Really Going Public
Successful projects can be simply stunning. Roku was behind three major high profile public displays in Holland. And the implementations were awesome!

Drumming up a storm of interest, three Roku BrightSign interactive media players, supplied by the company’s Benelux reseller Visual Hardware Services, VHS, powered three sophisticated public displays at major exhibits in the Netherlands. They delivered synchronised still images, sound and video for two exhibits at the International Triennial festival in Apeldoorn, and also for an exhibition of photography and video art at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. The 100 day duration Triennial Apeldoorn showcased landscapes, gardens and culture, running up to September 28 last year. Sixty-three 0f Roku’s BrightSign units were involved, all supplied by VHS, for ‘Invisible Work’, a particular exhibit set up in the Nettenfabriek - a former fishing net factory in the centre of Apeldoorn. The gregarious project also incorporated a further 20 units of touch screen interactive displays in the former radio station venue in nearby Kootwijk. Sixty player floor projection Hecla, one of the major systems integrators in the Netherlands, installed the 63 BrightSign HD600 media players for the Nettenfabriek Invisible Work exhibit. Sixty of them served a wide angle XGA LCD projector for the topdown projection of a 600m2 aerial view of the Netherlands. And this enabled visitors to walk up and down on the floor projected photo and video mosaic to discover the rich variety of multiple Dutch landscapes. All 60 HD600 players synchronously ran together. One of the players acted as the master and simultaneously controlled the 59 others. The projected display cycled through ten different aerial views of the Netherlands and to complement the floor projected aerial display, three other HD600 players were used to simultaneously project video and images of the corresponding landscape on the walls. “There are several systems on the market, but none could do this job so perfectly as Roku’s HD600 - and within our initial budget estimate,” says Hecla Director Han Klein Kranenbarg. The looping and synchronised presentation ran continuously, operating daily from 10am until 10pm utilising a simple synchronisation script. Roku provided a basic synchronisation script which supported a single master and four slave BrightSign units. Hecla simply modified this to enable a single master BrightSign unit to control the 59 other units instead of just the more usual four. Utilising this customised script, placed on a flash memory card, along with the image and video content, the synchronised BrightSign HD600 units played back the ten scenes easily and continuously in a loop. Following the Triennial exhibition, this 63 unit BrightSign based system is being reused for smaller and single playback systems. Interactive information ‘A Wider View’, the second Triennial project was located in a massive concrete building that was formerly the home of Radio Kootwijk. Some 20 BrightSign units were installed by Brun, the exhibition’s design, construction and system integrator. Each display featured an Elo TouchSystems LCD panel with touch screen interactivity, driven by a BrightSign HD2000 digital signage controller. BrightSign HD2000 connects simply and easily to the Elo touch screens via its USB port, requiring no special drivers or software and, according to Brun System Engineer Maarten Bus, making for a “highly simple implementation”. As standard, the HD2000’s twin high speed USB ports support touch screens, speakers, mice, keyboards, trackballs and barcode scanners straight out of the box. Following the exhibition’s theme of centuries old cultural landscapes in Europe, the interactive displays showed a wide variety of landscapes, using a combination of still photography and video interviews featuring international landscape designers. The HD2000 digital signage controller can display images in BMP, JPEG and PNG formats, as well as MPEG1 and 2 HD videos at up to 1080i resolution, via component or HDMI outputs.

All round creativity in HD

In Amsterdam, some 80km west of the Triennial event, a further seven BrightSign HD2000 media players were in use at the Jewish Historical Museum, controlling a new exhibition of photographic and video arts from Israel. VHS supplied the equipment to Ted de Leeuw who was in charge of systems integration on site at the museum. Without involving any external AV specialists, the BrightSign units were readily synchronised together to run a 40 minute display as a 360O immersive video presentation. Featuring works by 16 artists from Israel, the screens displayed a broad range of still and moving images, sometimes complementing and at other times contrasting with one another. One player controlled the soundtrack whilst the other six players synchronously kept the video footage running, all controlled through the HD2000’s intuitive and customisable software. The Jewish Historical Museum, established 75 years ago, is located in the restored complex of synagogues at Jonas Daniël Meijerplein. It houses over 11,000 works of art, ceremonial items and historical objects associated with the religion, culture and history of the Jews in the Netherlands and its former colonies. Apart from documentary information, which forms the majority of its holdings, the Resource Centre also has over 43,000 books, brochures, documents, photos, audio and video material. The museum also publishes research into its collection, as in the catalogues on religious textiles and ceremonial objects, and the Charlotte Salomon gouaches.

www.roku.com/brightsign

Main Players

Roku develops products and software for digital media delivery including digital signage. Its BrightSign is said to set new standards for video quality, reliability, price, ease of use and interactivity for solid state digital media players. As well as th BrightSign HD2000 player, the Roku portfolio includes BrightSign HD600 which supports standard definition video and interactivity options. VHS, Visual Hardware Services, has been involved in the audio visual and event projection market throughout the Netherlands for many years. The company is an independent supplier of fully integrated control and data display systems, also carrying out the design and engineering of complete mixed media systems. Its systems can be installed on a temporary basis such as at exhibitions and congresses but its focus is primarily on permanent, fixed installations for national and international customers. VHS works closely with leading AV suppliers including Roku and also provides sales and distribution of the BrightSign range of media players throughout Benelux countries. Hecla Professional Audio & Video Systems sells and installs professional audio and video systems. These systems vary from LCD projection to huge LED screens, foreground to background music systems, smart boards, flat screens and interactive content management systems and more. The company is a leading rental, sales and turnkey installer, also providing maintenance for professional AV equipment. It is recognised in Holland for its innovation in the presentation market. Bruns is a museum, information centre and science centre organiser, also creating presentation models and blow-ups. It works with designers and customers on a design and build basis where its emphasis lies in adding specific AV knowledge to complement partner know-how.

www.roku.com
www.vhs-bv.nl
www.hecla.nl
www.bruns.nl

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