PPDS ’19K’ Wall at Red Bull Impresses
Back in the early part of the year, we spotted that Philips Professional Display Systems (PPDS) had shown an 8K direct view LED display at the annual A/V event, ISE in Barcelona. PPDS is a company owned by TPV, by far the biggest maker of computer monitors in the world and the licensee of the Philips brand in a number of display applications. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to tell us more at that time. So, we jumped on the opportunity to talk to them after we saw that they had built a huge and very impressive LED wall system in the UK for Red Bull’s F1 team, Red Bull Racing and Red Bull Technology.
Although not technically ‘8K’ in the sense of the ITU definition, we were interested in the project as it reflects the trend we are seeing around the world that consumers are wanting more and more immersive experiences when they go to an event. Once they have experienced that kind of immersion, they want to bring it home.
The Display is Very Wide
We connected with Tim de Ruiter, who is Global Business Development & Partnerships at the firm and he gave us more background on the project which includes a direct view LED-based video wall with 19240 x 1144 resolution based on a 2.4mm pitch. The wall is in the MK-7 venue in the headquarters at the Red Bull Racing Technology Campus. The wall is 46.25m x 2.75m (152 ft x 9 ft) and curved.
The wall was officially unveiled by Christian Horner, Team Principal and CEO at Oracle Red Bull Racing, among the guest speakers on September 2024, but the idea for the project, de Ruiter told us, started as long ago as early 2022 when PPDS talked about an existing LCD-based video wall that was past its best. PPDS has a multi-level partnership with Red Bull and likes to work that way with clients, developing their facilities over time. There was a thought that the wall might be installed in 2023, but the facility is very busy, so in the end, the 8 week summer F1 break turned out to be the ideal time.
The Timetable was Tight
The timetable turned out to be quite tight once the formal go-ahead was given (or should that be ‘the flag was dropped’?). There were a number of significant challenges. As anyone knows that has built one of these walls, they can use a fair amount of power. The MK-7 one needed more than was available in the building, but fortunately there was spare capacity on the Campus. In addition, the cabinets are quite heavy and the ceiling and walls of the venue were already being used for hanging cars etc. so the wall had to be supported by special mounts on the floor.
PPDS worked with Vogels of the Netherlands on custom hardware to mount the cabinets. De Ruiter told us that the team of Vogels, PPDS and Ruitech Solutions (also of the Netherlands) that was the integrator, collaborated closely to position the mounts. Special laser equipment from MK Survey and Leica helped to precisely position the bolt holes and the mounts went in straight away. The LED cabinets (517 in total) took around two weeks to place with the cabling and LED tile fitting taking a further three. 4Km (2.5 miles) of cables were used in the installation! Final ‘tweaking’ and calibration went on until the day before the launch. Installing in the summer, with all partners having staff missing on vacation at times. added to the challenge.
Attention Paid to Image Quality
There were issues to be overcome to get the image quality completely uniform and to fit the space needed there were a mixture of cabinet sizes which added to the complexity. The panel is very wide, but the controller (from Novastar) was set up to allow the use of three sections (the centre and two sides) as mirrored 16:9 aspect ratio screens with mirroring. That enables standard and live video content to be easily displayed as well as more sophisticated content that uses the whole of the screen. De Ruiter told us that he really enjoyed explaining to the Red Bull content team the possibilities given by the very flexible format.
The static informational parts of the most common display configuration use a CMS to provide the content and this needed some modification to fit the display format. Plenty of storage was also installed to cover the high pixel count. We calculated the aspect ratio to be 151:9! The venue is also used by other organisations, so content needed to be as simple as possible to format and control.
Environmental Impact
We asked about the impact of the power consumption as F1 is keen to minimize its environmental impact and De Ruiter acknowledged that this had been a consideration. In the end, an offset approach was used and, as he put it “We bought a lot of trees”. The power demands are such that the wall has to be intelligently managed when powering up, which it does in stages, to avoid high peak currents. The 7000 Series LED system from PPDS has a dynamic power management facility which was very helpful.
The new display has been well received and all involved are very optimistic about the impact it will have on visitors and users of the venue. As Nick Kenton, Director of Hospitality and Events, Oracle Red Bull Racing said:
Working with PPDS, our visions for this stunning venue have been fulfilled, with the new Philips LED wall able to deliver the cutting-edge technology and performance befitting of our brand with the capabilities we craved.
