We've had 6 plasma displays (a pair of displays each in 3 separate
buildings) running for the past three years. Our setup is 1 old PC per
building with a VGA splitter and VGA-Cat5-VGA extensions to the screens (the
screens are as far as 100 feet from the PC). The PCs have PowerPoint Player
and Windows Media Player and pull either a PowerPoint slideshow from a
shared network folder or point to a Windows Media stream from our streaming
server.
Management is a bit of a hassle - VNC access to the PC (from either a Mac or
a PC) to load the appropriate show. It really doesn't take long -- a few
minutes to update the PowerPoint slideshow content, then about 60 seconds
per PC to VNC in, close the current PowerPoint show and open the new
PowerPoint show (or Windows Media stream).
Our students often submit video clips from weekend sports events or dances
or concerts and these are easily embedded in a slide on the PowerPoint show
so that the plasmas are more than just scrolling announcements; they are
also 1-2 minute video shows. Clubs also submit slides with announcements
(the most common is our fishing club which submits a photo of the winner of
the monthly fishing competition winner).
When we have school events (Open House, dinners, etc...) we get special
PowerPoint slide shows dedicated to those events. When major sporting
events are taking place during the school day (March Madness, Red Sox home
opener, etc...) we stream the TV coverage to the plasmas for the boys to
watch between classes (or during lunch or free periods).
The plasmas don't have audio (4 of them are near classrooms), but we haven't
found this to be too much of an issue.
The PCs driving the plasmas are all 5+ years old and while we've lost a few,
we've got the OS imaged and ready to roll out and we've got a few old PCs
lying around.
The whole setup is very low cost and very functional. The management takes
a little bit more work than some of the proprietary systems, but we've been
able to deal with it pretty easily.
Christopher
--
Christopher Butler
Academic Technology Director
St. John's Preparatory School
Danvers, MA
On 1/31/08 8:13 AM, "Peter Richardson" <richardson@RUTGERSPREP.ORG> wrote:
> Friends,
>
> I am a bit embarrassed to be asking this as I know it has been
> discussed on this list before. But, because they were not on my radar
> at the time, I did not pay adequate attention.
>
> Can anyone share ideas on a system that would display daily
> announcements, etc on a screen that we would put up in our lobby? All
> thoughts are welcome.
>
> Thanks
>
> Peter Richardson
> Director of Technical Services
> Rutgers Preparatory School
> 1345 Easton Avenue
> Somerset, NJ 08873
>
> 732-545-5600 x238
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
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[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
