With technology development continuing to accelerate, the worlds of AV and IT are full of myths, urban legends, and old wives’ tales — axioms that are totally bogus, or that used to be true but aren’t anymore. AV Technology examines 10 such claims.
1. VIDEO WILL CRASH YOUR NETWORK. That’s a myth…for the most part. According to Darren Scanlon, engineer for Emerge IT Solutions in Erlanger, KY, this axiom was probably true a decade or so ago, “when networks could only move 10 megabytes per second and when the only video was analog.”
Today, however, networks typically have much higher bandwidth capability, while digital video compression standards such as H.264/MPEG-4 offer better video quality than ever at a fraction of previous bandwidth requirements.
“Putting video on a network that doesn’t have managed traffic will still cause collisions of data that will in turn cause latency,” Scanlon adds. “If I’m sending an email, for example, I’m going to notice that the network is a little slower than usual. And if I’m trying to watch video, I’m going to see latency, and I’ll experience poor audio and poor video. But that’s not going to crash the network.”
2. YOU CAN BUY IT CHEAPER ONLINE OR AT A BIG BOX RETAILER. Sure, electronics are cheaper online and at big-box retail outlets such as Best Buy, but the hardware you’re buying is not professional grade, and the long-term costs associated with consumer-grade devices may actually be higher.
“Commercial AV equipment is designed to be used for a longer period of time,” explains Tim Cape, principal consultant for Atlanta-based technology consulting firm Technitect LLC. “A consumer-grade device may share some of the same components, but some of them will be different and the features will be different. But the big thing, particularly with displays, is the warranty will be different. A consumer display will have a 90- day warranty, or maybe a year, whereas a commercial-grade product will have a three-year warranty and be designed for 24-7 use.”
3. WE CAN INSTALL THE AV SYSTEM OURSELVES. Besides the value of professional-grade pro equipment, “the other thing people who are inexperienced with pro AV don’t understand is the labor cost and time it takes to do a professional installation,” Cape adds. “If you don’t do this for a living, you’re probably not going to know about lighting, proper image sizing, and a lot of other things that come into play, and you’ll probably get into trouble, even on a smaller installation.”
This myth, Cape notes, is especially virulent among some dedicated IT managers, who often denigrate the value of hiring outside AV help.
“An entire IT system might require just a few devices,” Cape explains. “For a typical network, you’re going to have tens of devices. Whereas, in a typical pro AV system, you may have thousands, including microphones, projectors, converters, adapters, control system interfaces, etc. And we don’t have to just know about all these devices — it goes beyond electronics into lighting and space planning.”
4. AV SHOULD BE INSTALLED AFTER THE CONSTRUCTION IS DONE. This is a tricky one. Most AV integrators agree that the dust should settle on a new construction site before expensive electronics are put in it.
“You also have electricians turning power on and off creating spikes that can damage processors,” notes Keith Willis, co-owner of Innovative Theatres, a high-end home theater designer and installer based in West Hollywood, CA.
However, there is also a consensus that not including AV design in the early architectural phase is a critical mistake. “If you wait until the end of the process to consider things like wiring, acoustical treatments, and lighting, the cost goes way up and the satisfaction goes way down,” Cape notes. “If you don’t design (AV) in early, too many compromises will have to be made with the resulting system, and because the building wasn’t designed to accommodate it, there will be a lot of things that just can’t be fixed.”
5. SWITCHING OFF POWER TO A PROJECTOR AT THE POWER STRIP IS OK. This is a total myth. Cutting off a projector’s power supply circumvents the device’s ability to run its fans in order to cool itself down after operation. Improper cool down can dramatically reduce projector lamp life — the number one complaint among projector users. However, at least one manufacturer has taken notice of some users’ tendency to improperly power down. Panasonic has a feature they call “direct power off,” which uses a built-in capacitor to provide continuous power to cool the internal components, even after the projector has been turned off and put away. Not only does this provide a quieter environment, it also prevents damage to the bulb from insufficient lamp cooling.
6. LCD MONITORS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR GAMES AND MOVIES. This is another one of those things that was true at one time, but not so much anymore.
“LCD’s only problem, and it’s gotten a lot better, is that the cells turn on real fast but the don’t turn off quickly,” says Willis of Innovative Theatres. “If you’re watching sports, for instance, if someone is running real fast, you’ll be able to see a trail if you have a good eye. But that problem has gotten much, much better. I certainly have no problem recommending LCDs, especially for screen sizes of less than 42 inches.”
Still, for his part, Willis believes DLP projectors deliver “blacker blacks” and better color reproduction than any other projection or display technology.
7. DATA STORED ON CD AND DVD LASTS FOREVER. The myth of all recorded media is permanence. Pre-recorded commercial CDs and DVDs that come out of replication plants have tiny physical pits embedded into their matrix that are read by the drive as binary information. Ultimately, corrosion and oxidization will corrupt these pits, but these discs have much more staying power than recordable CDs and DVDs, which use a more-fragile light-sensitive dye layer to store data.
In 2003, a Dutch technology magazine reported test results for 30 leading recordable CD brands. After just two years, some of the discs showed significant data loss.
8. WIRELESS NETWORKS ARE UNSAFE AND CAN BE HACKED EASILY. “Largely because of this myth, there’s been a whole lot more effort to protect people using wireless networks,” Emerge Technology’s Scanlon explains. “But it’s not true. The sophisticated wireless infrastructure that we install today is every bit as secure as [a wired network], if not more so.”
First and foremost, Scanlon notes, by simply choosing not to broadcast a wireless network’s SSID, IT administrators construct a somewhat impenetrable barrier — you can’t hack a network you can’t see.
Further, the military-grade encryption used on many wireless networks today means that, “even if someone could get control of your data, they probably couldn’t use it,” he adds.
9. WIRELESS MICROPHONES ARE ILLEGAL NOW THAT TV IS BROADCASTING IN DIGITAL. This is a myth…at least until the FCC declares it isn’t. Due to the recent digital transition of television broadcasting, and the subsequent auctioning off of the analog spectrum to wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon, those owning wireless microphones that operate on the UFC spectrum — most notably, mics using the 700 MHz band — are in limbo in terms of the long-term usability of their equipment.
The FCC, which has been slowed of late due to the changeover in administrations, is currently working out a plan to reclaim this analog spectrum so that can be finally handed over to AT&T and Verizon, which jointly paid $16.2 billion last year for it. Until the FCC figures out this transition, those owning microphones using the affected frequencies are free to use them.
“At some point, people who have these microphones are going to have to get rid of them, but the FCC has not said when we have to leave,” explains Chris Lyons, manager of educational and technical communications for mic manufacturer Shure.
10. VIDEOCONFERENCING WILL REPLACE FACE-TO-FACE MEETINGS. Videoconferencing enthusiasts have been making this claim for nearly 25 years, and it hasn’t happened…yet.
“I do believe that there will be significant cuts in the future in travel and face-to-face meetings, stimulated by civic action or government action to address global climate change,” says Andrew Davis, analyst for technology research firm Wainhouse Research. “Videoconferencing will replace a lot of face-to-face meetings — not because people want to do it that way, but because they’re forced to do it that way.”
Daniel Frankel is a Los Angeles-based freelancer who regularly writes about the businesses of entertainment and technology. He can be reached at frankel_daniel@hotmail.com.
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