Northview Church in greater Indianapolis is seeing substantial growth, with seven campuses and up to 2,200 attending services at the main campus in Carmel, Ind.
An 80x30 foot screen is a large focal point for the worship service, but the church's 10-year old projection system was losing brightness. Travis Carpenter, Production Service Manager for Northview Church, oversees the overall production value and knew he needed to address the brightness issue before it detracted further from the weekly worship experience. He also felt limited by the inflexibility of the current technology, and was ready to move to a more versatile system.
His initial thought was to replace the system with LED panels, but the infrastructure didn’t work and the project became cost-prohibitive. Carpenter then began looking into projection, and sought the expertise of Jon Cawston, who is owner of JNE Productions, a company specializing in design and integration specifically in church applications. After researching a variety of projectors at trade shows, Carpenter says he decided on Barco’s UDX series because it is laser-based and super-bright.
“We did a demo in the space comparing the existing equipment to the UDX,” says Carpenter. “And there was no comparison.” He says the UDX won out because of the clarity of the image from the 4K projector. “Our content is contrast heavy, with a lot of black in the background. The UDX projection delivers a more powerful image that pops for the end user.”
For a multi-location church like Northview, Carpenter says there’s another benefit to the UDX. The laser projector eliminated the need to monitor lamp hours. With each of the church’s locations having a minimum of three projectors, he says this greatly streamlined maintenance for Northview’s technical staff. The Constant Light Output mode is designed to lighten the maintenance load by extending the life of the system and prevent it from loosing brightness.
Carpenter worked with Jon Cawston to install the new projection system. The installation only took three days, so no Sunday services took place without the massive screen in use. The process included installing hydraulic lifts, adding additional voltage and adjusting the image blending across the six projectors so that one large seamless image is displayed.
“A year ago, this technology would not have been available to them,” says Cawston. “The UDX addresses the simultaneous issues of brightness, system flexibility, and frame delay. The math just works to make this the only viable option in this setting.”
In addition to the six projectors for the services, the church also acquired three additional projectors for special event use around the building, allowing the church to use projection technology at more events without the expense and hassle of using a rental house. Church projection can be a factor in educational sessions and specialized training opportunities.
At the same time, Carpenter also upgraded the media server to Barco’s E2 Master system. Supporting native 4K input/output, the E2 is designed to manage a 4K projector blend with refresh rates up to 60Hz.
Integrator Cawston also attends Northview Church and runs technology at one of the satellite campuses. “On the first day of services with UDX,” remarks Cawston, “My phone blew up with texts from people wanting to know what had changed, it was such a marked improvement. In fact, for the first few weeks, each week I get comments from people who see the difference.”
