The Auckland Museum, one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist attractions, has mondernised its entrance by implementing a 4×4 videowall comprising 16x 40in Samsung 400UX-3 LCD monitors with content driven by Matrox M9188 PCI Express x16 octal-monitor graphics cards.
The museum, which is one of the country’s finest heritage buildings, outsourced the project to Auckland-based Wallflower Advanced Digital Signage to promote current and upcoming exhibitions and galleries to some half-million visitors annually.
The required display solution had to be large enough to captivate audiences in the high-traffic area and the museum’s staff readily acknowledged that it should serve as an ideal, all-purpose electronic canvas to meet their digital display needs.
Having used Matrox multi-display graphics card and external multi-display adapter solutions for a variety of videowall installations in the past, Wallflower was interested in using Matrox M9188 graphics cards for this particular videowall deployment. The M9188 PCIe x16 octal-monitor board is capable of supporting eight displays and can also be combined with a second M9188 card to drive even more screens from a single PC running under Microsoft Windows 7 XDDM mode. Wallflower leveraged this multi-display technology, incorporating two M9188 boards to drive all sixteen at resolutions of 1920X1080 per display. The M-Series cards were easy to install and configure, while crucially providing a solid multi-monitor platform.
Wallflower also integrated its proprietary Wallflower Network content management software to drive the screens. The software allows system operators to intuitively manage their in-house designed multimedia, including information playlists to be run at specific times and dates. More importantly, video sync was achieved via the Wallflower software—without any DirectX support—so high-resolution content can be displayed across all monitors at a total resolution of 7680×4320.
The state-of-the-art, 12×7 foot video wall now serves as the official welcome banner in the museum’s main entrance, instantly engaging, informing, and even entertaining visitors with crisp, clear, and dynamic content. The staff has embraced the easy-to-use digital signage solution while positively noting the tremendous stopping power it has over passers-by.
“There’s no better way for visitors to begin a museum tour than to be wowed by our video wall immediately upon entry,” said Margi Mellsop, Marketing Manager, Auckland Museum. “This stunning visual platform gives us the proper communication channel to uniquely bring the past to the present, while enhancing our visitors’ overall museum experience for years to come.”
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