LumenAd, a Seville-based advertising company, recently acquired two Christie Crimson laser projectors to use in its projects with digital out-of-home (DOOH) media.

Under the name Big Brand (aimed at major brands that wish to reinforce their image by identifying with values like respect for the environment, quality and innovation), LumenAd now offers video projection for outdoor advertising as an alternative to conventional platforms (paper, vinyl, canvas and LED).

Alfonso Callejas, CEO at LumenAd, explains: “In addition to the size, image quality and versatility, the video projection ensures impeccable visualization in DOOH projects, and also affords other major benefits in terms of environmental sustainability and its non-aggressive integration in the urban landscape.”

The company uses the two Christie Crimson projectors in a DOOH installation on the facade of Galia Nervión, a well-known building located in the heart of Seville’s main shopping district.

The screen is strategically placed at the crossroads of two of the city’s main avenues, which is a high traffic area frequented by vehicles and pedestrians.

From a technical viewpoint, LumenAd says the installation is an international milestone given its complexity and novelty. There are three buildings involved: two of them host the projectors on their rooftops while the third (Galia Nervión) acts as a screen. The equipment is not visible and does not occupy the public space.

The result is a “full motion” screen covering 460 square meters (40 meters wide by 11.5 meters high) with a resolution of 3840 x 1080 pixels, which covers part of the building’s east and south façades. Together, the two Crimson projectors with WUXGA resolution (1920 x 1200) produce 50,000 lumens.

Besides the actual projector itself, one of the two “projector buildings” also houses the equipment for content playback and the monitoring and control systems, all of which are automated and remotely controlled. To synchronize the two screens, the video signal is relayed wirelessly to the second projector, producing one single screen split down the middle by 90 degrees at the corner of the building.

To protect the projectors outdoors, LumenAd designed a special casing that accounts for factors including humidity, ventilation and waterproofing. The throw distance of the two projectors to the screen is approximately 50 meters, and the distance between the projectors is 90 meters. The screen can be visualized from 10 to 300 meters.

Some of the brands which have already used the support are Telepizza, Motorola, Vodafone, McDonalds, and Beefeater.

The LumenAd CEO explained why they decided to opt for Christie Crimson 3DLP technology laser projectors: “I would say that the main reason is the lamp consumption. Calculator in hand, if you bear in mind that the installation is operating an average of five hours a day, 365 days a year, you would need 4.5 lamps (400 hours, without taking them to their limit). The Crimson’s 20,000 hours of operation, even reducing it by half, means a big saving on running costs, and if you multiply that by two, as is our case, then the savings are even greater.”

He added: “Apart from the issue of the lamps, we also looked at the requirements for power consumption and ventilation, which are less in the Crimson as compared with the Roadster; this was very important for us, considering that we are operating outdoors, inside our own self-designed casing, and it allows us to better control issues like humidity. I was also swayed by the precision of the electronics, the built-in Christie Twist, and the much more complete information on the projector like temperatures, and the preview screen.”

Go Seville’s LumenAd Goes for Christie Projectors for DOOH

Go Christie Crimson 3DLP

It was the deal that was supposed to set an example.

Now that example is a “how-not-to” instead of a how-to.

LinkNYC is a first-of-its-kind communications network replacing New York City pay phones with state-of-the-art kiosks called “Links.” Each Link provides free services like high-speed Wi-Fi, phone calls, a tablet for maps and city services, and device charging.

Link’s services are free to the public and come at no cost to taxpayers because it funds the deployment and maintenance by selling advertising on the kiosks' 55" displays. The company behind LinkNYC is CityBridge (under a franchise agreement granted by the City of New York).

But CityBridge stopped installing Links in the autumn of 2018, says New York City’s new commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

That left New York City with just 1800 Link kiosks, not the 4500 originally projected to be installed by mid-2019. And many of the Links that haven’t been installed were meant to service low-income neighborhoods, where residents are in greater need of free internet access.

And NYC is angry. “New Yorkers who'd benefit most from this service are not getting it, including thousands of people who live in districts that many of you represent, because CityBridge is delinquent,” the department’s commissioner, Jessica Tisch, told the City Council.

LinkNYC was also supposed to share ad revenue (an expected half a billion US dollars for New York City).

Uh, that didn’t exactly happen either.

“CityBridge owes the City tens of millions of dollars, going back to [fiscal year] 19,” Tisch testified to City Council. “All of this is against the backdrop of millions of dollars in advertising revenue that CityBridge has reported they received over the same time period.”

It’s all the worse because CityBridge is a group of companies that includes Intersection, Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes. Even Google is an investor (via Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs).

Link has supposedly invested $250 million to build out the kiosk network and provided more than $225 million in free wireless data to New Yorkers and its visitors.

In 2018, New York City had to agree to give the consortium more time to build out the network and share revenue with the city. In return, CityBridge promised it would be “on sound financial footing and fully capable of performing all remaining obligations under the agreement.”

But for the past year CityBridge has been trying to amend its agreement with City Hall-- again.

"CityBridge is working with the City of New York on a plan to address the financial viability of LinkNYC,” a CityBridge spokesperson said in a statement.

That means no money until a new agreement is negotiated or the existing one is enforced legally.

In fairness to CityBridge, there were some unexpected problem in setting up this smart city service. Soon after the kiosks began appearing on city sidewalks, in 2016, the city administration requested to unplug internet access-- in response to the volume of pornography being viewed on city sidewalks. And the large advertising screens have been repeatedly vandalized while some critics questioned the privacy issues around the data collected from passersby.

It seems the dream of city administrators for a smart city may be require smarter, more responsible citizens (and tourists).

Yet the public kiosk business has years of experience dealing with a wide range of citizen abuse and CityBridge should have been aware of this.

Maybe that’s why deputy commissioner Tisch says NYC would consider suing to enforce its contract with the firm.

"Our patience," she was quoted as saying, "is up."

Go LinkNYC: Smart City Signage Gone Wrong

At the start of the currently paused Bundesliga season 2019/2020, Vestel has equipped the stadium of the first division soccer team VfL Wolfsburg with around 400 professional displays.

The modern displays were installed in the VIP areas and lounges of the Volkswagen Arena in order to offer guests more comfort.

This includes a special solution for signal distribution to reduce the delay when watching the live games.

In the lounge and VIP area of the VfL Volkswagen Arena, mainly 49 ″ displays from Vestel, but also some 55, 65 and 75 inch models were installed (Photo: Vestel)

Vestel equipped the VIP areas of the Volkswagen Arena predominantly with the display model PD49U with a screen size of 49″. The aim was to offer the VIP guests the convenience of being able to follow the football game, retrospectives and press conferences from all tables and seats with only a minimal delay. Larger display sizes such as 55″, 65″ and 75″ are also used in special lounges.

The displays score particularly well in conjunction with a solution for signal distribution developed by system integrator GHMedia: The signal is processed into a LAN multicast stream and sent to the entire stadium in a dedicated, separately switched media network using a glass fiber ring.

The SoC does the conversion back to the picture on the display mainboard, so that no additional hardware is required. This solution not only offers a quick way to transmit the signal to all screens, but also ensures a quality gain compared to the old coaxial cables. After digitization into multicast packets, there is no loss of quality regardless of the cable length. "This type of signal distribution and the integrated central control of the devices is unique and the future for the entire multimedia industry," explains Dieter Rehberger, Managing Director of GHMedia GmbH.

Go Vestel Equips VfL Wolfsburg Stadium

Visix wins the Gold AVA Digital Award for digital excellence for its wayfinding design for Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino in New Mexico.

Their winning design includes interactive maps, directories, promotions, videos, image galleries, and more for guests of the resort.

The AVA Digital Awards is an international competition that recognizes excellence by creative professionals responsible for the planning, concept, direction, design and production of digital communication.

Work ranges from digital engagement campaigns to audio and video production to website development to social media interaction to mobile marketing. A full list of winners is available at https://avaawards.com/.

Visix’s creative services team has received more than 80 awards for their digital signage designs.

AVA Digital Awards is sponsored and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP).

Go Visix

Go AVA Digital Awards

As the original media technology provider at the Porsche Museum, the Stuttgart-based consulting and engineering firm macom was called in to manage the planning and design of the upgrade project (and take care of RFPs and construction supervision).

The Porsche Museum offers a comprehensive overview of Porsche brand know-how, past and present. More than 80 vehicles and countless small exhibits have been on display at the museum since 2007. After 7 years of operation, the decision was made to expand media technology, adding value to the final stages of the exhibition.

This has been achieved with new AV installations which let visitors immerse themselves interactively in the Porsche brand, adding value for more visitor enjoyment.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of the new installations is the Porsche Touchwall, a 12-meter wide video screen with a resolution of no less than 41 megapixels. The wall allows visitors to swipe through 3000+ photos, illustrations, posters, and advertising campaigns, some going back as far as 1931. The archive includes a comprehensive selection of images, including technical data on almost all road vehicles and racing cars that have proudly sported the Porsche logo. The installation is linked directly to a database which houses the unique Porsche archives. New content is automatically imported and displayed every day.

The touchwall works by using a tracking system (based on cameras and a touch overlay) to respond to visitors’ movements. The instant visitors walk past the touchwall, the sensors pick up their image and a virtual curtain comes up, giving access to the world of Porsche images. To navigate their way through the images, visitors use a touch frame. This offers various parallel options for swiping through content by making intuitive multi-touch hand movements. The setup has 20 seamless full HD LCDs, each measuring 55 inches. These are controlled by 5 graphics PCs using 3D real-time software that even allows for functions such as pictures sliding along the entire length of the touchwall.

The other highlight at the museum is an interactive sound installation called Porsche in the Mix. This installation allows visitors to browse through a touchscreen and pick a favorite from 7 possible car models. The choice ranges from a Porsche 356 to a Porsche 911 or Porsche 918, and the car they choose is then shown on the huge 9-square-meter LED display, which immediately comes to life with the distinctive sound of its engine. Each car model also comes with its own musical accompaniment.

Visitors can use the touchscreen to select up to 8 sounds from a car, ranging from indicators clicking to doors closing, and these can be integrated into the musical backing with the sound of the engine. All sound bites are based on original Porsche vehicle noises and they can also be illustrated on the LED video wall with movie clips and kinetic animations. The installation has 12 LED sound level indicators hovering in the air to the right and left of the video screen and these move up and down depending on the actual vehicle noise and the volume. Once they have finished, visitors can send their self-composed music track to themselves via email.

The concept behind the unique multimedia installation was developed by the customer experience agency Liganova GmbH from Stuttgart. The project was closely coordinated between macom, the agency, and Porsche to ensure that the challenging concept was realized not only within schedule but also within budget.

The installation also includes two “sound showers” along the side. The feature is called Start your Engine and it invites visitors to play the original engine starting noises of a Porsche RS Spyder, a Porsche Panamera, or a standard Porsche diesel tractor.

There is an “acceleration shower” for visitors to bask in the experience of shooting off in a Porsche 911 2.0 Coupé, a Porsche 935, or a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Inside the shower, there are original driving pedals and rev counters from the cars. Stepping on the gas produces the corresponding engine noise and an important aspect of this sound is the authenticity of the audio effect, so the software carefully matches individual sound levels to how the user revs on the pedal.

To get this right, the technical experts at the Porsche development center in Weissach were asked to record all of the original engine sounds at different driving speeds and rpm levels. Each sound bite is controlled by the software, which also does an amazing job emulating the real sound of engines for PC games.

Go AV Upgrade at Porsche Museum

Clear Channel Finland updates their Business Panorama digital network at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport with the installation of two 8.7sqm state-of-the-art Absen N4 LED screens to deliver advertising campaigns from some of the world’s best known brands.

Chosen by Clear Channel International as a trusted partner for some of the world’s biggest airports, Absen is  emerging as a product specialist in the airport vertical.

Completed in 2016, the installation marked another milestone in the relationship between Clear Channel and Absen, with the companies collaborating together for more than three years on projects and product innovations - such as the Absen N Series, developed with airport and retail environments in mind.

Features such as front installation and service, an ultra slim panel (less than 6cm), noiseless advanced monitoring, image quality, and the uniformity and consistency of the image all set the N4 apart and make it perfectly suited to the modern airport environment. Helsinki joins international airports in Italy (Rome, Venice), Australia (Sydney, Brisbane), New Zealand (Auckland), Norway (Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim) and tens of locations in the US which all now boast Absen solutions.

The professional relationship between Clear Channel Finland and the airport’s operator, Finavia, has been strong for the past 20 years. The two companies have worked closely together on several development projects. This relationship has paved the way for Clear Channel Finland to bring new ideas to the table which work not only for their customers, but also for Finavia’s – as well as travellers using Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport.

Clear Channel Finland Sales Director, Ville Bergman, says, “The idea was to increase digital formats in Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport, replacing the ageing 4x4 digital advertising video wall with new modern advertisement screens.”

Working closely with Finavia’s engineers, Clear Channel and Absen were able to determine the best possible solution, with size, weight and load all needing due consideration.

Two N4 displays, 4.32m w x 2.016m h, 8.71 sqm each, were used, and prime for fast and simple installation, the units were suspended from the ceiling on a tubular steel frame.

Go More on Absen N-Series

A quartet of Christie Q Series projectors enable a “talking” sculpture—the winning design at global engineering firm Arup’s contest that required AV as a dynamic element.

Heart of Arup by DaeWha Kang Design is the 2016 winner of the annual No.8@Arup competition— it’s a unique multimedia structure which incorporates Arup's digital social network stream in a creative audio-visual installation.

From their 90 offices in 38 countries, Arup’s 11,000 planners, designers, engineers and consultants deliver innovative projects across the world that are at the heart of many of the world's most prominent projects in the built environment and across industry.

Arup's "No.8@Arup" is an annual competition that shines a spotlight on innovative installations and sculptures from talented designers and architectural practices. The idea is a simple one: Arup encourages emerging architectural practices by providing an opportunity to showcase their creativity in Arup’s London office.

Designers were asked to consider the technological changes in the industry and-- by using digital optimisation, parametric modelling or coding—to design a stairway “to generate delight.”

17 practices entered the competition and seven were shortlisted.

"DaeWha Kang's installation Heart of Arup for this year's No8@Arup series transcends the physical constraints of the atrium and the brief. This sculpture not only evokes physical connections made possible by inserting a stair in the atrium, it's live-feed multichannel projections also reveal the minute by minute interpersonal connectedness of all Arup staff. The internet enabled communication of 13,000 Arup people, sharing their thoughts, expertise and insight for the benefit of our clients via invisible social media digital networks, may very well be the beating heart of Arup," says Nigel Tonks, Buildings London Leader, Arup.

The sculpture now hangs within the atrium space of Arup's No.8 Fitzroy Street office in central London. Christie's Q-Series projectors project multiple social media posts from Arup's Yammer stream onto cable-suspended acrylic 'leaves' of the sculpture. This concept takes the digital thoughts, expertise and insights of Arup employees from the virtual world and brings them into a visible reality.

The installation can be seen from an array of public spaces and working areas within the building, and it reflects the many daily interactions taking place between the company's offices around the world in an engaging and accessible format.

Christie's Q Series projectors tackle the atrium's challenging environment-- a light, spacious and airy space. Calling it "the industry's highest quality dual-lamp 1DLP projection solution," Christie says the Q Series combines the “versatility, affordability and performance” ideals for this application. The ultra-quiet operation, low profile design and reliability also ensure the focus remains solely on the installation's appealing aesthetic.

"We loved everything about this project. From the way the winning idea incorporated AV to make a 'talking sculpture' to the collaboration between so many parties involved in design and installation. In fact, the whole way this project developed was a great example of that and a rewarding process. The Heart of Arup gave us the challenge of projecting onto hanging pieces of acrylic in a central well flooded with daylight so we needed projection that was very bright, with good image quality that would run continuously for extended periods of time." Says James Belso, Senior Sales Manager, Christie, UK & Nordics.

The design further encourages employees to engage via the company's Yammer platform, and this interactive audio-visual element captured the imagination during the judging phase for the competition. The dynamic sculpture was delivered by a multidisciplinary team at Arup, led by Laura Sims, with materials and additional expertise from Base Structures, MEC, Aalco and White Light.

It will now remain in situ over the coming months, and it has already become a major talking point among staff and visitors alike. The installation has been designed with the potential to be incorporated into a more permanent feature stair within the atrium, envisioning a fully integrated digital and physical space,

Go Christie and The Heart of Arup

Go DaeWha Kang

Go No.8@Arup

BrightSign and Mood Media undertake the first roll-out of digital menu boards in Costa Coffee with an installation in more than 50 stores in Dubai. Costa Coffee is one of the top two coffeehouse chains globally and these stores operate under franchise by Emirates Leisure Retail.

Mood Media is installing digital menu boards driven by BrightSign players in Costa Coffees across the UAE. Each board consists of three 49” horizontal screens driven by BrightSign XD232 players supplied by Digital Communications LLC, the BrightSign distributor in Dubai.

[Photo caption: BrightSign players are driving digital menu boards in over 50 Costa Coffee stores installed by Mood Media in Dubai.]

The central screen features dynamic video content provided by Costa Coffee and/ or created by Mood GCC locally in Dubai. The screens to either side offer up to date menus and pricing, but can now also feature dynamic content such as moving images. Content is managed by Mood Media GCC and hosted using the BrightSign Network Enterprise Edition

Emirates Leisure Retail selected Mood Media to provide the menu boards after a detailed trial phase. Mood Media already manages the audio experience in its Costa Coffee stores, providing background music.

Shemaine Jones, Head of Marketing, Emirates Leisure Retail says, “We are always looking for ways to improve the customer experience. We spent six months evaluating digital menu board formats and content offline to create a formula that fully reflects our brand values and the store context. Only then did we move ahead with a pilot.”

The new digital menu boards were approved not only by Emirates Leisure Retail management locally but also by global Costa Coffee brand management in London before being piloted in a local store. The pilot was successful and an immediate decision was taken to roll digital menu boards across Costa Coffee stores in The UAE. Digital menu boards are introduced as each store becomes due for refurbishment. Around half are complete at this point. Mood Media is now in talks to extend the boards to other Costa Coffee stores in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) territories.

The complete roll-out calls for hundreds of BrightSign XD232 players. The XD232 offers an advanced video decoding engine with superior scaling technology that is capable of decoding two 1080p60 videos simultaneously. It is network-enabled and equipped with Power over Ethernet (PoE+). The players are attached to the rear of each screen for convenience as well as neatness.

Go Mood Media UAE

Go BrightSign