Exterity has announced that The Bend Motorsport Park in Adelaide has adopted its integrated IPTV and digital signage systems. A state-of-the-art, world-class motorsport facility, The Bend delivers an exhilarating experience for competitors, enthusiasts and spectators alike.
The Bend is part of a $100 million investment by the Peregrine Corporation, completed in April 2018, to create an iconic sporting facility championing local, national and international motorsport and major events for the state.
The Bend Motorsport Park spans a 680-hectare site including a 7.77-kilometre racing circuit, pit building, hotel and conference facilities; a purpose-built drift and karting circuit; an international Group 1 dragway; driver training facilities; an airstrip; a 4WD adventure park and an off-road facility. For the ultimate thrill, The Rydges Pit Lane Hotel is uniquely positioned right on the racing circuit, offering a track-side experience like no other.
The ambitious project also included a full suite of professional AV technologies across the site, ranging from in-room entertainment, digital signage and massive video walls offering both live TV and recorded action from across the facility.
The Bend selected Corporate Initiatives Australia (Ci), a highly regarded system integrator to deliver an Exterity system. As Michael Marafioti, National Enterprise Partnership Director for Ci Group explains, “We were involved with the contractors and architects at an early stage of The Bend and it was clear that reliability and flexibility were key requirements for the project. We looked at the available technologies, and our prior experience using Exterity made it a natural choice to meet all the requirements.”
With the construction project on an extremely tight schedule and budget, the team from Ci were on site during a 3-month implementation period spanning several areas that used Exterity technology. The first stage was the implementation of an Exterity powered IP video and Video-on-Demand solution for the Rydges Pit Lane Hotel, including screens in 100 well-appointed guest rooms overlooking the motor racing circuit track.
The in-room hospitality solution offers 20 live TV channels, 2 in-house video channels streaming live feeds of ongoing races at The Bend, plus access to a library of additional on-demand content. The live video is delivered from a race control room designed and built by Ci. The race control room pulls together video from 80 cameras dotted across the site and displayed on a bank of over 20 screens. Exterity technology is used within the control room to capture satellite TV channels and distribute video to the hotel and a further 70 screens in hospitality areas across the site.
One of the most impressive elements is an 8-metre LED Video Wall display facing the main stands. The giant screen displays race highlights along with additional ticket information generated by Exterity’s ArtioSign digital signage software.
“In total, Exterity technology powers more than 170 screens across The Bend and has proven itself powerful, flexible and incredibly reliable,” comments Marafioti. “Since The Bend opened, we have had zero failures of any Exterity hardware or software, and even minor configuration changes have been carried out remotely in just a few minutes.”
The technology has also proven extremely popular with the onsite facilities management team at The Bend. As Nick Rench, IT Manager at The Bend explains: “The combined IPTV, digital signage and media distribution system delivers a great guest experience and allows us to quickly meet the needs of our corporate hospitality clients, who require high quality, branded images and video to support their events.”
“The system has proven easy to use and we have yet to receive any request we were unable to deliver using the Exterity software.” says Rench. “The experts from Ci have been with us every step of the way with training and support and overall, the AV elements of The Bend have been the least challenging aspect of the project, while delivering capabilities that have exceeded our expectations.”
Racing to the future, Marafioti expects the Exterity solution to extend to the proposed trackside villas that are currently under development. Once built, they will offer racing teams, sponsors and guests an unrivalled access to the motorsport facilities.
