Planar 4K Display and Video Wall Solutions Create Attractive, Engaging Experiences for Museum-Goers

Cleveland, Mississippi is home to the new GRAMMY Museum Mississippi. Like its sister museum — the GRAMMY Museum® at L.A. LIVE — GRAMMY Museum Mississippi is dedicated to exploring the past, present and future of music, and the cultural context from which it emerges. The Museum explores the history of recorded music and the GRAMMY Awards® through a combination of public events, educational programming, engaging multimedia presentations, and interactive permanent and traveling exhibits. The design for the museum included three digital display platforms from Planar. These displays introduce visitors to the impact of Mississippi's songwriters, producers and musicians on the traditional and modern musical landscape and allows them to interactively explore this content in ways not found in any other museum in the United States.

Planar® UltraRes™ Series 4K LCD displays, Clarity® Matrix™ LCD Video Wall System and Planar® Simplicity™ Series LCD Displays were recommended by system integration firm, Mode Systems of Castle Rock, Colorado. GRAMMY Museum Mississippi's marketing team played a leading and strategic role, recognizing the need for the most advanced display platform.

"We could see that new displays, with the size and vividness of the images they are capable of presenting, would be impressive. You can't help but be attracted to them—and that includes the two Planar Simplicity Series displays in the lobby that display general Museum and event information. Already we've seen that they make you want to explore all that the Museum has to offer," Jackson says.

Big-screen displays deliver nearly life-size video imagery

To generate this attraction and interest, the first gallery one enters was designed around a centrally-located exhibit of GRAMMY Awards® flanked on either side by identical video walls which are programmed to present a unique video montage of artists performing short segments of their songs. These videos appear on 84-inch Planar UltraRes Series 4K LCD displays (UR8450) in three-wide-by-two high video walls (3x2), and are complemented by interspersing snippets of GRAMMY® acceptance speeches. "The presentation is really effective because you see a continually changing set of performances and acceptance speeches, which is inherently interesting, and it's all practically life-size, which makes you feel like you're right there with the artist," Jackson adds.

In addition to the size of the Planar UltraRes Series displays, they are exceptionally bright and clear. Each one operates at 500 nits of brightness, delivers true 4K content at just 60Hz, and boasts Ultra HD resolution of 3840 x 2160. "They are so big and bright that when people see them, they just say 'wow'. That's the reaction we were hoping to get and we do," Jackson says.

Also, the thin profile of the Planar UltraRes Series displays accommodate the exhibit space and give it a much more current and high tech look than projector-based systems which can be found in many museums today. "These video walls are under four inches in total mounted depth. As a result, they work well in this high traffic environment and are fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)," says Marc Headley of Mode Systems. "And they have Planar's industry-leading reliability which means they easily meet the museum's need for uninterrupted operation from early morning to late at night," he adds.

Other engineering and operational differentiators

Planar UltraRes Series displays use industry-leading engineering and operational capabilities to address the environmental challenges and opportunities of GRAMMY Museum Mississippi. For example, Planar UlraRes Series displays feature a kick-stand that tilts the display away from the wall for front-service access and/or removal without the entire video wall having to be dismantled. Then, there is the Planar UltraRes Series power management system. This is a combination of capabilities that enhances reliability. The displays include a fail-over power supply design, auto-off signal detection, industry-leading power consumption (460 watts) and a fan-less design that also results in whisper-quiet operation.

One-of-a-kind touch table lets viewers share content interactively

In the gallery area that showcases the deep musical roots of Mississippi, the design called for a truly unique display platform. Here the solution is a video wall installed as a table (called the Mississippi Music Table), configured with six 55-inch Clarity Matrix MX55HDS LCD video wall displays. The six displays are installed in portrait orientation, with one half accessible from one side of the table and the other half from the opposite side. Viewers on either side see a representation of the Mississippi River, with bubbles floating down the table each bubble contains interactive content about a particular artist.

On the Mississippi Music Table, each display is covered with Planar® ERO (Extended Ruggedness and Optics™) technology, an optically bonded glass surface that ensures protection against inadvertent damage. "This is an important feature to have in a high-traffic environment such as we have here," Vickie Jackson adds.

Planar delivers a quality, out of the box solution

Finally, both the Planar UltraRes Series and the Clarity Matrix video wall presented Mode and the museum with solutions that were ready for installation when they arrived onsite. "These are well engineered products; so much so that they came with all the components we needed to get them up and running. They loaded and were fully operational in a very short period of time. We didn't have to go and buy parts – which saved us time – and they required little or no tweaking to get the picture quality we wanted," Headley says. "If we had a question or needed help, Planar was either right there with us, or we could get help by phone at a moment's notice."