AV Technology - August 2008 - (Page 63)

OPINION THE WAY I SEE IT: THE STANDARDS DILEMMA IN AV The problem is not that AV doesn’t have any standards — it’s that we use too many of them without knowing how or why. By John Lopinto, President and CEO of Communications Specialties, Inc. ow many times have you had a project that combined products from multiple manufacturers and it “just worked” from both the mechanical interoperability and the signal compatibility perspectives? I didn’t think so. At the very least, connector gender changers are needed, or worse yet, boxes between boxes to perform some signal conversion magic to arrive at the desired result. Countless hours are spent tweaking, rethinking, and resolving interfacing nightmares that plague the pro AV industry as a whole. What remains unclear is why the industry endures this painstakingly difficult and costly methodology while other related industries such as broadcast and IT enjoy virtually seamless interoperability among various system components. They can plan complex system designs with great accuracy, keep these system designs within budget, and execute them with relative ease. They install components from an array of manufacturers and have them coexist www.avtechnologyonline.com H predictably in relative harmony both at the mechanical and electrical interface levels. And they do this repeatedly, confidently, every day. Isn’t this what every technology manager wants? IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM To understand the steps the pro AV industry must take in order to achieve a standards-based utopia, we must first understand why the problem exists and how the equipment manufacturers, the system integrators, and the technology managers are actually contributing to it. One could argue that the pro AV industry does employ many of the available standards most of the time, and they would be absolutely correct. However, this is at the heart of the problem: we are using too many (if not all) of the standards available today in many situations and none at all in others. Manufacturers and users alike are utilizing standards with little or no guidance as to which standard to use, how to use them, and when to use them. The electrical interfaces between devices can quickly become even more complex and unclear than their mechanical connector coun- terparts. What is the nominal level of line level audio? Is this level defined when terminated or unterminated, and under what load and source impedances? What exactly are the accepted data rates for RS-232? And while mechanical interface incompatibilities may be easier for an integrator to circumvent, electrical interface incompatibilities can be virtually impossible to solve. This is especially true when we are faced with products that have implemented an interface that is similar to, but not exactly like, the standard, resulting in a new, incompatible iteration of what was once a well-defined, field proven standard. Sadly, there are manufacturers that base their entire business model on this, ignoring the existing standards or, worse yet, creating their own. In many cases, this results in closed and proprietary systems that compel the system integrator to use only that manufacturer’s solution for most or all of the system design. For example, consider the number of interaugust 2008 | AV TECHNOLOGY | 63 http://www.avtechnologyonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AV Technology - August 2008

AV Technology - August 2008 Contents Precedent Corporate: The Project’s Over...Now What? Government: Generational Diversity and the Rise of the Millennials Education: DIY ISP.EDU HD Videoconferencing On a Budget Using Automatic Mic Mixers The Way I See It: The Standards Dilemma in AV Something for Everybody AV Adds the Magic to Microsoft’s Hat Trick Simple Control for Smarter Classrooms Product Review: VeEX VePAL MX100 Product Spotlight: Amps; Touchpanels New Products Ad Index AV MO: Dealing with Ambient Light

AV Technology - August 2008

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