Creating a Video Wall w/ Additional Hardware

End of Life LKV373A

  • The following guide requires extra hardware (Lenkeng LKV373A – sender only) to work. This hardware is not available anymore and will soon be EOL. Please do not buy the LKV373A V-4.0 It won’t work. If you are lucky and have found and purchased the LKV373A (Sender only), you can continue with this guide. If you cannot find this hardware anywhere on the internet, we strongly recommend using this workaround instead.
  • You can build a really affordable and impressive video wall setup using your Digital Signage Players.
  • You need to configure each of your screens manually. To do that for simple matrix-like video-walls, like 2×2 or 3×3, is really easy. For a more elaborate setup, you need to do the calculations. But you can create really great looking Video-Walls.

Required equipment

  • To create the setup, you will need the following equipment:
    • One Player for each screen that will be part of the Video-Wall.
    • One HDMI-to-IP- video streamer. We recommend the Lenkeng LKV373A (Sender only), which costs about $35 on eBay. Other devices will probably work as well. Check the required specifications for IP video streamers.
    • One network router with LAN and WAN ports. This is to prevent the multicast video stream from flooding the rest of your LAN.
    • An Ethernet network switch to connect all of the above. Any simple switch will do, but it should provide at least N+3 ports for an N-screen Video-Wall.
    • A “master” Player , playing back the content for the video-wall. This could also be any device with an HDMI output, e.g., a set-top box, sat receiver, DVD Player, or other media player.
  • Concerning the screens of the Video-Wall, we recommend using similar screens from the same vendor. Different brands of screens might have different brightness levels. Test the screens side-by-side before mounting them to see that their brightness levels can be adjusted.

Connecting everything together

  • Make sure that everything is unplugged from power.
    • Connect the router’s WAN port to your local network that provides Internet access.
    • Connect the router’s LAN port to the video wall’s network switch.
    • Connect all Players to the network switch.
    • Connect the IP streamer’s Ethernet port to the network switch.
    • Connect the IP streamer’s HDMI input to the HDMI output of the “master” Player (or any other HDMI device you might be using).
  • Plug the power into the router first and wait 2 minutes for it to boot. Then, power up the Ethernet switch, then the IP streamer, and the rest of the devices.

Making sure everything works (correctly)

  • After you have connected everything as above, you need to register the Players in your account, if you have not done so already.
  • Then we need to make sure that the screens do not do any overscan. 
  • Download this Test Card image (click and then select the “Download” icon from the top-right corner) and upload it to your Account:
Overscan Test Card
  • Please put it in a Layout and assign this Layout to all screens of the Video Wall. Then carefully check all corners of the screens for any overscan.
  • Here is what you should normally be seen in all 4 corners of each screen:
With Overscan
  • Overscan will interfere with Video-Wall alignments, so you need to remove it. 
  • Use the TV menu to adjust picture settings and change the option usually referenced as “P.SIZE”, “Aspect Ratio”, “Format”, or similar. 
  • These settings should have options like “16:9”, “4:3”, “Widescreen”, “Pixel Scan”, and so on. Cycle through the options to find the correct one that eliminates overscan.
Overscan Effect
  • Then, we need to make sure that the Players are configured with the proper orientation. If a screen in the Video-Wall is mounted vertically like a portrait or upside-down, you need to set this in the respective Monitor’s configuration in your account. Screens should then reconfigure and appear rotated after a few

Steps in your Account

Here are the steps you need to follow to configure a Video-Wall in your account.

Create 1 Streaming Video entry for each screen.

  • Go to the “Videos” section. Click “Add Video.”
  • In the pop-up that appears, select “Video Stream.”
  • In the video stream address field, you need to add the address of the multicast stream. For LKV373A, you would have to type “udp://239.255.42.42:5004” (without the quotes). For other IP streamers, use the proper multicast address and port. When done, click “Create”.
  • Type in a Name, e.g., “TV 1 Stream”.
  • Deactivate the “Buffering” option.
  • Activate the “Crop Video” toggle.
  • Fill out the cropping required for each screen to only display the required part of the feed. Initially, you can leave all 4 fields at 0% to test it out. Read the rest of the guide below for more details on this.
  • Click “Save.”
  • Repeat this Streaming Video creation process for each screen in your Video-Wall.

Create 1 Layout for each screen.

  • Go to the “Layouts” section, click “Add Layout.”
  • Type in a Name, e.g., “TV 1 Layout.”
  • If your screen is mounted as a portrait, make sure you click the “+” icon to add the 16:9 portrait layout and remove the 16:9 landscape layout.
  • Click on “Media.” In the pop-up that appears, select the respective stream you created previously, e.g., “TV 1 Stream”, select the “Fitting Option” as “Stretch,” and click “Ok.”
  • Resize the added Media in the layout editor to take up the whole area of the screen.
  • Click “Save.”
  • Repeat this Layout creation process for each screen in your Video-Wall.
  • Assign the Layouts to each Monitor as the Default Layout. Make sure you remove any scheduling temporarily, just for testing it out. Later, you can do scheduling if you want to.
  • Assign content to the “Master” Player using a Layout containing a Video. Make sure that the video has an audio track. This is important to avoid issues during testing.
  • Click the “Push to Players?” button.

TIP: The assigned media on the Master player does not have sound…
When using LKV, there is a small limitation. The input of the LKV should have sound; otherwise, the player will not be able to playback the stream. This is the default behavior of the LKV hardware.

If the assigned media on your Master player does not have sound, for example, an image, you must Mute ALL the slave players (from the Monitor settings in the Sound/Display Tab) to overcome the limitation of the LKV.

Sound Configuration

After that, you should have all the screens in the Video-Wall playing back the content you assigned to the “Master” Player.

Playback should be 100% completely synchronized. If it is not, then make sure you have the same settings on all screens. Some TV units have image processing for enhancing the picture. This induces a delay during playback. You should either disable that from all screens (recommended) or enable it on all TVs (only if they are the same models and size).