The recently-opened Hollister store in midtown Manhattan features a live video feed of surfers in Huntington Beach, CA, with the help of two Christie Spyder X20-0808 video processors and a Christie URS universal routing switcher.Hollister — the Southern California teen-inspired lifestyle brand from Abercrombie & Fitch — launched its second Manhattan store with a double-height glass storefront highlighting a surf motif. The company erected a giant wall consisting of 169 46-inch LCD displays stretching across the façade and over the front door.
- For this location, the facility expanded on a concept created and designed by PlayNetwork, who has been specializing in this type of install for years, in more than 400 international locations.
“The monitors are mounted in portrait mode with virtually no mullions (vertical columns between the monitors) and offer a total pixel count of 7290 x 3360,” said Jeff Anderson of G-Force Engineering, project integrator. “Two HD cameras in Huntington Beach feed live content to the video walls and are stitched together to spread a single image of the surf and surfers across the wall. We opted for dual cameras with a 15 percent screen overlap and resolution that is close to 4K."
“By adjusting the output in DVI format and pixel mapping to the monitor resolution we achieved a seamless integration between the Spyder X20s. If we lose a feed, we have the ability to stretch a single camera across the wall,” Anderson added. “The image quality the Spyder X20 provides is second to none. We looked at other processors, but the Christie product is the industry benchmark. That’s why we went with it.”
Inside the Hollister store, five additional video walls continue the illusion that shoppers are “in a shop on the Huntington Beach pier,” according to Anderson. “The monitor walls are set up to look like windows, so where you look determines what you see — the right side of the pier, the left side of the pier, or the ocean and surfers coming straight toward you.”
