For Pro AV, scan converters have been basically too much trouble for mostly so-so results. That was even true in broadcast where they are an unavoidable necessity. Ensemble Designs #IC2313 put the company’s scaling expertise to use on the problem and hit the mark with broadcasters with the Mitto. Now this Infocomm, Mitto gets an AV rollout with three new converters purpose-built for us. Ensemble’s Robert Nunez walks me through it. The original Mitto listed at $5500–went all the way up to 3G with features for audio delay and scaling. Too much for most of our applications. So one of the new converters drops the 3G (it’s HD) and $1600. The second converter drops the audio handles and $3000. There’s also an AV-friendly converter at a higher ($5900) price point with fiber out. If you need fiber runs consider it because it could save you on other aspects of your design.

Ensemble also tackled the ease-of-use issues–significantly you can easily grab a portion of your computer screen to redisplay, Nunez says. So overall this is a way to simplify displaying everything from Skype to HD content on another (usually bigger) screen.

Here’s the webcast on the BrightEye Mitto Scan Converter which is a pretty straightforward introduction if you can’t get on the booth to see it. This will get you started and then to read about how this translates to the ProAV market here’s the Infocomm release.