How do you select your kit?

[SamanthaD]

Hi there,

 

Something I'm genuinely interested in is how you all select your AV kit. I'm not talking about brands, thinking more screen size, display types, speaker selection etc? From my perspective there are guidelines out there for all of this, and we are currently writing up a set of policies to make it a lot clearer for the end user, but am wondering how much of this is actually used in the real world?

 

Opinions / thoughts welcomed.

[srvben]

Standards, standards, standards. I use those published by AVIXA (formerly InfoComm) extensively - DISCAS, projected image contrast ratio, audio coverage uniformity, cable labelling for AV systems to name a few. Being able to demonstrate how compliant (or not!) you are with these standards is very useful when it comes to securing investment for refurbishments. Build them in to your tenders and then you also have a solid quality control that is difficult to argue against. Of course not every single installation can comply fully, in which case they serve as good guidelines so you at least khow close you are.

 

There are also some great guidelines from AETM which are very useful.

[mole]

+1 for Avixa Standards, always useful to quote some recognised standards to people to back up why you're doing something in a certain way.

[synaesthesia]

Of course you should NEVER just go on someone's guidelines designed for a "one size fits all". You also need to speak to the users of the equipment and what direction your school is moving T&L in. You may need to bend those standards to make something work in a particular room, at a particular time or in a particular way.

[localzuk]

We go by "how bad is their current kit?" and go from there. We choose kit by what we can afford, and what will suit the task. If a room is huge, a 65" touchscreen isn't gonna cut it, so we look at something bigger. If the room is gonna be used by tiny children as well as adults, we'll use movable mounts.

 

Speakers, we generally have a "one size fits all" approach - vision amp and speakers, tech connect cabling etc...

 

Standards are all well and good, if you can afford to comply with them.

[SamanthaD]

Thanks for the responses. Warming to see a few here have heard of AVIXA (I'm CTS myself so well aware of them!). Just wondered out loud because I've seen a lot of previous posts regarding using consumer kit in schools, doing things on the cheap etc which we avoid like the plague, and started to wonder if we were the fools here as we're starting to write up our standards documentation that sets all this in stone.

[srvben]

CTS here too (and hopefully CTS-D sometime soon ). I'm a university AV guy rather than school so requirements and budgets are likely different to some, though as a post-'92 former poly we're not exactly swimming in cash so I do have to be very mindful of what we spend our money on. Consumer kit I leave to the consumers though...

[jimmckenna]

Hi, I'm afraid I have to admit I live in the "real world" and if there is no money available in school budgets, as most us have to deal with at the moment then price plays a huge part in choice!! Edited August 1, 2019 by jimmckenna