The Stratosphere Casino, Hotel & Tower, on Las Vegas Strip, has opened the William Hill Sports Book featuring a massive 105-foot curved LED videowall driven by Analog Way Ascender 48 seamless switchers integrated with a Picturall Pro media server.
Located in the heart of the casino, the William Hill Sports Book offers the country’s most expansive wagering menu. Game day action from all over the country is displayed on some of the highest-resolution screens found in any sports book, which are fed by approximately 39 sources.
In addition, two more large LED videowalls, driven by Ascender 32 seamless switchers, are featured in the adjacent Taphouse where guests sample craft beers in a true urban vibe.
“The William Hill Sports Book is the third largest in Las Vegas and one of the biggest we have done,” says Kevin Potts, Principal of Coherent Design in Las Vegas, which served as design consultants on the project. “The LED videowall was up and running in time for March Madness, and everyone is very, very happy with it.”
The 105 x 8-foot 1.87 mm pixel pitch LED videowall, from Yaham Optoelectronics, curves impressively around the sports book with a ticker scroll running beneath it. The videowall typically shows multiple layers of game content with 15 different video windows. Custom animations and branding are displayed as one seamless image across the vast canvas during hours when wagering is closed.
Ascender 48 proved to be a perfect fit for the sports book with its ability to scale and process large LED spaces and provide the multiple layers of video required for sports book applications. “We have worked with Coherent Design on a number of projects for event and leisure spaces,” says Dan Benjamin, Regional Sales Manager/Western US and Canada for Analog Way. “Any sports book videowall comprises a very wide pixel space and driving so much pixel density presents many complexities.”
“Sports books are an application we’re particularly good at,” notes Andrzej Lubaszka, Chief Technologist at Analog Way, who was instrumental in the design and commissioning of the project. “The William Hill Sports Book is a great example of our ability to seamlessly drive very large LED canvases with large numbers of windows.”
In the Stratosphere's sports book a large Creston NVX video distribution system feeds sources, including DirecTV, races from Dish Network and digital signage from Brightsign, into the Ascender 48 systems, which in turn feed custom resolutions into the LED display controllers provided by Yaham. A Picturall Pro media server directly feeds the Ascenders the off-hours graphics content at full resolution
“We knew the Ascenders were a robust solution that would be able to handle the design of the videowall with ease,” says Coherent Design Engineer, Sean Greener. “And Picturall integrated well with the system.”
Ticker data is fed in to the Ascender system where multiple video layers are placed side-by-side to create a seamless ticker scroll all the way across the length of the LED videowall. “The client wanted a ticker that runs smoothly with no seams, something competitors aren’t able to do,” notes Lubaszka.
The Taphouse features two Yaham Optoelectronics 1.87 mm pixel pitch LED videowalls on opposite walls, which display multi-window sports content as well as custom animations. One LED videowall measures 26.5 x 11 feet and the other 7.5 x 28 feet; each is driven by an Ascender 32, which is fed by the Crestron NVX system.
AV contractor Simply Connected and programmer Code Distillers worked together to program the Crestron NVX and the user-friendly Crestron touchpanels used by hotel staff to operate the LED videowalls.
“It was a real pleasure to partner with Coherent Design and Yaham Optoelectronics on this exciting project,” says Jay Gonzalez, Analog Way’s President of the Americas. “In addition to providing best-in-kind products, we thrive on delivering our partners world-class support from concept to the go-live day and beyond.”
