Dual-Purpose Brilliance: AVI Systems' Sony Crystal LED Video Wall

Introduction

Sony’s Crystal LED video wall technology serves dual purposes for AVI Systems: it showcases the global system integrator’s capabilities and provides a dynamic multi-view dashboard for its project staging area.

Challenge

AVI Systems needed immersive video wall technology flexible enough to highlight the system integrator’s project work and also provide a dashboard view of project status. The company required a solution that simplified and reduced installation and maintenance time, compared to other video wall options.

The Solution

AVI Systems installed a 50-cabinet Sony B-series Crystal LED video wall in the Velocity Logistics Center located within its Dallas manufacturing and logistics facility. This facility is focused on bulk rollouts of AV spaces ranging from smaller huddle areas up to larger conference rooms. The Velocity Logistics Center is also the logistics home of AVI Systems’ catalog of preconfigured workspace solutions. These certified designs are ideal for customers who need meeting room AV solutions built with speed, scale, and reliability – all at a fixed cost.

One segment of the Sony video wall’s display area highlights finished AVI Systems work. Another is planned to be a live multi-view dashboard of the status, KPIs and other business information related to Velocity projects, helping the Velocity center operate as a true Network Operations Center (NOC).

The video wall is the centerpiece of AVI Systems’ commissioning, testing and logistics floor, which is separated from the Velocity command center by a large glass window. Still, the Sony video wall’s clarity and resolution shine through.

“The technology’s multi-purpose versatility is perfect for showing off what we can do for our customers, and also helping our engineers visualize their day-to-day work,” said David Watkins, Velocity Logistics Center Manager for AVI Systems.

This flexibility also extends to the video wall’s installation. AVI Systems was able to deploy the wall in a five-by-ten configuration as a single wall rather than breaking it into two, but they also have the freedom to eventually reconfigure and move to two separate walls. “That level of functionality is huge for us,” he said.

“Every detail remains clear and always fully visible, which is wonderful,” Watkins said, “The 1.5-pixel pitch is fantastic even from about 20 feet away,” Watkins said. “Our salespeople can speak more effectively about what’s going on when giving a tour.”

Those tours, or “customer experience” walk-throughs, give AVI Systems an invaluable opportunity to show what they can do for customers, by showing what Crystal LED does for them.

“We have several other types of video walls in this space, but this is the first one people see, it’s the one they remember and it’s the one we get the most questions about,” Watkins said. “Customers are always impressed by the video wall, and they begin to visualize how it could benefit their own businesses — with our help, of course!”

Results

For a video wall with such intricate display characteristics, AVI Systems found the installation process fairly straightforward and simple. The video wall is designed for precise auto-calibration through a software-based camera alignment tool that adjusts color and positioning and can be performed using a Sony Alpha camera.

“After the wall was first set up, we had to fix a few basic issues,” he said. “Using our camera, we ran through a 30-minute process, and we were done. After that, we didn’t have to modify anything, and I didn’t have to get up there with a suction cup and move tiles around. It did everything on its own. It’s a night-and-day difference from other types of walls we’ve used where it takes a lot more effort to adjust and align everything. This wall essentially fixed itself.”

AVI Systems chose the Crystal LED technology mainly for its image consistency, even when using source content of varying formats and resolutions, and its brightness in varying lighting conditions.

“We actually keep it on half power because the lighting in this facility is good,” Watkins said. “But when the lights are off or dimmed during a customer demo, the brightness still makes every detail extremely clear. You can see everything but it’s never overbearing.”

Conclusion

The video wall highlights AVI Systems’ technology capabilities and the integrator’s long-term partnership with Sony.

“It gives us one more reason to speak about Sony technology, which we’ve used for a long time, especially when somebody mentions a competitor in the video wall space or the overall display category,” Watkins said. “Talking about the ease of use or the longevity of Sony products in front of this video wall makes that message land much differently. Then that focuses the conversation on what AVI Systems is capable of from a complexity perspective and what we can do for our customers.”