LED provider Watchfire turned to Datapath’s VSN video wall controller to power a digital “halo ring” inside a new team store for Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros.
The Astros Team Store is on the site of the 41,000-capacity Minute Maid Park stadium in Texas, USA. The recent revamp saw it quadruple in size to nearly 750 sq m.
A centrepiece of the store, the double-sided, 360-degree LED ‘halo ring’ has an outer surface of 9,984 pixels wide x 624 pixels high and an inner surface of 9,152 x 624.
The Halo Ring requires four customised zones to display a variety of ever-changing and adaptable content.
Watchfire selected Datapath’s VSNMicro 600 wall controller and WallControl 10 management software.
The VSNMicro 600 is used to receive content from a Brightsign media player, which is then processed and distributed onto the inner and outer walls of the canvas.
With multiple sources required, Datapath used four of the six available PCI slots available on the VSNMicro 600, installing audio, video, graphics and capture card drivers. These included a scalable Image2K graphics card, used to deliver 4K at 60fps with two outputs to the Halo Ring’s surface. Two Datapath VisionSC-HD4 audio video capture cards were also included, providing eight HD inputs, with a single VisionSC-UHD2 input card adding two HDMI 2.0 capture channels with HDCP2.2 support at 4K/60fps.
Combining seamlessly with Wallboard’s digital signage CMS, the VSNMicro 600 has been able to achieve the Houston Astro store’s four-zone objectives. The Datapath team also provided training to Houston Astro’s AV/IT management team.
The four zones outlined in the project brief include:
- Zone 1 – Full Display Takeover
Using animations or digital signage still graphics to take over the full display.
- Zone 2 – Non-Gamedays / Special Events
Using two spaces each on the inner and out ring to display digital signage.
- Zone 3 – Non-Gamedays / Pre Game / Special Events
Using content zones and 16:9 video sources to display digital signage and TV channels.
- Zone 4 – Gameday Look
Using content zones and 16:9 video sources, as well as a quad box (up to four video sources within a 16x9 zone) look to display digital signage and TV channels to create an immersive in-game experience.