AVSS Puts Analog Way Equipment to Work on Diverse Shows in Las Vegas and Nashville

Audio Visual Systems & Support, Inc. (AVSS) in Fort Myers, Florida has put its large inventory of Analog Way equipment to work on shows for clients in every business sector. Most recently, AVSS deployed Analog Way gear on an international cardiac symposium in Las Vegas and a national life insurance sales meeting in Nashville.

An AV company, which has staged shows on every continent, AVSS most recently acquired two Analog Way Ascender 48-4K multi-screen processors, a NeXtage 16-4K seamless AV processor, two Control Boxes, and secure power units. The company has additional Ascender 48 and NeXtage 16 units plus Saphyr seamless switchers and Vertige remote controllers.

"Most of our switching is now Analog Way," says Mike Fitzgerald, president of AVSS. "We were one of the early adopters when the Ascender was introduced. We liked their products and bought a few. Then we bought a couple more and a couple more."

AVSS deployed a large inventory of Analog Way gear for the four-day Pediatric and Adult Interventional Cardiac Symposium (PICS-AICS 2018), which AVSS produced at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

"We've been doing the show for 20 years," Fitzgerald reports. "New this year was the addition of live HEVC streaming technology from Teradek, it helped save our client over $150,000 on the satellite and fiber services we have used in the past. We had a fully loaded Teradek T-Rex in the general session with Cube 755 at all the remote sites."

The general session stage featured two 24' x 13.5' borderless side screens, which appeared to float on a background of bleached white muslin. In the center was a ROE Visual Black Pearl BP2 LED display measuring approximately 40' x 11' and comprising more than 4,000 pixels.

"Doctors drooled over the gorgeous LED screen," Fitzgerald says. "We had IMAG on the two outside screens and PIPs in the center with the featured panelist or doctor and feeds from the remote sites." The general sessions included live and interactive surgeries, with bi-directional communications with the audience, from sites in Doha, Qatar; London; Sao Paulo; San Diego; Memphis; Cincinnati; Columbus; Seattle; and New York."

"We shipped our Ascenders to the Children's Hospitals in Columbus and Cincinnati, Memphis and San Diego for their live surgeries," Fitzgerald says.

"With the Ascenders at the remote sites we were able to use the backup Cube to send a second signal back from those sites allowing us to send additional imaging from the fluoroscopy feeds, Ultrasound and 3D imaging outputs enabled us to send any additional imaging PIPs the audience wanted to see," he explains. The remote sites had 10-12 sources all with different resolutions, aspect ratios and types of signals from super high-resolution 3D imaging sources, multiple high-resolution 4:3 fluoroscopy feeds, even some S-video and composite sources. "In the past we used other brand processors with scan converters to deal with the different resolutions, but Ascender made our lives easier by replacing all that gear with one box," he says.

"Two Ascender 48-4Ks in the general session, working with a Lightware MX33 router controlled with a Vertige controller, handled four cameras, six streaming inputs, two streaming outputs, a Chyron and 14 computer sources. It gave us the capability to use the whole 4,300 pixel-wide ROE Creative LED tile canvas to make multiple high-resolution PIPs across it," Fitzgerald says.

"We hope to take a couple of sites to 4K content with Ascender this year, although technically we're already running 4K to get the pixel counts we need across the blends."

The Symposium's two breakout rooms, which hosted gatherings akin to "small general sessions," utilized two NeXtage 16 units to feed two screens in each location with PowerPoint and video sources. The second output on each system fed a separate recording of the session with a PIP of the presenter for later posting to the Symposium's website.

AVSS also used its Analog Way Ascenders and Vertige for the Jackson National Life Insurance Sales Meeting in Nashville. AVSS has been involved with the annual gathering for several years.

This year AVSS wrapped the room for the general session with bleached white muslin screens boxed with truss. Two 20' x 100' screens covered the sides of the room and one 20' x 126' screen formed the front wall; 18 20K projectors displayed imagery for speaker support and introducing the new group of honorees named to the Redcoat Hall of Fame. "The audience was immersed in the room -- it was pretty impressive," declares Fitzgerald.

Four Ascender 48-4Ks linked together with a Lightware MX-33 router all controlled with a Vertige controller provided the 16-outputs required for the four-projector blends along the two side screens, the five-projector blend for the front screen, four downstage monitors routable in pairs and the stage manager's confidence monitor, which took the last output. "We used the fiber outputs of the Ascender to run all the projectors," Fitzgerald notes. "I think we had over 1,400' of truss in the room."

"We're known for pushing our Analog Way gear to the max, so we can't wait to get our hands on the new 8K switchers," he concludes.