Polycom’s demonstration operations engineer (EMEA), Ray Kemble, explained that a driving factor in the upgrade had been the need to maximise the ability to show the new HD standard with a high-brightness/high-contrast media display.
“We have enjoyed a long-term relationship with Carillion, and although we considered other solutions, the proposal they came up with better suited our requirements.”
A 3D animated fly-through as part of their presentation, which demonstrated the high impact and visual acuity of Supernova, helped seal the deal.
“We took the Supernova Infinity on Carillion’s recommendation and have received nothing but positive feedback from our visitors, stating how impressed they are,” confirms Ray Kemble.
When the contract was given the green light back in August last year, Carillion sales director David Ashley and senior sales consultant Matt Williams were fully aware that they would be designing a facility that would be widely used.
They therefore set about designing a tailored environment far beyond the conventional presentation room, setting the massive 6m x 1.2m Supernova screens (offering three 16:9 aspect ratio displays) into a chic piano black acrylic ellipse to complement the Polycom logo and overall look-and-feel.
“We needed to move up to high definition, and at the same time create an environment with a real wow factor,” noted Ashley. “Because Polycom had always worked with three separate conventional displays, I thought why not do it with one Supernova?”
Carillion contacted Paradigm AV, dnp’s UK distributors, and established that, since the room admitted a specific, tailored light setup, Supernova was the only product that would meet the performance and size specification. “After carrying out testing at Paradigm we were extremely impressed,” they said.
As its name suggests, the modular construction of Supernova Infinity enables infinite large-scale displays to be created and offers a seamless viewing experience, soft-edge blending, full colour balance conservation and compatibility with standard projectors.
The award-winning system achieves its performance by incorporating an active high-contrast filter, enabling the screen to reflect the projected image while effectively absorbing other undesirable ambient light. The result is vivid, sharp pictures with up to seven times the contrast and double the brightness of conventional front projection screen images.
Carillion specified three ceiling-mounted Mitsubishi FL7000 3LCD native 1080p projectors, knowing that their silent operation would not interfere with the ceiling mic arrays. They also proposed a Dexon multi-screen graphics wall controller to handle soft-edge blending and processing and provide various screen configurations (either one single image, three independent 16:9 frames or a two-plus-one arrangement).
The Centaurus Room – which can extend with removable partitions to a 70-seat theatre – is a demonstration suite for Polycom’s own suite of new-generation products; in fact the facility needed to be completed in time for an important product launch.
While the projectors take conventional feeds from Blu-ray DVD, DVICO TVIX HD multimedia players and laptops, there are also three HD camera feeds from Polycom’s Eagle-Eye 720ps (with 60fps video capture).
Also in the equipment rack are Polycom SoundStructure C16 and C8 DSP’s for audio processing and mixing the Polycom HDX mic arrays in full stereo HD sound (with parameters that include feedback suppression, mic muting etc). Finally, the Polycom HDX 9004 HD room telepresence codec, with 1280 x 720 (720p) resolution, operates in conjunction with the cameras.
Carillion has incorporated flexibility into the design, with laptop plug-ins at the lectern and three floor boxes to allow for alternative lectern positions. The entire integration is under Crestron TPS5000 touch control, for which Carillion has developed a custom interface.
As for the dnp Supernova, Matt Williams states how impressed he was with the speed of transition from concept to installation. “Paradigm’s service and design package were fantastic – from the help given by sales manager Mick Perrone to the installation team arriving on site. It went straight in first time without any debugging or return visits necessary.”
Although Carillion has worked with Paradigm rear-projection screens in the past this has been their first experience with Supernova – and they couldn’t be more impressed.
Kemble extends this by emphasising the detail they have been able to achieve. “We staged a session on Healthcare and we were able to display diagnostics clearly on screen, in either one or three separate images, which clearly impressed the delegates.”
