NEED
There is a growing market for graphics systems of all kinds and complexities.
A major company in the U.S. pay-TV market had a system to provide video services
for hotels and hospitals, which is controlled via a PC compatible computer at
the hotel front desk. However, the system graphics were inadequate and the
system could not compete effectively within the international marketplace.
Since the company's engineering staff had limited resources, they needed
someone to take the lead in a complete re-design of the graphics system,
including both the custom Color Graphics Adapters used for text and graphics
generation and the central location software which controlled the screens.
SOLUTION
Mitsi engineers did a comprehensive study of the entire system, and followed
up with the re-design that the company needed. When the company began to look to
the European market, Mitsi was called upon to improve the overall quality of the
graphics being generated.
In response to the needs of the client's European customers, engineers
specified and designed next generation equipment with high resolution graphics
and a color palette of 262,144 colors.
The graphics system (JPG 6k)was changed to
allow for conversion to USA RS-170, British PAL-I, Continental Europe PAL-G and
French SECAM signals (since the system is intended for TV screens, not
monitors), and re-writing the communications software which interacted with the
graphics controller.
In addition, in order to standardize and expand the system, a PC compatible
bus was used as the backplane for the graphics adapter cards instead of the
custom backplane previously in use.
The Dual Video Graphics Module (Dual-VGA) was
designed to allow for the installation of up to 32 Video Graphics Adapter
monitors or television sets to be installed in a single
computer (JPG 5k). Communications are handled by a LAN card and an
intelligent serial card allowing for a larger number of monitors.
