Avocent Technology Paving the Way in Wireless Video World

The next time you are pumping gas don’t be surprised if you find a small screen in the pump itself as there is a huge push for wireless video and Emerson Network Power (News - Alert) is giving the movement wings with its technology.

Emerson’s Avocent (News - Alert) technology transmits video from point A to point B, or sometimes from one point to multi-points, all through wireless technology.

“The bottom line is you are eliminating wires, and that’s what’s key,” Senior Product Manager of Avocent Products and Services Caleb Hooper told TMCnet in a recent interview. “Especially if you are going back into an infrastructure that you are retrofitting, that’s where a lot of wireless products really shine.”

The Avocent technology has already been deployed in a variety of industries, from retail stores to supermarkets to gas pumps to car dealerships. It can be useful in any place where “you are trying to capture a consumer’s attention and where you are trying to focus a value proposition to an end user,” Hooper said.

Recently, Hooper visited a car dealership that relies on Avocent technology to bring content in their glass box show room.

“They had screens all around these show room and they were actually using our technology to wirelessly transmit information on the cars and the different vehicles and the features and that environment is great because it is a glass box and they are putting it in locations where they cannot be running AV transmission lines,” he said.

Wireless video is “phenomenal,” according to Hooper, as it allows user to install new equipment without incurring the labor and cost of cabling and without permanently altering your facility. For example, if you have a one-time event you are able to position and dynamically stage the presentation.

Moreover, it allows customers to push multiple channels of videos to multiple receivers, allowing you to create a “hub and spoke environment” of being able to drive certain content to certain screens, according to Hooper.

One place that has exploded exponentially with regards to wireless video is the gas station market.

“The average pumping of gas takes three to five minutes and that is a captive audience; that’s a point in time to where you’ve got somebody paying attention,” Hooper said. “You have a targeted audience, you know what they are looking for and you can take advantage of that. There is a huge value in overdoing the typical poster on top of the gas pump – that you have to change out that can become dated and not relevant to what is going on currently – and going to the video side of things where you can target and keep it relevant.”

Video feeds at the gas pump can be customized with weather conditions, the time of day and even what type of gas someone is pumping.

In fact, some gas stations are moving beyond just simply placing a video screen on top of the pumps and placing them in the pump themselves because of the success that wireless video has had.

“Having a dynamic video wireless video source allows you to make those changes on the fly to adapt to the marketplace and you end users over a printed piece of marketing material,” Hooper said.