Located in Coal Drops Yard, a new shopping and dining development next to King’s Cross station, Samsung KX is much more than just a shop.
Spread over 20,000sqft it is intended to ‘redefine the retail experience’, according to Samsung, offering guests the opportunity to be among the first in the world to try the manufacturer’s technologies and discover, through simulated environments such as smart homes and connected devices, how its innovations are set to impact our lives.
With that in mind, Samsung KX is home to a number of events, spaces and environments, hosting everything from yoga and music events to exhibitions, gaming events and skills-sharing workshops.
In order to enable such a wide and varied programme of events, an AV infrastructure that supports multiplicity and flexibility was a must.
Snelling Business Systems was appointed to implement the design and support the AV and IT infrastructure to enhance the visitor experience. At a glance, the vast AV and ICT integration delivered a converged technology deployment; including the world’s first 10-metre-wide vertically curved 1.5mm Samsung LED screen and Europe’s largest uncompressed 4K HDR10+ video over fibre deployment via ZeeVee Zyper4k SDVoE.
Charlie Sullivan, UK and Ireland Business Development Manager at ZeeVee, said: “The brief specified there could be no compromise on uncompressed, real-time video with zero quality loss – mission critical performance for Samsung KX. Snelling Business Systems has flawlessly delivered an impressive installation leveraging the whole set of ZeeVee Zyper4K ‘s rich features, flexibility to scale to any unique resolution, ultra-fast switching across a 10GB fibre network, and future-proofing to support the expansion of 100+ endpoints at any time in the future.”
A multitude of possibilities
The objective of the project is to showcase the full Samsung ecosystem – how multiple devices and services come together to deliver a complete and harmonised experience.
According to Younghee Lee, CMO of Samsung Electronics: “This flagship space will allow visitors to see, hear and experience all we have to offer.”
For example, film screenings are made possible with content played from a Pioneer UDP-LX800 Blu-Ray player. This content is distributed over the AVoIP system to the ScreenMax wall and/or other screens. A Trinnov cinema audio decoder provides multi-channel (surround) audio content from the Blu-Ray players, routed to the main loudspeakers (for centre/left/right channels) and to connection plates (for surround / rear channels) where temporary loudspeakers can be connected.
To support live music acts, two front-of-house floor boxes allow connectivity of an audio mixing desk for routing of instrument/vocal audio channels and monitors between the FoH position and the stage via a stage box. There is also connectivity in the floor boxes for a lighting control desk and LAN connections for digital connectivity into the Dante audio network.
When it comes to talks and lectures, two HDMI inputs at the Stage Box location allow video and audio from devices to connect into the ZeeVee CDN for display onto the ScreenMax wall and audio distribution to the loudspeakers around the ScreenMax.
Wireless microphones provide speech reinforcement to the ceiling loudspeakers, and three PTZ video cameras installed in the ceiling troughs on the West side capture full view of the stage to ZeeVee encoders.
The AV system utilises three central AMX Netlinx NX Control processors to initiate video and audio processing, routing and equipment control. The AMX processors also provide the interfaces between the AV system and the Martin Lighting production lighting system including façade lighting. A wired 10in touch panel in the Managers Office and mobile tablets provide a user interface to the control system. A networked remote PTZ controller is provided to control the PTZ cameras in the West side of the store.
Steve Royans, sales director at Snelling Business Systems, concludes: “Samsung envisioned the space as an inspiring hub for curated, on-brand experiences that bring Samsung’s latest technologies and services to life. Samsung KX is a place of discovery, where people can interact with cutting edge innovation and local community passions such as film screenings and live music performances, under one iconic roof through a roster of skills sharing events and workshops providing a breadth of experiences available to all.
“It’s an engineering masterpiece. The systems and infrastructure we have deployed is critical to support the envisaged visitor experience. Look around and you will see only high-end commercial installation audio equipment, uncompressed 4K content distribution, large format LED walls and more. Keeping in mind the design of the building and its iconic rooftop, our aim was to support the delivery of ‘London’s greatest retail experience’.
“Samsung KX will be a unique experience space in the UK and I’m confident Samsung has set a new benchmark in experiential brand building.”
