The video wall is becoming a common aspect of today’s digital era. They are prevalent in corporate lobbies capturing customers’ attention, delivering corporate messages and building a corporate brand image. In mission-critical control rooms they are used to support faster and more effective decision making and in executive boardrooms and high-end meeting rooms to increase collaboration and make meetings more productive.
Anywhere where visualisation reinforces specific messaging, the use of video walls has become increasingly important. Because they are so business critical today. Barco completely redesigned and optimised every component of the LCD video wall, resulting in Barco UniSee, a modular LCD video wall platform that not only takes a step forward in terms of image quality and viewing experience, but also in terms of installation, ease-of-servicing, and reliability.
Contrary to traditional LCD video wall solutions, Barco UniSee is a modular platform consisting of three modules, which together create the real value of the LCD video wall.
UniSee View refers to the LCD panel that Barco has optimised and enhanced the viewing experience for maximum visual engagement, thanks to a “barely noticeable inter-tile gap”. Precise alignment of the panels is achieved with the UniSee Mount, an in-house designed mounting structure leveraging gravity and a new concept in bezel-less video walls. The new mounting provides for landscape or portrait installations, facilitates maintenance and servicing through front panel accessibility, and also hosts critical components like power supply and input board, that have been taken out of the LCD panel making it lighter and easier to handle.
The third module, UniSee Connect, is the control manager which is the brain of the LCD video wall. UniSee Connect controls and manages the entire video wall as if it would be one single screen, allowing for easy set-up and configuration, without the need for a remote control. It also runs Barco’s Sense X calibration software ensuring unmatched uniformity.
Critically video walls need to be able to scale, which is what makes the Barco UniSee modular solution so unique, as you can add to and grow the screen size and capacity as and when needed. But that’s not all, as part of its new design the company has recreated the way in which it is assembled and serviced.
The bezel-less design and Barco’s unique NoGap technology provides viewers with an uninterrupted viewing experience with no visual information loss. In addition, thanks to the Sense X software that runs on the UniSee Connect, you are assured of a perfectly balanced image and unmatched inter- and intra-tile uniformity at all times as built-in sensors continuously measure colour and brightness – and make real-time adjustments when required. This way, the technology counters any shifts in brightness or colour that occur in video walls over time- something that becomes far more noticeable as the bezel becomes thinner.
On the hardware side, the new design has a typical backlight lifetime of 100,000 hours when run 24/7 making it last longer than its competitors, it is also fan-less and has both a remote or integrated redundant power supply.
From a visual quality and visual environment perspective, the Barco UniSee video wall delivers a typical brightness of 800 NIT, enough power to optimise the video wall’s ergonomics to any lighting conditions – including ambient daylight. With a haze level of only 44%, ambient lighting reflections are minimised – allowing for a wider variety of installations.
The walls now support 4K loop-through capability, which allows all video signals to be sent to the Barco UniSee display wall using just a single video cable connection from the controller. Notably, this allows you to cut down the cost of, and need for, extensive cabling to and from every individual panel.
With these new enhancements, Barco is providing a visual business tool unlike anything available today in the market. The innovation now inherent in the platform does not only touch on quality, but also management, maintenance and ease of use. Bringing the reality of LCD video walls that much closer to the business.
By Marius van Wyk, Operations and Technical Director at SkyGroup Communications
