El CÃculo, a television show on Madrid’s public TV channel in Spain has employed a MicroTiles videowall comprising 24 tiles mounted in a six by four format by Videoreport. The display acts as a backdrop to presenters and is 2.5 x 1.2m in size. Images are output from a Sony video mixer DVS-7000.
El Círculo is a morning chat show broadcast by the regional TV channel Telemadrid from Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 9:30 am. It is presented by Ely del Valle, and aired for the first time ten years ago. Every morning, with the aid of two guest journalists, presenter Del Valle conducts interviews with representative from the worlds of politics, culture, society and sports.
Until last summer the show was aired from the café at Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid from which it borrowed its name. The backdrop was a huge window giving onto the street. However, when the duration of the TV programme was extended (from half an hour to one hour) and new sections were included, the TV show moved to the regional TV channel’s studios in Ciudad de la Imagen, in Pozuelo.
“However, we wanted to keep the idea of the window on Madrid, which is why we needed to include a huge display behind the presenters. The idea was that the audience would still get the same feeling of the street behind us,” explained Federico Gaitán, head of Telemadrid’s newsroom.
Gaitán said other technologies were considered. “We studied some rear projection systems, but they didn’t give us the brightness we were looking for, and also traditional videowalls, but we were really not impressed. What attracted us about MicroTiles was the excellent resolution and the minimal seams between the tiles.
“Besides, as the TV channel was purchasing the equipment, and one never knows how long a programme will last, we were looking for a solution with other applications that could be reused in the future, if necessary, in other TV studios with different layouts and designs and arrangements. And this system proved to be the most suitable solution.
“While other rear projection systems required a lot of space on the TV set, the Christie modular system was the most suitable due to its small footprint, which adapted well to the size of our studio,” added Gaitán.
The videowall is mounted behind the desk of the TV presenters and has a large panel imitating a window. The modular display mainly shows live images of different scenes in Madrid. “It is as if we have the street behind us, like when we were broadcasting from El Círculo de Bellas Artes,” said Gaitán.