Mall's Massive Matrox-Powered Video Wall Drives Demand for Advertising Screen Time

One of the busiest places in all of Finland, Helsinki’s Kamppi Center shopping mall, just got busier with the addition of a massive 14.4-meter-high Matrox Mura™ MPX Series-powered display wall.

With metro and bus stations on the bottom floors, the modern mall—already in a centrally located Helsinki district—has a daily footfall of approximately 110,000 people. Seeking to replace a six-year-old LED installation and better engage shoppers, Kamppi Center contracted integrator Craneworks.

The local digital signage firm in turn went with a 108m² Mura-powered digiLED outdoor screen, three times the size of the original and the first installation of its kind for the supplier, according to Craneworks managing director Sami Käyhkö.

Shopping Around

Searching the web for different controller workstations, Craneworks tested and evaluated several systems, ultimately settling on just as unique of a solution: an HP Z600 workstation powered by a Matrox Mura MPX-4/4 video wall controller board, which features four HD outputs and four HD inputs all on one card.

Inputs include two Mac® mini media players for redundancy, one local DVI input, and one live feed. The live feed is then converted from different external video sources (HD-SDI, composite, VGA) to Mura, which then scales the content itself. Mura also switches between the content for different advertising campaigns.

“We needed to have a scaler that was able to crop portrait video and partially split it to two different outputs,” said Craneworks project manager Jukka Vuoristo. “This was crucial, as we needed to handle PC and video signals through one device.”

A Great Buy

Minimizing the need for multiple solutions, Matrox Mura MPX video wall processor cards proved to be a very cost-effective choice for Craneworks overall. Comprising different capture & display, video capture, and SDI SKUs, Mura MPX Series boards can be combined within single controller systems to meet specific channel requirements and drive video walls of almost any size for a variety of applications.

Many control options are available, ranging from the user-friendly Mura Network API, which helps in the development of third-party software options, to Matrox MuraControl™ for Windows® for easy layout creation/switching and input management.

“Our digital signage player software does basic layout and input control and we use MuraControl for Windows for remote layout management for special live event purposes,” said Vuoristo, who also praised Mura for its easy and straight-forward setup, wide selection of inputs and outputs, and its architecture, which is the most scalable in the industry.

What the Future Holds in Store

Käyhkö added that Mura is a frontrunner for “projects where programmability and flexibility are needed.” Vuoristo meanwhile foresaw Mura as a potential solution in the future for Craneworks in control rooms and operations centers requiring “lots of inputs and easy management with an iPad.”

“Normally, control rooms and operations centers want to easily change between different layouts,” he said, referencing another Mura MPX Series software control option, MuraControl for iPad®, a free-to-download app requiring just a tablet device and a standard network connection.

In specific regard to Kamppi, Craneworks also manages the LED screen’s day-to-day operation. Käyhkö said they would probably have their hands full… were it not for Mura.

“Matrox Mura boards make it easy to build attractive signage layouts incorporating live content feeds, signage content from Mac mini media players, and different backgrounds,” continued Käyhkö.

“We have a lot of special campaigns at Kamppi and we often get different kinds of live video feeds that we have to scale and place on the screen with different background materials. With Matrox Mura, we’re able to take advantage of scaling and input switching. We get the freedom we need from a programming standpoint.”