Christie Enters BBC's Global Living Room

An iconic BBC Worldwide globe, which dominates the large ground floor atrium at the new Media Centre in London's White City, has been brought to life by Christie DS+655 high-definition projectors in a highly-challenging integration.
Meeting a design conceived by architects DEGW, five of the Christie dual-lamp, single chop DLP projectors were detailed by system integrators AVAT, who have spaced the projectors equally around a circular ceiling truss to deliver 360° rotating segmented and edge-blended images onto the eye-catching hemisphere.
Special custom brackets - which allow the projectors to be rebated off the back of the rig - have been fabricated by AVAT, thus enabling the image to be optimised over the required 2.7m throw distance, using the projectors' fixed, short-throw 0:8:1 lens.
Since there is a heavily-used walkway immediately above, on the first floor, Catenary wires have placed the structure under tension to provide image stability.
This was all part of the challenge presented to Vic Woodcraft's team by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, which manages a range of media businesses around the world. These include the BBC Worldwide Channels, BBC Worldwide Sales and Distribution, BBC Worldwide Content & Production, BBC Magazines, BBC Home Entertainment, BBC Worldwide Digital Media and BBC Global Brands.
Charlotte Wayne, Head of Corporate Projects for BBC Worldwide, said: "Our atrium area is a much used space, both for corporate hosting and as a "global living room". Our building has separate zones dedicated to the various territories we serve, including the Americas, India, Australia and China - the globe has been designed to promote awareness of all our businesses and we have created a dynamic space to support this."
The globe has already been integrated into some of the BBC hosting TV specials, such as Comic Relief and Children In Need and has featured in the BBC Watchdog programmes - while at Christmas custom snowflake content was created to coincide with the Corporation's Christmas Wonderland party.
But delivering this construction within the building's space constraints was not so easy. AVAT Managing Director Vic Woodcraft, said that while the DS+655 projectos were always his first choice for delivering the image, the geometrics in siting the 5m diameter hemisphere proved exacting.
Woodcraft has enjoyed a long relationship with Christie products extending back to the days when the company was called Electrohome. He said: "I chose the DS+655's because of their ease-of-use, their ability to function over a long duty cycle, their proven low cost of ownership - and also the aesthetics. They had to form part of the visual experience."
At the same time AVAT needed to consider other issues, such as the high ambient brightness in the atrium and the paint finish on the fibreglass globe.
"We did a shoot out with the client to ascertain whether we needed to add paint, but decided we didn't. Keeping it as a matt finish ensures that there is no degradation or 'bleeding' of image; it is entirely contained.
"At the same time we didn't want to give over-brightness." In this event, this fast-track design and build programme has been implemented within the design agency's budget."
The material is created and delivered from two third party media servers, which handle the processing and soft-edge blending, with the entire network operating under Creston master control via RS232, programmed by AVAT.
This ranges from promotional loops, created and stored in a time line on the separate media server, to live segment feeds and news relays - generally operating in the five separate segments. For special world events, such as the election of President Obama, this was beamed around the full 360° circumference of the globe.
The five-days a week (8am - 6pm) duty cycle is programmed into the Crestron's scheduler and image RPM can be adjusted.
The pod also includes four internal 26in widescreen LCD displays (mounted on the central support pole), local volume control and banquette seating for 15. When none of the on-air, off-line or graphics content is being beamed, the globe is 'washed' by a series of PAR 64 LED RGB spots.
The corporate rebranding exercise has been a triumph for the design team, which included main contractors, Overbury, designers/architects DEGW and project managers Savant International.
Summing up, Vic Woodcraft, said: "We have met DEGW's design brief and hopefully delivered the wow factor. Because the natural surface has the necessary gain for projection, there is no hotspotting - and it's a testament to the DS+655's that they can perform with such high clarity despite the high brightness."
(KMcA/BMcc)