VuWall technology in the new flagship studio of Radio NRJ Zurich
Challenge
Radio NRJ opened a new studio at Ringier Press House in Zurich in 2017. It’s a place where guests can relax in a contemporary setting and watch their favorite presenters live in the new café-bar “The Studio”. To modernize Radio NRJ’s studio, they were seeking to add some visualization technology into the studio. They needed a multi-surface display solution that would work across multiple rooms, be able to support various configurations, inputs and resolutions and be centrally controlled with single system that was easy to use and easy to manage. The technical team at Radio NRJ began planning in 2015. To find the right solution, they travelled to leading audio-visual industry trade shows and that’s where they discovered VuWall, at ISE 2015.
Solution
Radio NRJ selected VuWall because of their expertise in multi-surface control and their ability to meet all their management needs. A VuScape video wall controller (VS-400M series with 32 outputs, 10x DVI and 4x HD-SDI inputs) is running at Radio NRJ in Zurich.
The VuScape controller is equipped with the VuWall2 PRO video wall management software and is connected to different video walls and individual monitors throughout the building, all of which have different resolutions and configurations:
Event monitoring video wall: Follows the attendance of NRJ’s events such as NRJ-Air – 40,000 visitors, NRJFashion Night – 7,000 visitors, NRJ-Stars For Free – 13,000 visitors, NRJ Live Sessions.
Several displays are used for branding.
A portrait monitor in the studio: info screen which hosts 5 presets that are triggered by the scheduling tool.
Café bar “The Studio”: 3×2 meter large LED wall.
News-editorial office: 3×2 video wall consisting of six 55″ monitors. This wall has 3 presets, each with a customized variety of information sources from the Topic Planning Tool (online statistics, scheduled items, status) and 2 television stations.
The entire control of the system and switching of the layouts on different surfaces is managed through a Crestron media controller. For more specific applications such as events and special occasions for which no preset is available, they use the VuWall client. On the input side at the VuScape controller, there are 6 television stations, an SDI matrix and with the TV team of “Blick”, there is a line available on which signals can be interchanged. This means that virtually any signal in the building can be presented in any way using the VuWall system.
One of the key features of VuWall’s solution for NRJ is it combines the functionality of a video wall controller and a matrix switcher, and it can display high-definition content such as browser windows (websites, social media, etc.) directly. However, the most outstanding feature to NRJ is the multi-surface display functionality, where multiple screens or displays with different configurations, content sources, and resolutions can be controlled across several rooms very easily, from one central location.
Results
Not only is VuScape running the displays in their Zurich location, but NRJ also deployed VuWall systems at their other sites in Bern and Basel. The super modern NRJ Flagship Studio, which is now open to the general public, is a significant example of the rejuvenation efforts of Ringier Press House. With this reopening, Ringier has secured the future of Zurich as a media capital.