The newest Main Event Entertainment complex in San Antonio, TX, boasts the company’s first center with a fully digital AV infrastructure, and it is powered by Kramer Electronics CORE products.
The complex, which features bowling, laser tag, obstacle courses, arcades, pool tables, rope course and food and beverage offerings all under one roof, has integrated a completely digital sight and sound experience into the building. Designed and installed by SAVE Electronics, a local professional electronics design and integration company, the San Antonio site features 35 big screen TVs ranging in size from 47- to 70-inches, as well as 11 WXGA projectors. Bowlers in the 22-lane bowling alley enjoy programming on 11 screens that span two lanes each. Music videos, advertising and programming are transmitted from six digital satellite receivers, six digital signage PCs, and five laptop connections.
According to Tim Boyd, owner of SAVE Electronics, building an all-digital system required switching equipment that could both handle the heavy source volume and be expandable for the future. “No one had a big enough switcher that would send video from the satellite receivers to all the TVs. Kramer was the only one that could handle it at the resolution we required,” Boyd said. “The system lets us send anything, anywhere throughout the building.”
Clint Hoffman, vice president of marketing for Kramer Electronics, noted that the Kramer CORE products were ideal for the Main Event Entertainment application. “The CORE products are designed to be complete end-to-end solutions—they handle any Pro AV signal type and allow for easy future expansion,” he said.
The system features two Kramer Electronics CORE VS-3232D matrix switchers, each of which can be populated with boards up to four inputs or four outputs per board. The Main Event system in San Antonio is populated with a total of 12 HDCP compatible DVI input cards and 12 HDCP compatible DVI output cards, making it capable of distributing 48 sources to 48 displays. Forty Kramer PT-571 and PT-572 DGKat technology twisted pair transmitter/receivers for HDMI signals, six Kramer TP-581T and TP-582R HDBaseT transmitter/receivers for HDMI signals, and six Kramer WP-121 and TP-122 wall plate transmitter/receivers for computer graphics video signals convert the various sources to HDMI for long-distance routing around the facility. Six Kramer VP-434 ProScale Digital Scalers and 20 Kramer VM-2HXL 1:2 distribution amplifiers for HDMI signals are used to scale the video to a uniform resolution and distribute it to every display. A Kramer VS-1616A 16x16 audio matrix switcher handles the audio signal routing in the system.
The system also uses Kramer Electronics power supplies, rack mounting kits and over 16,000 feet of Kramer DGKat cable. The switchers and sources are all housed in a dedicated control room on the building’s second floor.
