Christie MicroTiles Debut On Colbert Report

Millions of fans of The Colbert Report - the US's award-winning series on Comedy Central – received a visual treat on the 4th January season premiere, when Stephen Colbert introduced the redesign of his new Red, White & Blue set featuring Christie MicroTiles. The breakthrough modular display technology debuted in a bolder-than-HiDef-way for the Comedy Central’s most daring pundit. The redesigned stage features 41 MicroTiles arranged as three horizontal displays, in 1x4, 1x5 and 1x4 arrays underneath Colbert’s desk; and four angled 1x7 vertical columns along the backdrop. The tiles display high definition video and graphics created exclusively for the show.
This marks the first installation of Christie MicroTiles since its US launch on 11th November, 2009. "The best part about being the first show to use the Christie MicroTiles is that we are the first. We love being first," noted Meredith Bennett Co-Executive Producer.
Videofilm Systems, Inc. of Bridgeport, Connecticut collaborated with Emmy-Award winning design firm Jack Morton to specify and install the Christie MicroTiles for The Colbert Report. Dale Cihi, Engineering Designer at Videofilm recounted: "After Giselle Vogel, our Vice President and I saw the MicroTiles demo at InfoComm ‘09 we were taken by the technology and knew we had to include it on the set of The Colbert Report. Real-time colour correction and off-access viewing were the primary requirements we had to overcome and Christie MicroTiles definitely met the criteria. It’s the kind of product that sells itself once you see it. It definitely has the wow factor."
Jim Fenhagen, Senior Vice President of Design at Jack Morton and Chief Designer of The Colbert Report set comments on Christie MicroTiles’ unique combination of DLP with LED illumination: "We found that in updating the set, the brightness factor was crucial and we really wanted to include strips of video into the redesign. The set had to be amplified visually without being too distracting, while still maintaining its unique signature on air. Christie MicroTiles were perfect. They fit seamlessly into the existing space while providing the best colour matched graphics and video without any pixelation."
"More often, we are building ‘green‘ into our solutions. With Christie MicroTiles, our installs use less electricity and operate longer with lower cost of ownership. This is as close to 'set-it-and-forget-it' technology as you can get," Cihi concluded.
"Set design is a very competitive business and to stay on top you have to find creative and renewable ways to use the technology you have," Fenhagen continued. "This is what we love so much about MicroTiles. Its innovative media easily adapts for entertainment spaces. We can stack them the way we want and repurpose them later to create a totally new design. The ease in which the tiles went in was also very accommodating; we didn’t have to redo the existing columns."
Christie MicroTiles bring a new era to broadcast sets and their narrow profile can fit even the most space constrained studios. "The possibilities are endless in terms of what they can do. The added advantage is that HiDef cameras love MicroTiles. They achieve 115% NTSC broadcast standard and PAL colour gamut – no other display can do this," said Mitch Rosenberg, Director of Sales, Visual Environments Display Systems at Christie. "MicroTiles have an amazing visual impact and are fun to work with…it's as easy as…design, lock and play."
For more information visit: www.christiedigital.com
(BMcN/BMcC)