XL Video is The One for HTC Events

	HTC at the 2014 Mobile World Congress with XL Video

XL Video has recently supplied LED and plasma screens and control for two separate events for Taiwanese global technology brand HTC -- the first was for their exhibition stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, followed shortly after by the high-profile London launch of the One M8 flagship smartphone at Olympia.

The 2014 Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona took place at the Gran Fira expo center, with XL working for global brand experience agency SSG Create. XL's project manager was Rich Pow.

HTC was revealing their 2014 mid-range portfolio, making their presence felt with one of the larger booth spaces of the show. XL supplied and ground-supported a prominent 6m wide by 3.4m high 16:9 aspect ratio 6mm high definition LED screen which was incorporated into the building structure.

Content for the screen was supplied by HTC and played back via an Apple MacBook laptop running PlaybackPro -- complete with a hot backup -- switched to screen by one of XL's Barco 902s. XL also supplied a compact d&b Q7 audio system together with E12 subs and a Soundcraft mixer for high quality audio for the screen.

A 65" plasma screen was wall mounted into a custom housing and utilized for a "TV demo" showcasing the latest HTC gadgets, including a super-cool Bluetooth speaker built into a light bulb, which Pow comments, "Would be fantastic to impress dinner party guests."

Two plasma-screen pods were highly visible on the stand, both pods featuring two 50" plasma screens, one in portrait and one in landscape format, fed through a DVI matrix allowing on site videos to go to any of the pod screens. Audio for the pods was run via a Yamaha LS9 mixer which allowed audio to follow the selection of content and its related audio to be run independently on each pod at any time.

Lightware DVI-Cat5 converters were used to feed the signal to each plasma screen which simplified the build as the XL team could then run Cat5 throughout the installation. The pods were highlighting various phone software updates and other HTC related elements.

Eight meeting rooms integral to the stand were set-up with assorted XL plasma screens - one at 42", seven at 50", and one 65" respectively -- all recessed on the wall in special housings. These areas were utilized for specific product presentations.

XL's site crew included Alex Mulrenan and Steve Grinceri.

The HTC One M8 Launch in London was a highly anticipated special event staged at Olympia West with a simultaneous event in running New York. Attended by high ranking HTC executives, the London presentation was started by HTC chairwoman Cher Wang and continued by Scott Croyle, SVP of design and user experience, with XL again working for SSG Create and installing a widescreen projection system.

The screen -- a custom part of the set -- measured 14m wide by 3.7m high and was fed by four Panasonic PT-DZ21K projectors run as two doubled-up pairs, edge-blended together for optimized brightness. The machines were fitted with short-throw LE6 zoom lenses (0.9 - 1.1) which enables lens shift in tight spaces.

The lenses were specified by XL's project manager Nick Diacre who needed to be inventive and devise a solution that enabled the projectors to sit almost on top of the screen, maximizing the headroom in the presentation space, and ensuring a clear path from projector to screen.

The PZ21Ks were positioned side-by-side in pairs and lined up using their onboard warping engines.

Four MacPro towers running Keynote were fed into a Barco Encore system and output to the screen, and the Encore also routed signals to a series of comfort monitors positioned around the auditorium and technical relay screens located in key backstage vantage points for the crew.

In the adjacent exhibition area -- into which guests filtered after the presentation -- XL installed 14 x 46 and 55" LED screens, ten of which were rigged in three tree formations so guests could test and examine the various IR features of the One M8.

Design aesthetics and the use of clean, neat, and tidy screens were top of the agenda. The screens had to be unbranded, so XL sourced and supplied a video wall product with a plain bezel offering extremely clear and crisp definition. It also had onboard software enabling zoom in and rotation effects to be applied to the live feed from the new handset.

The Encore Operator was Chris Bowman with support from Andrew Vass; the projectionists were Greg Scoble and Alex Thomas and the two graphics operators were Phil Maiden and Egill "E" Kristbjornson.

"A lot of thought went into coming up with a neat solution that utilized the space properly. Our crew worked together with the team from SSG Create extremely well and everyone was pleased with the results," concludes Diacre.