Barco enhances a Radio City Christmas tradition
On November 3, 2005, New York City’s Radio City Music Hall opened their yearly Christmas Spectacular, a traditional family show that includes music, song, spirit and the world-famous Radio City Rockettes. However, this year, there’s a new addition to the stage — the world’s largest flown HD resolution LED wall, with ILITE 10 LED tiles and engineering provided by Barco.
From a production standpoint, Barco’s ILITE 10 LED wall opens up worlds of creative possibilities for shows and events that will use the Radio City venue from this point forward. In the entertainment industry, producers and production designers are beginning to use walls such as this to create seamless “virtual scenery” to augment the “physical” scenery that is traditionally used, and this new LED wall places Radio City Music Hall at the forefront of the virtual scenery trend — in full high-definition clarity.
From an engineering standpoint, the statistics for the Radio City installation are as remarkable as the visuals. A total of 1,269 17”x17” ILITE 10 tiles were used, stretching 40’x70’ across the stage, and including 2.5 million LEDs. Based on Radio City’s precise space restrictions, the wall’s depth is only 12 inches, supported by a precision-engineered aluminum frame. The entire 45,518 lb. wall is perfectly counterbalanced — it can fly smoothly into position on stage, or glide back up into the fly tower. In terms of power, 1600 amps are required to drive the entire LED wall.
David Niles is Director/DP/Designer for New York City’s Colossalvision, and the primary video consultant for the Radio City LED project. “You have to remember that Radio City’s Christmas show is a tradition,” noted David. “They perform six shows a day for two months, and it packs the house. The audience returns year after year with certain expectations, and you have to be careful about introducing new ideas and new elements. With Barco’s HD wall, we’ve enhanced what is already a spectacular show, and truly merged the traditional with new technology.”
Once Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular wraps in January, Producers are already lining up to take advantage of this new video technology. Radio City Music Hall is a pioneering theater, with a rich history extending back over 80 years. With the installation of Barco’s LED wall, that pioneering tradition continues.
About Barco Media & Entertainment
Barco’s specialized visualization solutions targeted at the needs of the Media & Entertainment industries are used at high-profile venues and events. Barco counts names such as U2, Ferrari, Louis Vuitton, Madonna and Daimler Chrysler, Clearchannel Spectacolor, as well as installations for Merrill Lynch, Kinepolis, China Film Group, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Reliant Park Stadium (USA) and Miami Heat NBA amongst some of its key references.
About Barco
Barco, an international company with headquarters in Kortrijk, Belgium, provides visualization and display solutions for professional markets. Barco designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications and systems for visual inspection. Barco is active worldwide and has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco is quoted on Euronext Brussels and is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company.
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