Video wall controller

What it is

A video wall controller is the engine behind a video wall: it accepts source streams, composites them into a layout, drives the panels, and exposes a control plane for operators. Two architectures dominate.

Hardware appliances

Purpose-built boxes from Datapath, Matrox, RGB Spectrum. Predictable performance, fixed source/output capacities, and a price proportional to those capacities. Adding capability often means swapping the box.

Software platforms

Run on commodity servers or PCs with one or more GPUs. Source count scales with GPU memory, output count with the number of physical outputs, and workflow with the software's feature set (NDI ingest, KVM forwarding, recording, scenes, multi-operator). Craft Wall is in this category, as are Userful and Hiperwall; see also multiviewer.

Why it matters

The controller decides what the wall can do. A great panel array driven by a weak controller is wallpaper; a modest panel array driven by a strong controller is an operations tool.

Related terms

• Video wall
• Multiviewer
• NDI (Network Device Interface)
• IP-KVM
• dvLED (direct-view LED)
• Pixel pitch