The second winning entry with a hospitality focus at this year’s InstallAwards was the Striders Turf Clublounge project, which won the Best Hospitality Project Award.
Handed over to the client on 10 October 2015, the aim of the project was to create a modern, hospitality experience combining first-class dining, and sports entertainment, with the only venue in downtown San Diego permitted to host live horse race betting.
The client brief called for scalable AV distribution that could support an initial 30 HD sources from a central location transmitting to 150 HD screens from 29in in the bathrooms, and ranging from 32in to 64in throughout the venue. There are also two 84in displays at the entrance to the second floor and three customisable videowalls in 3×5, 3×3 and 2×5 configurations.
A key aspect of the solution was for staff to have full control of all sources and displays from anywhere in the venue as a central selling point of Striders is that customers are able to select their chosen content depending on where they are seated.
The AV system helped the venue achieve an atmosphere combining that of a club, sports bar, eatery and a racetrack with display and videowall positioning reflecting light from metallic ceilings, glass walls, and marble counters to contrast with the décor.
Divided into six separate AV zones over two levels, screens incorporate landscape and portrait orientation, double-sided screens on custom mounts, mosaic displays and interactive touchscreens.
“They wanted to take everything they’d done on previous projects and step it up to the next level, and that’s what we’ve helped them achieve,” said James Meredith, Enado/NetworkHD product manager at Wyrestorm.
The WyreStorm NetworkHD 200-series AV over IP system delivers AV content, CEC and RS-232 commands from any source over Cat5/6 to individual NetworkHD decoders behind every screen. The installation was further simplified with Cisco SG500 52-port PoE switches remotely powering NetworkHD encoders and decoders.
The scalability of the system doesn’t lock Striders into a standard matrix I/O but gives freedom to expand the system as they see fit.
Striders can display a variety of different multi-screen wall and individual screen configurations. Each pre-set configuration is stored in the NetworkHD controller and can be recalled instantly from anywhere in the venue using triggers in the Enado control system. All of which helped provide an individual sports entertainment and hospitality experience for each customer.
Both NetworkHD and Enado systems were selected to meet the client’s requirements. The H.264 compression offered the high quality low-bandwidth distribution and matrix switching the client needed as well as 1920×1200 @60Hz with source switching, CEC to all screens, two-way RS-232 and 4×4 videowall over LAN also helped provide the customer/staff experience the client was looking for.
Plug and play and Bonjour auto-discovery means the client can add more sources and more screens by adding more encoders to the rack and running cable to decoders behind the new screens. As units are PoE powered, installation is further simplified, reducing client costs.
The template-driven web-based WYSIWYG Enado interface made controlling such a large number of sources and displays easy for Striders staff. Distilling the control of an entire system to essentially two buttons on a single iPad went beyond the expectations of the client.
“This is the first recognition we’ve had of a project in the pro AV market, so we’re thrilled to win this award,” concluded Meredith.
