The site
Fort Davis is one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars frontier military post in the Southwest. From 1854 to 1891 it protected emigrants, mail coaches and freight wagons on the Trans-Pecos portion of the San Antonio–El Paso Road and on the Chihuahua Trail.
Park staff present a wide range of media in the visitor centre theater, both for the public and for NPS needs.
The challenge
National Park Service technicians needed an AV system that untrained park staff and volunteers could operate day to day — playing the park movie from a BrightSign player on a regular basis, and taking occasional sources such as laptops over VGA and HDMI.
The switcher and scaler had to feed and extend to a ceiling-mounted DLP projector over HDMI, and drive a stereo amplifier over unbalanced audio to loudspeakers either side of the screen.
The solution
The KanexPro HDSC12D HDBaseT Presentation Switcher & Scaler, with an HDBASE70POER receiver taking the signal to the projector over CAT6 with PoE.
After extensive market research the HDSC12D met every requirement at a competitive price. A demonstration unit was tested first, and the park was satisfied with its performance, reliability and user interface before committing.
The result
Reliable, high-quality, simple playback of every source the theater uses — including the park movie, “Fort Davis: West Texas Military Outpost 1854–91”.
Twelve inputs cover the projector, document camera, VGA PCs, laptops, DVD/VCR, a conferencing camera and microphone, with RS-232, LAN and audio all carried on the same system.
The 12-input presentation system has been easy to operate, 100% reliable, and allows us to extend uncompressed HDMI signals.
Senior AV Manager, National Park Service