A recent upgrade of the audiovisual equipment at the University of Manchester, carried out by integrator Roche AV, features Crestron’s Quick Media, a control solution for multimedia environments that allowed the installation to be completed by a single engineer and a programmer within two weeks.
Among the new teaching rooms at the university is a teaching zone that contains 34 student PCs built into custom-designed furniture clusters that feature retractable screens. This large teaching space also has a main presentation desk and projectors and interactive boards at each end of the room. In addition, five flatscreen displays are available together with two more screens in breakout rooms across the corridor.
The challenge for Roche AV was to find a solution that could deliver a flexible set-up, allowing any of the 34 student PCs to be linked to any of the nine display devices.
Crestron’s Quick Media was chosen to carry and control the different signal types. The number of inputs and outputs would dictate the selection of a matrix switcher, and the use of Quick Media is said to have simplified the system installation significantly. A dedicated Cat5 infrastructure was installed by the network contractor with Crestron’s Cresnet cable installed at the same time to provide a solid network for controlling the system.
A Crestron TPS-15G-QM Touch Panel provides a graphical layout of the room to allow simple linking of source and display configurations. With over 50 Crestron devices on the system network, Crestron’s Toolbox software was said to be invaluable in setting up all the Quick Media devices.
