Remote Management on Display

Users are often their own worst enemies. Configurations are easily changed by pressing the wrong series of buttons. In addition, setting up display monitors in corporate environments has become increasingly complex. Until recently, each brand of monitor offered myriad on-screen and off-screen control buttons and menus. Apart from those inconsistent user interfaces, making changes to monitor settings can be a black art, requiring care to set up both the monitor and the internal PC's display adapter, along with any operating system control panel settings as well.

Support has become more crucial as the world of monitors has evolved into more complex digital-video modes. Convergence with television and broadcast video standards, and support for multiple-monitor display stations for advanced applications are also factors. Being able to remotely diagnose and repair monitors and their settings can result in lower total cost of ownership for enterprise computing managers, along with the ability to better track the actual physical location of any particular monitor as it migrates around to various desktops.

"A large portion of companies' IT budgets is allocated to simply supporting their computer hardware, including maintaining and tracking their monitors," says Bob O'Donnell, research director for IDC.

A new solution, available next month from NEC/Mitsubishi Electronics, aims to address those issues. Its product, NaViSet Software, relies on a combination of new monitor hardware from NEC, coupled with software drivers and a series of management protocols called Display Data Channel/

Command Interface (DDC/CI). Think of the offering as a network-management program just for display adapters, so that programs can query a display across the enterprise network and control its various settings. Actually, DDC/CI,the interface behind NaViSet,has been around the video standards committees for several years. Its new twist is being able to send commands from a remote-computer system to control configuration rather than using the display software running on a locally attached PC.

DDC/CI enables two-way communication between the monitor and its video adapter. That is useful for several reasons. First, these days monitors do more than just display text; the best possible display configuration is mission-critical for applications including digital prepress, graphic arts and video production. Colors that don't match the printed page or are off because of an incorrect setting chew up time and require expensive corrections. Second, having monitor configuration under software control means that end-user software applications can set up the best possible display modes for their screens without having to reboot the PC to a known state. And, third, poorly configured monitors can cause unneeded eyestrain for users.

Currently, NaViSet runs on roughly a dozen different models out of the entire line of NEC/Mitsubishi monitors, although it does run on some of the newer models, including the MultiSync LCD 1880SX and some models of the Mitsubishi-Diamond displays. The free software works only with Windows 2000 and XP versions. That is because earlier versions of Windows are not compatible with the DDC/CI-interface specifications.

For additional details, including a table describing the various display adapter chipsets and which of their numerous display modes are supported by the NaViSet software, go to www.necmitsubishi.com/naviset.