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The CQ900 from Interlaced Technology Ltd therefore came as something of a surprise. It is a real old-fashioned quad, the sort of thing we used to get quite excited about in the olden days (circa late 1980s) when the ability to display four images on a monitor screen at the same time was considered an advanced facility and rarely seen away from costly high-end installations.

ITL believes there is still a market for a basic quad switcher, and make no mistake, the CQ900 is very basic indeed.

Judging by the blanked out socket holes on the back panel, the case appears to have been seconded from other parts of the ITL model range. This is not necessarily a problem, though this means it is quite a bit larger than it needs to be: the printed circuit board and power supply probably take up less than a quarter of the available space inside the box.

The four BNC camera input sockets and two monitor outputs (also BNC) look a little lost on the back panel. There aren't any loop-through connections; the instruction manual helpfully suggests the use of T-Piece connectors if that facility is required.

The only other rear panel connections are a pair or multi-way connectors for alarm inputs and outputs and there is a miniature DIP-switch next to the camera input sockets for setting the video impedance.

The instructions somewhat misleadingly refer to a nine-pin D-Sub socket and controls for a network connection and optional remote control. (It even shows how to wire it up in the connection diagram.) But this particular facility was nowhere to be found on our sample. We were also a little confused by obtuse references to 'multiplexers', 'cameo screens', 'Security Keys' and RS485 networking protocols in the Glossary.

The Troubleshooting section suggests checking the unit's 'Alarm Log' if any of the keys does not respond. If the CQ900 does indeed have a facility to log alarm events it has been very well hidden.

There's really not much to see around the front and the snazzy two-tone grey cosmetics, presumably designed for a quite different control layout, look slightly incongruous.

On the left side of the panel there are two groups of four buttons, with LED illuminators, for camera selection and image freeze.

They also double up as controls for the menu-driven on-screen displays. On the right side is a widely spaced row of four buttons for Function, Monitor output and Setup.

The feature list makes sparse reading; it is a colour model with real time (i.e. non-jerky) display, there is a choice of ten screen layouts, individual images within the quad display can be frozen, there is a front panel video loss indication and twin sequential flicker-free sequencing.

Camera idents can be composed and it has a multi-lingual (seven languages) on-screen display. Remember this is just a quad switcher not a multiplexer, so there is no provision for a fast sequenced time-lapse video output.

Of course there is nothing to stop a VCR being connected to one of the monitor outputs, and it has a relay alarm facility that switches to the relevant camera channel so it could in theory be used to switch a time-lapse VCR to real time mode. But the instructions do not go into any detail on this matter.

However, in the end the VCR will only record what's on the screen at the time.

Pressing the Setup button brings up the menu display main screen. There are no security features as such but access to the menu is semi-protected against accidental or deliberate interference and the options are locked until the 'FCN' button is depressed for at least five seconds. Incidentally, on our sample the display lost sync for well over a second every time the menu was shown.

There are seven options on the menu. Item 1 covers camera title and position; each camera can be assigned an ident of up to 16 characters and these can be located in any one of the four corners of the picture on a single image display.

Item 2 is for the alarm feature with settings for the output condition and alarm duration. Time and date settings are handled by the third menu option and the layout of the various display screens is accessed from menu number four.

That is followed by switcher dwell times for each of the two monitor outputs (0 to 99 seconds) and the quad display can also be included in the sequences. The last two menus cover language selection (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German & Dutch) and lastly a system reset, to return the unit to its factory defaults.

The preliminaries (setting time and date, camera idents etc) only take a few minutes after which it is ready to go. The only front panel controls of any consequence are the four camera selector buttons.

Pressing any of them brings up a full screen display of the relevant camera channel, pressing it a second time puts the unit into sequence mode, stepping through each camera input in turn. To return to quad display, simply press one of the monitor buttons.

There's no explanation of what the picture freeze facility is for but in any case it's of limited use since it only works in quad display mode and not full screen. It is also possible to toggle the quad displays between mono and colour displays but again the instructions do not go into any detail as to why anyone should want to do such a thing.

Performance
The camera sequencer is indeed 'flicker free' but that's because the screen blanks out for a good half second when switching between cameras. It is very distracting and not the sort of thing you expect to see on a high end product these days.

The camera ident seems to be only tenuously locked to the picture and when each image appears, the ident flies in from the top or bottom of the screen, which again can get quite annoying after a while.

The good news, and there had to be some, is that the CQ900 is effectively transparent to video signals. We tried it with a range of colour and black and white cameras and electronically generated test patterns. In short, what goes in comes out with no discernible increase in noise or reduction in resolution (up to around 400 lines) nor the addition of any processing artefacts.

What the manufacturer says ...
The CQ900 is a new cost-effective configurable colour quad that combines standard quad functions with that of a four-channel configurable display. It is capable of eight different display formats. The unique CQ900 is aimed both at standard quad users who require high quality pictures, as well as specialist applications where a mixture of quadrants and vertical/horizontal splits are required.

With an update time of 50 fields per second (25 frames per second interlaced) the CQ900 offers the fastest possible refresh rate for comfortable and continuous viewing. The real time display is specifically designed not to 'picture shear', (which can be seen on some other quad systems), providing the best possible quality, even during fast panning.

The vertical and horizontal splits take the centre section of the camera picture to be displayed, therefore maintaining the correct picture aspect ratio without 'squish' effects. This also makes the unit practical for use in machine vision systems for production monitoring and comparisons applications.

The CQ900 offers standard alarm inputs and dry contact relay alarm output. An RS 485 interface for remote control is available as a No Cost option, at time of order from ITL. The remote can control up to 64 CQ900s with a maximum of eight remotes, and can of course be 'system' networked with the ITL Easi-Plex Plus multiplexers.

The protocols are available from ITL at no cost. The menus for the CQ900 are multilingual, for most common European languages. As with other ITL products, the unit is ready for use out of the box, with no programming required for standard applications. Simply pressing the monitor button selects the display format required. Plug in and walk away!