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Table of Contents LED DISPLAY WALLS: 101
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To discuss what an LED display wall is — and how it can enhance the worship experience and your church’s financial bottom line — we must first understand what an LED is. By Marty Gregor
CASE STUDY: SADDLEBACK CHURCH
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World-renowned Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, was looking to upgrade its facility as part of its “Decade of Destiny” campaign — a 10-year vision to help members in the areas of physical, financial, relational, emotional, mental, vocational and spiritual health. By Marty Gregor
LED DISPLAY WALLS: PLACEMENT GUIDELINES & SUGGESTIONS
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If you’ve decided LED display walls are a good fit for your facilities, the next step is to ensure they’re properly positioned — a key component for maximum ministry benefit. By Marty Gregor
THE ST. ANDREW’S MISSION FOR NEW VIDEO DISPLAYS
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When St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, MN, decided to upgrade its audiovisual system, it included extensive research into new video screens. Having rented projectors for special services in the past — and because the sanctuary has an abundance of natural ambient light — church leaders knew projectors weren’t the best fit. “We didn’t really want to take this beautiful space and darken it order to see something,” explains Dale Bakken, Director of Buildings and Grounds. That’s when he got familiar with LED technology. By Marty Gregor
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LED display walls:
101 By Marty Gregor
To discuss what an LED display wall is — and how it can enhance the worship experience and your church’s financial bottom line — we must first understand what an LED is.
LED is short for “light emitting diode.” It’s a tiny electronic semiconductor that converts electric energy into visible light. Unlike incandescent lamps and projectors, LEDs have no filaments that can burn out or fail, meaning they have an incredibly long lifetime. Manufacturers use several types of LEDs to construct display walls. The two most common are Through-Hole LEDs and Surface Mount Device (SMD) LEDs. Each type has its respective advantages that make them preferable for different applications. When it comes to LED display walls for houses of worship, there are typically two different uses: Indoor (SMD) and Outdoor (Through-Hole).
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Indoor displays When we refer to indoor displays for houses of worship, we typically talk about them being used as a video display. The SMD technology (see above) is trending within the display industry as a 3-in-1 design for LEDs — three colors, one LED — using the same color dyes as throughhole LEDs. These SMD LEDs disperse light more evenly than throughhole LEDs across both horizontal and vertical angles, providing for an improved off-angle viewing in both directions. SMD LEDs are an excellent choice for most indoor applications as the smaller LED package allows for a higher resolution and closer viewing distances. Outdoor displays The traditional form of outdoor LED displays is the through-hole design in which LEDs use a reflector cup and an epoxy lens package. The combination of the two elements, as well as the type of dye used, plays a role in determining the elliptical viewing cone produced. Much like a floodlight, a through-hole LED’s reflector cup focuses the light emitted by the dye into a specific viewing area. This area defines the LED’s viewing angle.
LED vs. projection Due to the increasing demand for high-quality visual aids with sustained performance — plus, the prices of LEDs being reduced over the last five to 10 years — many worship venues have switched from projectors to LED displays for their viewing needs. Two main factors in this choice are overall image quality and overall cost of ownership. Although LED displays and projectors use different technology to produce an image, the visual difference in image quality can easily be compared between the two products. Two main contributors to image quality are brightness and contrast.
Image quality / brightness. Many factors contribute to brightness, including innate brightness capability and ambient lighting conditions. An indoor environment can present a variety of unique challenges that require certain brightness capabilities to ensure clear image quality. For example, churches and auditoriums often have mixed ambient lighting conditions, which can be a combination of natural sunlight and overhead lighting. Because image quality partially depends on ambient lighting conditions, the best visual aid in this type of setting is one that performs flawlessly every time regardless of surrounding lighting. Projectors reflect light off a surface. Because of that, their image quality is partially dependent on the surface used. This means that the brightness of the content is reduced if the surface is well-lit. LED displays produce light internally, so content doesn’t have to bounce off a surface before it reaches the audience. This means that LED displays can adjust to surrounding conditions without a complicated setup or additional technology to produce a clear image; a clear image is produced simply by turning on the device. The ability to direct — rather than reflect — light gives the LED display a distinct visual advantage in a variety of ambient lighting conditions. Image quality / contrast. Another factor that affects image quality is contrast — the difference between lightness and darkness in an image. (See image, right) The greater the difference between these two values, the better-quality image on your display. Because projectors need to reflect light off a surface to produce an image, black screens are not an option. This greatly limits capacity to improve contrast. In comparison, LED displays have masks that provide a deep black background for content and can also use louvers and other display face features to create unmatched contrast and superior image quality. Overall cost of ownership. LED displays also have much fewer replacement costs than projectors. Projector maintenance requires frequently changing lamps. These expenses add up over time. An LED display is at half-brightness after 100,000 hours of use. If a projector lamp’s lifetime is 2,500 hours, the lamp would have to be changed about 40 times to reach the equal lifetime of the LED display. Service is also important when choosing to go with an LED display, if you are unfamiliar with the technology. You want to make sure that somebody is close by and replacements parts are easy to get should a situation should arise. With LED displays, your content reaches the entire audience with bright, clear image quality — from the front row to the choir loft.
Marty Gregor is a video products sales expert for Brookings, SD-based Daktronics www.daktronics.com/worship , a leading digital display manufacturer established in 1968.
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Case Study: Saddleback Church By Marty Gregor
Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA, hosts more than 20,000 people in weekly attendance. Throughout the week, this globally recognized church offers five services and a number of different events, including concerts, workshops and other studies and seminars. The church was looking to upgrade its facility as part of its “Decade of Destiny” campaign — a 10-year vision to help members in the areas of physical, financial, relational, emotional, mental, vocational and spiritual health.
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AFTER: With a much higher brightness level, LED displays ensure images are sharp and stand out — even in the brightly lit auditorium.
The challenge The main auditorium at Saddleback is very large, very open and very bright. Previously, the church used rear-projection screens to help share the visual elements of its services, including song lyrics, recorded and live video. Unfortunately, the image and video quality was washed out and hard to see within the large, brightly lit auditorium. Church leaders looked at different types of technology to help better showcase its services by not having the content appear “washed out” on the displays. LED video was on church leaders’ radar, given their brightness they compared to projector technology. In the end, Daktronics was awarded to provide a solution. The solution Our solutions included two LED video displays featuring 4-millimeter-pixel layouts — one of the tightest resolution displays in the industry. The pair of displays measures 14 feet high by 24 feet wide to provide all worshipers with a clear view of the message, regardless of the lighting conditions. LED displays have a much higher brightness level than the projectors the church previously used. As such, image quality stays sharp and stands out, even in the church’s heavily lit auditorium and with brightness shining directly on the display face. These displays combine advanced contrast levels with 3-in-1 LED pixels for a premium display solution. This is ideal for the viewing distances that exist inside Saddleback’s auditorium. Pastor Dave Arnold, director of strategic initiatives at the church, says he and his team thoroughly evaluated the technologies and displays available to them. “Ultimately, we determined Daktronics could provide us with the best LED solution for our needs,” he explains. The results Today, the LED displays have been installed, and Saddleback uses them in numerous ways. churchexecutive.com
BEFORE: Saddleback’s main auditorium is large, open and bright, which washed out the images on the rear-projection screens it used for projecting song lyrics and videos.
• At the beginning of services, video content plays as the congregation walks to their seats. • S ong lyrics are displayed, along with live video of the band or a music video. • Specific promotional and highlight videos are created to emphasize the current message. • The church video crew uses multiple cameras in each service to ensure a full broadcast feel. Carefully selected for this challenging space, the LED displays ensure great image clarity in every situation in which they’re used. Marty Gregor is a video products sales expert for Brookings, SD-based Daktronics www.daktronics.com/worship, a leading digital display manufacturer established in 1968. P A S T O R F R I E N D LY V I D E O • CHURCH EXECUTIVE
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LED display walls: placement guidelines & suggestions By Marty Gregor
If you’ve decided LED display walls are a good fit for your facilities, the next step is to ensure they’re properly positioned — a key component for maximum ministry benefit. To this end, Daktronics uses two measuring approaches to determine an appropriate pixel pitch for an LED display: minimum viewing distance and smooth image distance. The graph below illustrates the viewing ranges of each display, with the bottom bar depicting the minimum viewing distance and the top bar denoting smooth image distance.
300 ft
90 m
290 ft
85 m
280 ft 270 ft
80 m
260 ft 250 ft
75 m
240 ft
70 m
230 ft 220 ft
65 m
210 ft 200 ft
60 m
190 ft
55 m
180 ft 170 ft
50 m
160 ft 150 ft
45 m
Minimum viewing distance — the minimum viewing distance is the closest distance at which the colors from an individual pixel begin to blend with the surrounding pixels. Smooth image distance — the point at which the video display is at its purist distance in relation to where the viewer is standing.
140 ft
40 m
130 ft 120 ft
35 m
110 ft
30 m
100 ft 90 ft
25 m
80 ft 70 ft
20 m
60 ft 50 ft 40 ft
15 mm
30 ft 20 ft 10 ft
4 mm
6 mm
15 HD
20 mm
15 SMD
13 HD
10 mm
8 SMD
16 mm
20 mm
15 m 10 m
10 SMD
5m
INDOOR
OUTDOOR
Pixel Pitch
4 mm
6 mm
10 mm
15 mm
20 mm
True Pixel Pitch
4.66 mm
6.60 mm
9.90 mm
15.85
19.81
8 SMD
Min Viewing Distance
10.51 ft. 3.2 m
14.89 ft. 4.54 m
22.33 ft. 6.81 m
35.75 ft. 10.9 m
44.69 ft. 13.62 m
18.36 ft 5.60 m
Smooth Image Distance
52.56 ft. 16.02 m
74.44 ft. 22.69 m
111.66 ft. 34.03 m
178.77 ft. 54.49 m
223.4 ft. 68.09 m
82.83 ft. 25.18 m
8.14
10 SMD
13 HD
15 HD
15 SMD
16 mm
20 mm
10.16
13.06 mm
15.24 mm
15.24mm
16.63 mm
20.32 mm
20.63 ft 6.19 m
29.46 ft. 8.98 m
34.38 ft. 10.48 m
30.94 ft. 9.43 m
37.51 ft. 11.43 m
45.84 ft. 13.97 m
103.13 ft. 31.44 m
147.3 ft. 44.9 m
171.89 ft. 52.39 m
154.7 ft. 47.15 m
187.56 ft. 57.17 m
229.18 ft. 69.86 m
201 Daktronics Dr PO Box 5128 Brookings, SD 57006-5128 tel 800-325-8766 605-697-4300 fax 605-697-4700 www.daktronics.com e-mail sales@daktronics.com Copyright © 2014 Daktronics SL-04379 Rev 01 09222014
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Viewing angles are especially important in worship environments where most congregants aren’t directly facing the pastor and pulpit.
Viewing cone of an LED video display Particularly in the worship market, viewing angles are important — especially when the majority of the congregation isn’t directly facing the pastor and pulpit. The 170-degree horizontal viewing angles of our LED video displays allow the worshippers (no matter where they’re seated) to clearly see the video display content. The viewing cones of LED video displays differ slightly, but why the difference? It’s simply a matter of geometry and how the human eye perceives light. As the congregation moves off-center, the area of focus does not remain constant; it actually increases. It’s an effect similar to shining a flashlight on a wall: The sharper the angle between the flashlight and the wall, the greater the amount of surface area the flashlight beam will cover. As the spectator’s angle to the display increases, so does the area of focus. Increasing the area of focus results in more light reaching the eye.
It enables Image Magnification (IMAG). Incorporating IMAG / live video ensures everyone can see what’s going on, regardless of where they’re sitting in the sanctuary. During a service, IMAG keeps worshipers engaged with close-up shots of the choir as they sing and the pastor as he or she delivers the sermon. No more rentals! Using permanent LED displays means churches won’t need to rent projection screens and projectors for large events. This is crucial because, in just a few years, a church will spend as much on rentals as it will to buy a permanent LED display. Marty Gregor is a video products sales expert for Brookings, SD-based Daktronics www.daktronics.com/worship, a leading digital display manufacturer established in 1968.
Quiet operation Efficient module and cabinet design eliminates the need for external forced ventilation. Standing next to the display with fan-less cabinets, the only thing you’ll hear is the clock ticking on the wall. Our company’s indoor displays are designed to enhance the visual appearance of the surrounding environment without impacting HVAC or the ambience with noisy operation. Without fans in the displays, there’s no worrying about routine maintenance that can be incurred with other manufacturers. This saves time, money, and increases the display’s longevity. As a provider focused on delivering quality service for any application, we start by keeping ease of service in mind. For example, combining front and rear access with service-friendly features — such as magnetic attachment of the modules — allows extremely tight pixel pitches to have the same front access that makes maintenance convenient for technicians. This easy access enables techs to quickly replace faulty components without powering down the display. Location — where should we put an LED display? The location of the LED display is crucial. Typical placements of LED displays are stage right and stage left; this means the displays (usually two) are located on the right of the stage and also the left. Many times, with a larger LED display, churches will consider attaching it to a rigging system to suspend it above the stage. This application is more common in sanctuaries without wide viewing angles. Another trend for many worship facilities is to install a display in the far back of the church, behind the congregation. This placement is mainly for the benefit of the pastor and choir, as it helps them know what the rest of the congregation is seeing, but from the front of the sanctuary. Another use is for the display of lyrics and hymns. How an LED display enhances worship It’s paperless. There are many benefits of an LED display, including reduced paper consumption. Cutting back on ink and paper for the weekly sermons reduces costs and saves money for the church. Displayed content can include lyrics, prayers, videos, announcements — the money-saving possibilities are numerous. It sets the mood. When members walk into a brightly lit sanctuary on a sunny morning, vivid imagery of nature scenes can enhance their mood. Using LED displays correctly (read: accompanied by uplifting messages) creates a warm, welcoming environment for everyone. churchexecutive.com
Combining front and rear access with service-friendly features — such as magnetic attachment of the modules — allows extremely tight pixel pitches to have the same front access that makes maintenance convenient for technicians. This easy access enables techs to quickly replace faulty components without powering down the display.
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The St. Andrew’s mission for new video displays By Marty Gregor
When St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, MN decided to upgrade its audiovisual system, it included extensive research into new video screens. Having rented projectors for special services in the past — and because the sanctuary has an abundance of natural ambient light — church leaders knew projectors weren’t the best fit. “We didn’t really want to take this beautiful space and darken it order to see something,” explains Dale Bakken, Director of Buildings and Grounds. Getting familiar with LED technology With limited knowledge of LED video technology, Bakken and Dennie Boice, the church’s video production and IT manager, set out to research this option, hoping to find a viable solution for the space. Through searches and by talking with congregants, they broke down their options to nine different vendors. After visiting with all of them, the decision was made to go with Daktronics. “We went and visited [the company] first,” Bakken notes. “We didn’t realize it at the time, but we had made a benchmark. We went to different companies and eliminated them fairly easy because of product noise and accessibility.” Bakken and Boice toured the Daktronics headquarters in Brookings, SD, to see the manufacturing process firsthand, visit the reliability lab, and ask questions. “We were impressed to see a complete manufacturer and not just piecing parts together,” Boice recalls. “We were able to see everything from LEDs being inserted into circuit boards to extensive testing in their reliability lab. And, everyone we met along the way was friendly and enjoying their job — you could see it on their faces. It was a great atmosphere.” All their questions were answered, and the team showed Bakken and Boice their best product options. “We got a good feel about what we’d be receiving,” Bakken says. The church selected video displays that allowed them to control the brightness of each display independently to adjust for all kinds of conditions — from cloudy, overcast days to bright, sunny ones. Brightness can be adjusted accordingly so the displays are visible and have the desired impact for early services, when the sun is only hitting one display, and for later services when the sun is hitting the other display — all without sacrificing quality in the worship space featuring lots of natural lighting. 10
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“A big factor when looking at our manufacturing options was that everything seemed good online; but, once we visited and saw things firsthand, we could tell that certain options were too loud and noisy for our setting as a worship facility,” Bakken explains. “That helped us rule out a few possibilities and nail down our options. And, once we saw the 4-millimeter option from Daktronics, the question became, How soon can we get this? Everyone was blown away by the clarity of the display.” Installation without interruption The installation of the new displays at St. Andrew’s took four days and didn’t interrupt the worship schedule or church planned activities. Bakken says he was amazed at how quickly everything was installed. “From the time the displays showed up in crate, to the time they were operational with content on them, was really fast. It worked into our schedule, and that was very beneficial.” Enhancing worship In this very traditional church setting, there was some skepticism at first about how the video displays would affect worship services. St. Andrew’s has a separate space for contemporary services and needed to be sure people didn’t see this equipment as an intrusion. All it took to dispel those concerns was the first use of the displays at a baptism. “The congregation was in awe of the clarity of the displays,” recalls Lead Pastor Michael Carlson. “People were able to see the water drip off the child’s head. In our large church, seeing such a thing wouldn’t have been possible before, except for those sitting in the front few rows.” One of the next uses of the displays was for summertime Vacation Bible School. This served as a significant opportunity to enlighten those in the congregation that the displays would enhance the traditional church program, not take away from it. “We had 700 people here singing, and it’s the loudest it’s ever been because people were actually able to look up from their hymnals and see the lyrics on the screens, sing and project their voices,” Carlson noted. Additionally, the large 100- to 150-person choir that sits behind the pastor is now able to see everything the congregation sees by looking up at the new, 6-millimeter video display in the back of the chapel. According to Carlson, these displays were originally intended to appeal to the younger church members. However, there were additional, unforeseen benefits for other groups as well. For one church member — who has a medical condition which makes it difficult to hold the printed materials and follow along with the service — this installation helps that individual to feel truly involved in worship again. And, congregants with vision loss — who hadn’t been able to follow along with the service for years, despite the availability of large-print bulletins — are also benefitting. “An elderly lady in our congregation came up to me after one of the first services with these new displays,” Carlson shares. “With a tear in her eye she said, ‘Pastor, that’s the first time in over 10 years I’ve been able to follow along in a service.’ “I knew right there that these displays were worth it.” Marty Gregor is a video products sales expert for Brookings, SD-based Daktronics www.daktronics.com/worship, a leading digital display manufacturer established in 1968. churchexecutive.com
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