Atlantic City casino claims 'world's largest outdoor video display'

Harrah's Resort Atlantic City is more than 500 feet of proof that digital signage deployments can come in nearly all shapes and sizes.

At more than 500 feet tall, the entire building is a digital signage installation that illuminates the night sky in Atlantic City.

"You see it for miles," said Mike Tully, vice president of Specialized Productions Inc. (SPI), the company that designs most of the digital signage content for the Harrah's building. "It's almost like the old days when you used to have those searchlights in the sky and people would know ‘Hey, something interesting's happening over there,' but this is more dynamic."

LED lights have been built into the structure of all four exterior walls, and the whole of it is "claimed to be the world largest outdoor video display," says Todd Rickenbach, national sales manager for SPI.

"Once dusk hits, their lightshow will come on, and it's really a sight to see," he said.

The building becomes a digital signage installation promoting upcoming events at Harrah's that can be seen from as far away as the Atlantic City Expressway a mile or two away, according to Rickenbach — further proof, he says, that the possibilities of digital signage are effectively endless.

"A lot of people, when they think of digital signage, they think of that digital billboard on the side of the highway, or they think of a digital flat screen televisions," Rickenbach said. "But really it is limitless, and with the different companies and providers out there today, there are curtains, there's video walls, there's multiscreen synchronization, there's the 77-foot serpentine [ribbon display] we've done."

SPI specializes in digital signage content creation, primarily for the casino and gaming industry, and in designing entire digital signage and audio/visual systems. In one casino they designed a 77-foot long serpentine video ribbon, along with animated content — like dancing slot machines — to go on it.

Working with digital signage deployments of this size brings with it certain technical considerations, primary among them the need to realize that the message is meant to be seen from far away.

"One of the most important things is to realize that these visualizations, these displays, are created to be seen from a distance," Rickenbach said. "You have to take that into account…and make sure that it catches people's eyes and is clear and visible from that distance."

The building's LED system is run through a C-nario digital signage playback platform, Tully says, which converts the huge initial image files from SPI into six smaller light panel shows for the four exterior walls of the building.

The building was retrofitted with the LED lights, and Harrah's took special care to do so in a way that avoids marring the view for its guests. Above and below each room window are strips of LED lights that work together to form, in effect, a huge LED screen, Tully says.

"The pixels of this screen are so large they call it a light show. It really is a light show at the end of the day, although it is a big huge LED display," he said. "Somewhere along the way it converts from an LED screen to a light show."

The ROI measurement for the display system is simply drawing attention to Harrah's and getting more people into the resort and into its attractions, Tully says. When people arrive in Atlantic City they can see the casino-dominated skyline, he says, but the huge light show on the Harrah's building is aimed at distracting visitors and getting them to turn away from the main core of casinos and turning off toward Harrah's.

"And it seems to be working," he said. "It does grab your attention; you're almost mesmerized."