Envision Cinemas Bar & Grille
Just Add Power Ultra HD Over IP System Fluidly Solves Video Distribution Complexity at Envision Cinemas Bar & Grille
Client
Envision Cinemas
Where
Blue Ash, Ohio
Sector
Technology
Integrator
M. Alan Associates
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Background
Envision Cinemas Bar & Grille was designed to offer the ultimate movie-going experience that goes beyond the seven-auditorium theater. The owners envisioned a cinema that would entertain visitors the moment they walk into the door, offering them an upscale all-American food and bar hot spot. Beyond the great food, drinks, and movies, high-end, seamless technology became a priority for every inch of the theater.
Electronics systems contractor M. Alan Associates was brought in to bring the elite cinema’s vision to life. The owners were already familiar with the design and integration capabilities of the contractor from a previous residential installation and wanted to bring that that concept to the theater on a much larger scale. They wanted to step up the visual factor with displays and video sources. The theater boasted a restaurant and VIP room that offer the most state-of-the-art video and audio systems available.
Challenge
It’s not uncommon for large-scale commercial projects to change over the course of the install. In this case, as the cinema took shape, the owners didn’t think the number of displays they originally had planned wasn’t going to measure up to their vision of an impressive visual presentation, so they added even more displays midway through the installation. Between the restaurant, bar, and lobby 47 flatscreen displays, a projector setup, as well as 16 small displays at each of the restaurant booths were installed. In the VIP room, five displays were installed as well.
The facility need to be able to distribute and switch 12 video sources that included six DirecTV inputs, six inputs from the theater’s movie trailer entertainment system, and signage for the theater’s ShowTime system, to any of the displays or the projector system within the facility.
“We needed a video distribution solution that was scalable, without us having to completely re-engineer it every time the scope changed,” said Joe Baum, integrator at M. Alan Associates. “The original design certainly didn’t start with 47 displays. The challenge was selecting a distribution system that would allow for flexibility as the project scope continued to change without redoing the work that had been done.”
Solution
Because of the evolving scope of these type of projects, M. Alan Associates knew Just Add Power (J+P) Ultra HD Over IP products would offer the scalability needed for the Envision Cinemas Bar and Grille. The Ultra HD Over IP products lets integrators create any size of 4K or 1080p HDMI matrix using a 1Gb network and Cat-5e/6 cabling. A perfect solution for commercial installations, it offers any combination of inputs and outputs, and the system can be easily expanded to accommodate additional sources and screens in the future. Integrators just add another receiver for every additional screen and another transmitter for every additional source, making the system an economical system over large, fixed-format HDBaseT matrices. It’s also designed to work within centralized and decentralized designs, or a mixture of both. Fully PoE, the commercial-grade hardware comes backed by 3-year warranty. It can also be controlled from a variety of systems, meeting a variety of control requirements.
For the projector system, M. Alan Association also selected Just Add Power’s multi-image video tiling processor. The processor allows any screen with a J+P receiver to be tiled, and tiles up to four source devices on a single screen. With a variety of viewing modes, including quad view and picture in picture, it turns any display an eye-catching video wall attraction and presentation system.
Results
Just Add Power HD Over IP system has proven to be a robust, highly scalable solution that fit the advanced video distribution requirements of Envision Cinemas Bar and Grille. As a result, M. Alan Associates could just add onto the system as changes happened rather than having to purchase the exact size switcher that may not be adequate down the road.
“Most video distribution systems require you to know in advance how many screens you’re going to install,” said Baum. “With Just Add Power, you can be going into a project with 12 displays and two sources, for example, and six months later, that changes to 24 displays and half a dozen sources. The system allows that flexibility, and solves one of the greatest pain points for integrators — especially within commercial installations. The Ultra HD Over IP line up offers a solution that allows me to be nimble enough to deal with those kinds of changes without any sacrifice on quality of video or the vision.”
In addition, the system flawlessly interfaced with the cinema’s chosen RTI RTiPanel iPad control app, allowing employees to easily switch between any of the 12 sources and distribute the video to any display within the network. It also manages the video tiling processor capabilities, providing them with screen options for the projector setup that can be changed throughout the day. They can select up to four different sources to display simultaneously and other dynamic options.
“Just Add Power is super easy to deal with from every aspect — logistically, technically, and from a support standpoint,” said Baum. “It really made the installation smooth and simple at every step.”
