There’s even more reason to get a seat at the bar of Round Rock Tavern just outside of Austin, Texas. The older, well-established business underwent incredible expansion in the last year, adding an outdoor patio bar on the main floor as well as the roof top.
In addition to libations aplenty, the owners wanted more screens, more audio, and overall, more entertainment. They enlisted Mood:Texas, a well-known AV integration firm that serves multiple areas in the state, with taking the establishment’s simple sound system and a handful of TVs to the next level. The tavern’s order: Put together a distributed AV system comprised of 13 sources (eight cable boxes, two digital signage players, and three HDMI inputs) that feed to the 28 displays throughout the building. In addition, they wanted simple mobile control of all the displays in the main bar as well as the outdoor videowalls for the new patio and rooftop bars.
“It makes perfect sense today to put videowalls in these new, big outdoor spaces where guests are choosing to spend more of their time, but they want to be able to watch multiple feeds at once or see more important championship games over the whole screen,” said Andrew Adams, sales director for Mood: Texas.
The first hurdle was selecting an affordable display that could be deployed outdoors. Because they’re exposed to the elements, outdoor displays would be ideal, but they are notorious for thick bezels, which don’t create an aesthetically pleasing video wall. LED video walls, on the other hand, are cost prohibitive for most bars, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for an industry that works on relatively thin profit margins. Even commercial-grade video wall displays, though not rated for outdoors, can run into the 50K range. While that might be doable for some small businesses, putting them outside often voids their warranty, creating an expensive and possibly short-term investment. Mood:Texas was able to shave significant cost off the typical video installation using affordable, consumer-grade displays featuring thin bezels to create a cohesive video wall. While not weatherproof, the displays are so affordable, they can be easily swapped out.
Because they knew there would be a multitude of displays in the original part of the bar, on the rooftop, and on the patio that would need to access to a variety of sources, the integrator relied on Just Add Power’s AV-over-IP audio and video distribution system. Just Add Power utilizes the facility’s common network infrastructure; HDMI transmitters and receivers are network appliances, so they conform to all networking protocols and standards for wiring and reliability. Therefore, AV signals are efficiently and reliably transmitted anywhere that data on the network can travel. It is uniquely scalable, no matter how many sources or displays are installed or over a multitude of floors, or how many times they have to be swapped out.
The system realizes just 16 ms of latency from source to screen and supports 4K Ultra HD resolutions and HDMI 2.0 devices with HDCP 2.2. The platform enables seamless switching between any resolution HDMI source as well as uncompressed lossless multichannel audio formats, including Dolby Atmos. Just Add Power works with any display—professional or consumer grade—that have HDMI inputs.
The distribution system comes with built-in video wall effects, eliminating the need to purchase an expensive video wall processor or ultranarrow bezel displays. All of Just Add Power’s current HDMI-over-IP devices have a built-in video wall processor that allows integrators to build anywhere from a 2×2 video wall up to a 16×16—or nearly any configuration within that scope. (i.e., 2×4, 1×8, 5×5, 6×2, 6×14, 12×16). The system can also simultaneously support distribution to a virtually unlimited number of single screens. In this case, a 3×3 video wall was installed in the rooftop space. The patio was finished with a 2×2 configuration.
“Even if we might have to replace a display here or there, the Just Add Power receivers live on,” said Adams. “They out-survive the display all the time. In fact, we use them in outdoor settings all over town. They’re so small, they disappear behind the TV and are protected.”
To distribute TV audio to each area, the integrator installed Just Add Power’s ST1 Sound Transceiver. An audio-only component that functions as either an input or output, the ST1 allows integrators to easily add a stereo audio source to any Just Add Power system, or to extract stereo audio from an existing transmitter. In the tavern, it allowed the integrator to pull the audio from any source and send it anywhere.
In addition, Just Add Power VBS-HDIP707WP2 HDMI wall plate were installed in each area, providing the DJ with a local input that can be distributed as well.
Bar staff control the system with a fleet of iPads running RTI’s Control App. Just Add Power provides free drivers for many popular control systems, including RTI, and an easily accessible API. RTI’s XP-6s control processor—the integrator’s go-to control processing solution—is the brain for activating the capabilities available on the iPad app. With a simple and illustrative GUI, they can send any source to any screen, changing the video wall layouts with a tap.
“Pictures are worth a thousand words, literally,” said Adams. “There are six pages of different control interfaces clearly laid out. One is all audio, with a bunch of sliders and source selectors. One has a map of the whole facility with TV icons, and they can click the display and then tap the source—the cable box, audio, or digital signage player—they want. Even with the video walls, they don’t have to go through a bunch of complex steps to get the configuration they want or push a button on a video wall processor installed in the back.”
Just Add Power modular and IP-based AV distribution system, paired with RTI, complements the integrator’s leasing options that the bar is taking advantage of as part of Mood: Texas’ AV as a service offering
