Church LED Video Wall

Are Video Walls Advantageous in Smaller Churches?

by ChurchesVideo

We always seem to focus on the giant 60 foot wide by 20 foot high panoramic LED screen we installed a few years ago, but we have installed a lot more small LED video walls in small churches. There are several benefits that allow a video wall to rescue a congregation from bad projector applications.

Our latest example is a Full Gospel church in Scarborough that had a pair of Best Buy type portable meeting room projectors fighting to create images on the painted walls flanking the platform. We replaced the two projectors with a single LED video wall that is a modest 12 feet wide by 7 feet high (3.5m by 2m). Since the sanctuary seats less than 400 worshippers, the size is more than adequate, and produces a larger image than the projectors.

There were a few key desires and some problems to solve, and the LED video wall delivered:

  1. With 2 separate projectors, the congregation would be stuck looking left or right of the platform to see the lyrics, and losing focus on the platform message. By installing a single screen behind the worship team and pastor, everyone is focussed on the platform without distraction.
  2. The projectors suffered from the ambient room light, causing washed out images tainted by the wall’s paint color. The LED video wall is at the back of the platform, and there are two in-ceiling pot lights shining on the screen and 4 powerful stage key lights hitting the video wall from several angles. Yet, the image is clear and solid, showing no effects of the multiple light sources. If this were a projector screen, it would be nothing but an off-white rectangle with a badly faded projector image.
  3. Better livestream clarity, since the background is in the livestream camera shot. Volunteer AV operators are having an easier time since they don’t need to deal with video mixing, and lower thirds overlays to enable livestream viewers to see the other content. The LED screen looks great on camera. You may not have noticed, but the picture with this article is a screenshot off my laptop—not a direct photo!
  4. Improved visibility for those with less than optimal vision. Since the contrast and brightness of a LED video wall is so much higher, it is much easier to see.
  5. Better for fan-shaped sanctuaries. Our custom designed LED video walls have a 160 degree field of view so viewers seated at the sides of the sanctuary get a view just as good as those sitting directly in front. Projectors, due to their reflective nature, are unable to keep any kind of reasonable image for people sitting more than 30 degrees from the center.

We are working with another smaller church that will be ditching the suggestion of using a pair of 85” LED Smart TVs in favour of our LED video wall. The single LED wall has the same area as two 85” TVs, allowing for bolder, brighter images. And since the LED video wall is over 4 times brighter than a smart TV, it can easily push a strong image to the back of the long chapel.

While consumer grade TV’s are fairly inexpensive, they don’t last long when pushed to provide the light output that is required for churches. This leads to another problem—when one TV has a defect, both TVs need to be replaced since they won’t match. But with an LED video wall, if a defect or damage occurs, we only need to snap in a couple of small, inexpensive replacement “tiles”. This is one of the reasons that an LED video wall has a lifespan exceeding 10 years—no expensive bulbs to replace every few years, and no TV’s to replace when one of a matched set has a problem.

Take a look at your sanctuary. If you have windows, or hanging light fixtures, or floodlights covering the platform, I’ll bet your projector image looks bland. Contact us to find out what can be done with LED video wall technology in your worship space.

LED Church Video Wall

What Drives the Cost of an LED Video Wall?

by BusinessChurchesVideo

There are two main points that determine the cost of an LED video wall—resolution and size.  Both are highly dependent on the purpose and need, and are also separate from each other.  This is also where major mistakes can be made without considering these points.

First Step: Resolution

When you are driving around, look at digital signs in front of businesses.  Some look good and others look horrible.  Try to assess them from the same distance away to keep things in context.  The better looking screens have a higher pixel count, resulting in higher resolution. It doesn’t matter if it is text or images or live video, the resolution chosen must be driven by one factor—the distance to the first row of viewing seats.  

This pixel count is measured in millimetres as the distance between each pixel or single light emitting diode (LED).  Street billboards will often have a pitch of 8mm or looser (called “P8”), and look worse the closer you get inside the minimum viewing distance.

In a church or sports bar, if the first seating positions are around 30 feet from the display, a pitch of P2.5 to P3 would look incredibly good.  If the seating starts around 20 feet away, a P1.5 to P2 display would be needed.  As the pitch number gets smaller, the price gets larger due to the concentration of circuitry and LED pixels.

The First Common Mistake

Often you will hear that it is important to set a budget, but that is the second step because resolution is the most important starting parameter.  You measure the distance to the first row of seats away from the display at 20 feet and obtain a quote on a P2 display to properly suit the viewing distance.  If the price is not workable, hold off.  The idea of a lower price sounds better, but will not do the job.  Either move the seats back to increase the viewing distance, or arrange for a larger budget, but don’t compromise on resolution.

Next Step: Overall Size

If resolution is based on the closest seat, overall size is based on the furthest seat.  Since LED video walls can be built in a variety of shapes, most applications use a TV shaped rectangular display format with a width to height ratio of 16:9 (the standard for videos and home theater) or 16:10 (commercial presentation systems).  For sports bars, 16:9 makes sense if showing mostly televised sporting events.  However, for churches and conference presentations, you can form an LED video wall into any size and shape and create content to fit. 

 The price increases as the display gets larger, but here is where LED video displays are flexible—you can make the display larger later if the budget now does not permit for the perfect screen choice initially.  Just add a few cabinets to the side and a few to the bottom and the whole display is now larger.

LED Wall Build

A Third Step: Display Geometry

Depending on the purpose, a shape other than 16:9 rectangular is totally fine.  For example a sports bar might show a television broadcast, but having some extra display space allows the bar to create ads for specials that fit beside the televised image during the event. In a church application we installed a 60 foot wide screen that is shaped like a fat “T” that allows slides or camera feeds on the arms of the T and a backdrop image and text in the body of the T.  LED displays can also be curved.

Contact us if you want to explore the factors in your environment and your LED video wall options.

LED Church Video Wall

Why are LED Video Walls Replacing Projectors?  

by BusinessChurchesProjector

For many reasons, video projectors are now considered obsolete for church sanctuaries, large meetings rooms and entertainment venues.  We have suffered with the limitations of projectors for decades.  The only significant improvement was made a few years ago with the introduction of “laser projectors”.  However, lasers only solved one or two of the many problems.

The new alternative is the super bright, high contrast LED Pixel Display.  Made up of cabinets that are usually 500 x 500mm  (20” x 20”), cabinets are latched together to make a video screen of any shape or size. Don’t confuse this with mounting a grid of a dozen 65” TVs with a processor—the bezel lines ruin the whole objective. A true video wall is pure picture from corner to corner.

Let’s look at a the first two of many examples we will cover:

Reflective versus Emissive

LED is the only solution for a facility that has windows with natural daylight that would wash out a normal projection screen.  It is also far better in large meeting rooms where the room lights must stay on, or a stage application where there are bright stage lights. This is because a projector is a “reflective” device.  It pushes a picture onto a reflective surface, normally a true video screen.  A wall painted flat white is often the cheap replacement for a real screen, further dulling the picture.  A true screen has a “gain factor” that can help to refocus the reflection to the audience so it appears brighter by sacrificing viewing at the sides of the room.   But even with the best screen, a projector cannot produce black parts of an image because the wall colour is as black as the image can get, meaning that a flat white wall reflects any light in the room so black appears as some level of mid grey.

In contrast, LED walls are “emissive” since they actually emit light from their mounting position on the wall.  There is no reflection, instead the light flows directly from the screen to the viewer’s eyes.  When there is no image, the screen is nearly pitch black reflecting none of the light in the room, resulting in images that have the highest contrast. With 160 degrees of viewing angle, even people way off to the side of the display can see.

Contrast is the difference between black and bright white.  In order to get a projector to produce higher contrast, we need to first turn off the lights to make the room totally dark (not suitable for any room other than a theatre).  Then we need to buy a very high output projector and pump up the already overtaxed lamp to beyond maximum, shortening its already brief lifespan.

Another key issue is obstructions.  Any object between the projector and screen results in a shadow caused by the object or presenter, and the missing part of the image shows on the presenter.  Standing in front of an LED wall causes no impairment to the image.

LED Screen Church Setup

Lifespan

A projector is like a race car running at full power all the time.  Its brightness declines every minute it operates since the lamp wears quickly due to sheer punishment.  Claims of “1000 or 2000 hours” are wildly optimistic since a projector’s brightness fades every day it is used.  For true usability, the lamp should be replaced after 500 hours since it will already be noticeably dimmer.  After 2 lamp changes, the optics of the projector are getting burnt by heat and UV, and the projector should be replaced, or moved to a darker room for its remaining life.

An LED video wall emits light so it can run with considerably less stress, making the LED pixels degrade very slowly over the years. LED’s emit many times the amount of light of a projector, so we find in environments like sports bars and churches, reducing the brightness results in the lifespan extending to a rewarding level.  In a church, the lifespan of a video wall can exceed 12 years, more than triple the lifespan of a projector.  Compare the cost of 3 projectors and 9 lamp replacements along other service/maintenance issues to come close to a video wall, and projectors fall far behind.

More to come! Reach out to us if you want to discover if LED Video Wall technology is right for you.

retro-tv

But I just had cabling installed for Hi Def TV—why won’t it work?

by Frontpage ArticleInstallation

Tried to buy a TV that is not 4K UHD resolution? It is almost impossible now. The transition in TV and video displays to 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) is almost complete. And now the wiring in your home is no longer compatible. Here is why:

Those expensive HDMI cables have always been limited to (depending on the resolution) under 12 feet of cable length. Sure, you could push 720p and 1080i resolutions through a 50 foot HDMI and it would usually work. But 1080p (Blu Ray) is a different story. Depending on the quality of the cable, you might get up to 20 feet. But the new 4K TV format is 12 feet or less. That forces you to put the equipment close to the TV, and that usually never looks good.

If you recently had CAT6 cable installed, you were probably thinking of using an “extender” to allow you to feed a TV up to 300 feet away. Again, resolution is the deciding factor, since higher resolutions have higher “bitrates” meaning more data is required to produce the image. CAT6 data cable, most noted for its use in computer networks, can carry up to 10 Gbps (1000 million bits per second) up to 150 feet, which is fine for most 1080p Blu Ray video sources, but not for the new 4K video unless you shorten the distance to, say, 80 feet or less. Then extenders work if they are of high enough quality and are compatible with HDCP 2.2 copy protection, and all the terminations and connections are perfect.

In most cases, if your home has CAT6 cabling installed, you would believe that it can handle 4K TV, but note a couple of rules:
First, the CAT6 cable must be “shielded” not the most common “unshielded”. Second, this applies for “compressed” 4k video, where the amount of data is reduced to allow it to work over weaker cabling arrangements, by sacrificing a bit of the resolution . In other words, your 4K is not authentic 4K, if it is coming from a cable receiver.

Upgrading to CAT6A shielded cabling is about as good as you can get for up to 300 feet using copper wire technology. The new CAT7 cable will handle 40 Gbps, but only to about 80 feet. But again, if you think about what you want to watch, the limitations show up. 4K UHD with HDR (high dynamic range) and uncompressed (no sacrifice of video quality) uses 18 Gbps of data—well past what any CAT6A or below copper wire can handle. UHD or as some brands call it “SUHD”, can’t be used unless the player is within about 7—10 feet of the TV using an HDMI cable.

And now the industry is introducing 8K and 10K video, which means that anything above plain 4K UHD needs to be run on fiber optic cabling, which depending on the fiber type can run for an insane (for residential use) 10 kilometers.

So if you are planning on building or renovating a home and want to have the equipment hidden away, coax and CAT6 won’t cut it. Call us for help!

Hanging-by-a-prayer

Hanging By A Prayer…

by ChurchesFrontpage Article

There is a surprising amount of gear suspended overhead in commercial environments, especially churches. Speakers, projectors, lights, displays and other gear compete for space on the ceiling. But hanging anything from a ceiling over people is a tricky business due to variables like static load, shock load, support capacity, hardware, safety backups among others.

samsung-tv

Should you avoid Samsung TVs with Bell and Rogers?

by Frontpage ArticleInstallation

We have encountered many reports both online, and with customers who have had difficulty with Samsung TV’s when using Bell Fibe or Rogers Cable.

Rogers’ Issue:

In Rogers’ case, the screen goes black and delivers the message “This is a 4K UHD channel that requires a HDCP 2.2 compatible 4K TV for display.”  This occurred shortly after the Olympics ended when apparently Rogers pushed a firmware update to all its customers, breaking 4K.  Some users simply had to buy a higher grade HDMI cable to solve the problem.  But if you have a video distribution system like a matrix device, even if it can handle 4K UHD HDCP 2.2, the length and quality of cable comes into play.

Using EDID management in a 4K video matrix to tell the Rogers box that “I am a 4K UHD HDCP 2.2 TV display” did not encourage the Rogers box to deliver 4K content.  Outboard EDID compensators also did not remedy the problem.  The only solution seemed to be to locate the Rogers cable receiver within the 7 foot limit of the HDMI cable length so a direct HDMI to HDMI connection could be made.  For many homes IF there was a cable feed to all the rooms, this is clumsy but workable.  But for restaurants and bars that have multiple TV’s sharing the same Rogers box, 4K was going to be a significant problem.  Calls to Rogers’ technical support put the problem on Samsung.

Bell Fibe’s Issue:

We set up a test system using a new Samsung and a new Panasonic TV, with Bell Fibe 4K PVR (Arris VIP5662)  and Rogers 4K connected to both.  The latest firmware was present. In this test, the connections were direct HDMI to HDMI, under 7 feet of cable length. Rogers was stable (we will add our findings from using a twisted pair ling range extender) but after about a week, Bell began to deliver the H1001 error code.  Rebooting or following any of Bell’s solutions would not work. On occasions where we were able to get it to behave, we tested Bell’s 4K content and found it to have no bandwidth issues, so it is not an “insufficient HDMI cable”, or too long a cable length.

To isolate the problem, we swapped inputs on the TV, so the Bell used the input that Rogers was successfully using.  The problem occurred on the new input.  Effectively, we have ruled out the TV and HDMI cable as possible failure points, leaving the Bell receiver as the culprit.  Bell is sending a new 4K box.

But it gets interesting:

We removed the functioning wireless Bell TV Anywhere receiver from the Panasonic TV and connected it to the Samsung TV.  It failed to work.  We now have isolated the problem to two devices—the Samsung TV and the Bell Fibe receivers (both 4K and 1080p devices).  Connect back to the Panasonic and it works perfectly.  Others have the same issue with the Rogers/Samsung pairing.

Here is where we have a serious choice: is it Rogers’ and Bell’s problem or Samsung’s?  The choice gets pretty simple.  You have the options of either Rogers or Bell as providers, but you can purchase any one of dozens of different TVs.  You can press your luck and use whichever provider with a Samsung TV, but if it becomes problematic later, you have only one other provider, and likely no way to get things to work. While this was once a problem that affected large multi-room systems, now it can infect anyone with a single TV.

Calling tech support is pointless, since each company will blame the other.  To Rogers/Bell, the issue only affects one brand of TV out of many, so they consider it not their fault, using their success with all the other TV brands as proof.  Similarly, Samsung may have no problems with any cable company in the world except a couple in the barren, inconsequential population of Canada.

Unfortunately, the best solution is to avoid Samsung TVs, since there are infinitely more TVs than providers in the Canadian market.  Samsungs are some of the lowest priced TVs on the market, but not worth the aggravation that can appear well after the warranty expires.   While we design systems that are as cost effective as possible, we have always known that some products are inexpensive for a reason. We do not spec Samsung TVs when a Rogers or Bell service is involved, but will still use them on other video sources if they perform.

Here is a link with further details on dealing with he problems affecting Samsung TVs:  http://www.wyrestorm.com/news/wyrestorm-handles-samsung-firmware-update-incompatibility-with-hdbaset