State of CTRL: new features available for the control room platform

Barco CTRL is growing even further. Our powerful control room platform has been updated and can boast some exciting new features. It is now even more reliable, even more international, even more versatile. The regular enrichment of the solution’s capabilities makes sure we really stay at the forefront of technology and fully answer the requirements of all customers and applications.

Ensuring the highest level of availability is essential for critical control rooms. Barco CTRL offers an optional redundancy path for servers. In case the primary server fails (due to a power outage, a malfunction, a natural disaster, …), a second unit will automatically take over to ensure availability.

This option works with 2 additional servers: one device functions as a failover device, while the other serves as the arbiter – determining which server can be active to prevent the occurrence of a "split brain" scenario.  

We designed Barco CTRL to be extremely secure. That is why encryption is always on by default, making it impossible to intercept data in a CTRL network. This means that all encoders can only communicate with other trusted Barco devices. However, in some cases customers want to send the data in an unencrypted way, or use a different method to protect their data. For example, when using the source in external systems. This unencrypted encoder mode enables the use of CTRL in a variety of new scenarios.

Tearing on a video wall occurs when the content running on different decoders is not synchronized. Barco CTRL now introduces the content sync feature that ensures that all involved SAN-050 decoders start processing the same frame at the same time.  

The interfaces of CTRLwall and CTRLsystem are now available in an additional number of languages. Next to English, users also have Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, and French at their disposal. The CTRLdesk already has these languages (and more) on board.

What’s more, also different standards of keyboard layouts (QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ) are now supported, as are all main browsers. In this way, operators can use the tools they are most comfortable with.

‘State of CTRL’ is the new series of videos, in which product manager Gareth Hay explains additional features and functionalities, or highlights specific aspects of Barco CTRL. These, and more clips, can be found on our dedicated CTRL videos page.