Dealing with 2 Video EndPoints

[tvasantamonica]

As many of you may know, Composer will only allow us to have 1 video endpoint in a system. This is difficult when you have a room with both a plasma/LCD and a projection system. However, today I completed a system in which I have both an LCD TV and a Projector in the same room and was able (with some help) to trick composer. Here's what I did:

Problem: Whenever the Screen is down (comes down infront of LCD, but does not cover the TV compeltely) the system turns on the TV when the '4' button is pressed.

Solution: Teach a useless command to the Power on and Off commands of the primary video endpoint. Then create a custom command (I called mine 'Secret Power Command') and route the TV power yourself. I associated a Power command for the TV whenever the Receiver turns on. Then I was able to build a 'Swap Video' macro which turned the TV on and off sucessfully.

Hope this Helps.

AG

[Guest esmith]

In the initial design of the Video Endpoint stuff and other room bindings, we needed to give a name to the thing that you deliver Video and Audio and Temperature etc. to. The name we came up with was a "room" since this is the name of a thing we all know, and for most people the need to deliver more than one of each of these things to a single room would be rare. We did know that some would want to handle more, and it can be done very easily by creating multiple "rooms"(i.e. the C4 concept) in one room(i.e. the physical world concept). This is exaclty how the "Video Wall" agent works. You set up a room for each screen even though they are in the same room.

This can be made simple for the end user by just creating a "Theater Projection" room and a "Theater Plasma" room. The user then just selects the appropriate room before starting to watch TV.

[tvasantamonica]

That may be true, but I think what was underestimated was the fact that several steps need to be taken by the End-User to swap rooms. This to me is not a great way to deal with this situation. The concept of having 2 rooms inside one system is certainly foreign to the consumer. It should be as close to a one button operation as possible.

I certainly respect that most guys are not installing these types of systems, but many of us are. This was a simple and effective way to deal with the issue.