Chauvet Professional Pumps Up Rangers Opening Game Event at Madison Square Garden

Heading into the 2015-16 season, the New York Rangers and their fans had plenty of reasons to be optimistic. The NHL club had earned a team record 113 points the previous year and reached the Eastern Conference finals. Even better things were expected this year, when Rangers faithful gathered en masse at Madison Square Garden's Foyer Court on West 33rd Street in Manhattan for a celebration before the team's opening game. The throngs of fans on hand were able to follow the festivities on a large video wall made of MVP Ta8 Curve LED panels from Chauvet Professional.

"We had the video wall positioned on top of the foyer steps and showed IMAG, interviews with players, advertising messages, performances by bands, and break up patterns," says Darren Lussier of Image Production Services, which created the display. "It was a bright sunny day, but all of these images showed up clearly, thanks to the intensity and contrast of the video panels."

The 8.3 mm pixel pitch of the Chauvet Professional panels provided clear viewing for the fans in attendance. "People were about 30' away from the panels, so the resolution was perfect," says Lussier. "Some of the images we showed required especially clear resolution, and the panels performed perfectly in these instances. We fed video content to the panels using HD-SDI to DVI 1080P."

A total of 32 panels were used to build the video wall. (The panels measure 600mm x600mm x 66mm.) Framed by goal post truss, the wall measured 8 panels high by 16 panels wide. Lussier used an SCD 40 pipe, Gac Flex slings, and the Chauvet Professional MVP rigging clamps to connect the tiles to the pipe.

"Aside from the performance of the video wall itself in terms of how well it displays the images you're showing, how realistic its colors are and things of that nature, your big concern when setting up a display like this is how easy it is to assemble and how well it stands up to outdoor conditions," says Lussier. "The mounting options and rigging kits with these panels make them easy to work with, especially when you're under time pressure as we were at Madison Square Garden. Obviously at a busy site like that, the client wants you to keep setup and take down time to a minimum. Also, the panel's IP54 rating makes you feel secure using them in temporary outdoor projects."

The panels' performance earned enthusiastic thumbs-up reviews from the Madison Square Garden crowd and Roof Top Productions, which hired Image Production Services for the project. "We were very happy with how this whole thing went," says Lussier. "As anyone in New York knows, Rangers fans are very passionate, so we didn't want to let them down."