Laguna Beach Videowall

Over the last 10 years, video walls have become standard in many commercial spaces. After seeing a video wall in a bar, one Laguna Beach, California, beach-front homeowner took things to the next level by requesting a replica of the display in his family’s home theater. Matt Kindle, President of local technology integration firm eHome Lifestyle Inc., accepted the challenge without hesitation and began designing the 138-inch NEC LED video wall surrounded by 10 Sunfire speakers and subwoofers.

The homeowner wanted a replica of a video wall he saw in a bar in his own home theater, complete with a state-of-the-art sound system and the flexibility to control how the display's brightness, content, and more with the touch of a button.

This was the first time that Kindle had attempted to do anything like this. After receiving and accepting the challenge, he immediately started researching how to build the display. He had already decided that he would use Sunfire for the home theater, whether the speakers were in-wall or exposed, so the primary goal was to find a display with the very thinnest bezel possible. He eventually came across 46-inch NEC LED displays with a bezel roughly 4MM thick.

To build the full-featured video wall, Kindle and his team installed nine of the displays to create an extraordinary visual solution. Then, he built an extensive A/V system around it, including home control by ELAN.

On the 3’x 3’ LED display, homeowners can watch one program with all nine screens displaying one large image, or can squeeze the image onto four of the displays, creating a 2x2, 96-inch image. The other five screens surrounding the compacted main display each have small DirecTV boxes attached to the back, so they can simultaneously play different channels around the compact main display.

To ensure that the theater not only looks great, but is also extremely user-friendly, Kindle built the system around the ELAN Entertainment and Control platform. Kindle pre-programmed the ELAN platform to create unique user settings within the display. With ELAN, one button can turn on the whole display or turn it into five different displays where the homeowners can easily select a source for the video and audio. Kindle also added 'daytime' and 'nighttime' buttons to automatically adjust the brightness of the video wall to reflect the specific time of day.

To provide impactful sound surrounding the video wall, Kindle installed enough speakers and subs to fill the room with full-bodied, crystal-clear audio. With five Sunfire XRS3 Ribbon Speakers along with a Sunfire TGA7401 400w x 7 amplifier, two Sunfire Subrosa subwoofers and two 2700w Sunfire Subwoofer amplifiers, viewers can feel the boom no matter what they are watching.

The whole-home control system also features Vantage lighting control; 12 Aprilaire thermostats; 12 zones of shade control; 17 zones of audio through an ELAN S1616 controller and Niles Audio indoor/outdoor speakers; a GE Concord security system connected to 16 Cameras and 4 Holovision keypads; Pentair Pool and Spa Control; and, of course, home theater controls.

No customer testimonial provided.