Being one of the oldest nations in Europe, with their country founded more than thousand years ago in 896, the Hungarians respect their history and promote their culture across the nation and internationally. History says that on August 20, 1000, István (Stephen) I was crowned on the Hungarian throne to become the first king of Hungary.
St. Stephen’s Day, Hungary’s birthday, is celebrated with a special sentiment and splendor. On this day, Budapest turns into a huge stage to host a magnificent festival of culture, history, and technological advances. Since 2021, the Hungarian capital has witnessed the most fascinating and technically ambitious video mapping shows sited on the beautiful banks of the Danube. A number of iconic locations, including the buildings of the Hungarian Parliament, the National Gallery, the Buda Castle, and Gellért Hill become an epic canvas for a dazzling night projection performance to reflect on the nation’s history and culture.
The Hungarian AV production and integration company Visual Europe Group, being one of the biggest operators of the live events and rental market in Central and Eastern Europe has provided the production, installation, and performance for the country’s birthday video mapping show for three years in a row. In August 2022, the company created 20 outdoor stages across the capital, including the main attraction area on the Danube’s banks. Visual Europe Group developed a project to deploy 54 units of powerful 35000 lm projectors and 4 units of 50000 lm machines from Panasonic, as well as 700 units of moving lights, and sound systems with more than 1000 speakers and Unilum Upad III video walls covering approximately 200m2 all around the city.
For this challenging project of audiovisual narrative, Visual Europe Group utilized Lightware’s technology for the AV signal routing and delivery over a distance of 4.8km and across the river at 400 mtr. In particular, there were deployed Lightware’s
-
MX2-48x48 matrix switcher x 2 units (1 + 1 as backup) providing 4K60Hz 4:4:4 signal management over HDMI 2.0 and featuring Display Port 1.2 connections;
-
MX-17x17DVI PRO matrix switcher with CPU2 board x 1 unit with 20 pairs of Lightware DVI extenders;
-
Fiber optical HDMI 2.0 extension pair of 220Pro Series supporting EDID Management HDMI-OPTC-220-Pro x 20 units.
Visual Europe Group managed to complete the installation of the huge fleet of devices, including focusing for masking, wrapping, and adjustment in the record 3 days. Many years of seamless use of Lightware’s devices made the choice of technology for the project an easy job for the integrator. Visual Europe Group opted for Lightware being confident of its excellent performance, exceptional reliability and redundancy.
Lightware’s team extended its experienced helping hand to the engineers of Visual Europe Group to offer its broad support at the time of the project development and during the show.
The Budapest monumental projection performance entered the list of the best global video mapping events. Its success is the result of the colossal amount of creativity and cooperation between Visual Europe Group and technology suppliers. For Lightware, it was a matter of honor to provide its flagman solutions for its hometown's iconic video mapping project.
