue to digital systems affecting every part of the AV industry.
The positive and negative implications of that transition have been anticipated and debated for the best part of a decade. According to many predictions and expectations we’re now well past sunset and should be waking up to a digital dawn. But, as with most evolutionary processes, things don’t usually work that neatly.
To outline early evolutionary steps, Stijn Ooms, technology director at Crestron, says: “In the early 2000s, in an environment where you had to distribute a video image over long distance, the analogue infrastructure was not sufficient.
“Transmitting the image 30m over a VGA cable was not enough as distance requirements were becoming longer and longer. At that point Crestron and other manufacturers developed solutions where you could balance your analogue signal on a Cat5 cable.
“The main analogue infrastructure arguably changed before sources and endpoints became digital. So, it didn’t just evolve straight away from an analogue to a digital infrastructure.â€
In the full article we discuss the drivers of this transition, if the transition is complete and what’s next with Analog Way, distributor Mocom and more from Crestron.
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