Projects: 700-Plus Wide Band Of LCDs At Orlando’s Airport

June 22, 2017 by Dave Haynes

One of the InfoComm Big Canvas sessions I put together last week in Orlando took an in-depth look at the massive video wall steadily being put in place at Orlando’s primary airport.

We had Seattle’s Synect, which did the content, RP Visuals, which did the mount structure, and LG, which won the deal for 700 displays, all talking about the project, which should wrap this phase in early 2018.

There are some 700 screens going in, set up in one very wide 1 by 700 configuration. The horizontal bands are broken up only by things like major passageways, and the bands are all set up behind the airport’s check-in counters. In all, the width is 1,560 linear feet of 55-inch super-narrow bezel LG displays.

As of last week, 446 of the 700 screens were in. They are all on swinging hinges designed by RP to allow servicing and maintain the tight seams between the panels.

The content serves a few purposes. Developed by Synect (whose clients also include Microsoft and the awesome nothing-but-LCD walls in its retail stores), the creative was all designed back at the shop and tested on screens there. It’s a blend of celebration of the city and culture, branding of the airport, and functionality for the airlines during check-in times.

‘This is the first time an airport can really communicate its own brand,” Synect CEO Yahav Ran told the audience.

The company created custom animations and distinct style guide for the creative that runs when counters are not active for an airline. The Software – YCD’s – allows the airport to assign segments of the LCD band to different airlines, who may need extra counters at peak period while other smaller airlines may not even have flights that day. The airline check-in zones are branded in the airline colors, with shifting logos and motion content.

The system is all running on hardware built, imaged and staged by Seneca, which supplies the PC hardware behind a lot of big video walls in the U.S.

It’s one of those things far better seen than read about.

The airport is in Phase 1, and Ran says there are plans to extend the look and feel of the creative deeper into the terminal, pre and post-security. The company is also starting to test full motion video creative in collaboration with airlines,  ultimately getting to 40K video.

It’s a very impressive project, and something I think other airports will see and want to emulate if their physical set-up allows.