Kramer VP

The VP-551X is the box that runs the room. Ten video inputs go in - eight HDMI, one VGA, and one composite for whatever legacy source is still bolted to the wall - and one scaled picture comes out, mirrored on HDMI and on HDBaseT so a local display and a projector at the far end of a Cat cable both get it. It scales to and from resolutions up to 4K at 60Hz (4:4:4) and holds constant sync on the output, so the projector does not drop to black and re-handshake every time somebody switches sources. PixPerfect scaling, 3:2 and 2:2 pull-down de-interlacing, selectable aspect ratios and a built-in ProcAmp for color, hue, sharpness, noise, contrast and brightness give you a picture worth putting on a screen.

Audio is treated as a first-class citizen. Every one of the ten video inputs has a companion analog audio input, so you can pair a separate audio channel with any video source or bypass it to let a multi-channel Dolby or DTS bitstream through. Two independent microphone inputs, each with switchable 48V phantom power, mix, switch or talk over the program audio, and a DSP handles equalization, mixing and delay. On the way out, audio is embedded on HDMI and HDBaseT, extracted to balanced analog and to S/PDIF, and amplified to 20W per channel to drive a pair of loudspeakers directly - no separate amp in the rack. Control comes from the front panel and OSD, RS-232, the bundled IR remote, or Ethernet web pages, and the 1U chassis feeds PoE to a compatible HDBaseT receiver at the other end.