>A couple of questions: >1) Is there a good, free or low cost Powerpoint Viewer for MAC OSX? >MS don't offer one and TonicPoint Viewer seems very minimal and unsuited >to being set up to automatically play a signage-type presentation.
Well, if you're willing to save out the ppt files as either pdf or jpg then you could use Preview which comes with OS X. Another option that comes to mind (assuming that you're using ppt on os x) is that you can save the presentation as a quicktime movie and then any number of things can view that on OS X. Pretty much as long as you're willing to do a little conversion, then you're in good shape on OS X. However, that being said, PPT as your graphics engine is always going to be fairly annoying and limiting, especially if you're going to go cross platform. That's a longer rant and I'll spare that conversation at the moment unless you're interested. I'll assume you have a good idea of what you're up against there and even though I'm a fan of hacking anything under the sun, that's a path of pain. >2) does anyone have experience streaming high definition VGA video from >PC to MAC? ...I'm interested in the hardware and software required. Do you need to stream in real-time or are you just doing playback of pre-recordered / pre-rendered video? The former is hard and I'd have some questions about what you're trying to do before figuring out a solution. If you're doing playback, why do you need a second computer? Don't you just need a single computer to do playback and either send video a great distance to a remote screen OR have the computer at the display for playback and suck the video content over the network from a file server (is that what you're imagining in your scenario above?) In any case, if you're wondering about lower cost solutions, take a look at the new Apple TV appliance - <http://www.apple.com/appletv/>. While it doesn't do full VGA, it is only $300 and will do up to 1280 x 720 at 24fps (other resolutions at up to 30 fps) which may get in the ballpark of what you need. Are the remote displays just doing dumb playback? Actually, let's make this a better discussion - would you be willing to step back and give the big picture view of what you're trying to do? It's easier to suggest general approaches to the whole problem rather than evaluating individual bits in isolation. -bw. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bruce Wyman, Director of New Technologies Denver Art Museum / 100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204 office: 720.913.0159 / fax: 720.913.0002 <bwyman at denverartmuseum.org>
