At a glance
- Client: Netflix, the Live Command Center on the Los Gatos campus
- Location: 121 Albright Way, Los Gatos, California — room F129, with the feeder IDF in F131 and displays continuing into the corridor
- Scope: 24 legacy 50 inch displays removed and replaced with 20 Sony FW65BZ40L on a new speed-rail wall, plus two 85 inch displays, five corridor displays, new LCR and surround loudspeakers, a new amplifier and a reprogrammed Q-SYS control system
- Platform: Q-SYS control with Sony BRAVIA professional displays and client-provided IPTV decoders
The situation
A live command center is a room full of people watching screens so that somebody else does not have to. Netflix runs one on its Los Gatos campus: ten operator desks on height-adjustable consoles facing a wall of displays, with an IDF next door feeding every one of them. The project sits within our command center and control room AV work, and within the enterprise audiovisual systems we build for corporate campuses.
That wall was 24 fifty-inch LG displays on a floor-post structure. The scope of work sets three objectives for replacing it, and they are usefully unglamorous: enhance viewing quality, maximize vertical space utilization, and simplify system operation. In practice that meant fewer, larger, brighter screens, mounted so the people sitting down can actually read them, on a control system that had accumulated features nobody used.
One of those features is worth naming because removing it was part of the brief. The Q-SYS system carried a quad and tile view mode and a set of LG display drivers. Both were decommissioned outright rather than carried forward. A control room UI that offers an operator several ways to do one thing is not flexible, it is slow.
What made it hard
Sightlines, first. Operators sit at consoles that adjust between a low seated position and a 45 inch standing height, and a two-row wall puts the top row well above eye level. The drawings work the angles: 16 and 26 degrees to the two rows seated, 17 and 29 degrees standing. The scope of work fixes the answer — the top row is mounted on fixed 15 degree brackets, tilted down at the people using them.
Second, the wall itself was not our structure. Forecast Consoles supplied and installed the aluminum speed-rail system onto new backing provided by the general contractor, so our mounting hardware had to be compatible with their rail spacing, and Sony's four-inch clearance requirement on every side of every panel had to survive the coordination. On site, the rails still had to move: a daily log records Forecast repositioning the horizontal bars so the displays could reach their drawn elevations.
Third, a room like this does not politely stand still. The floor boxes feeding the operator desks were documented and photographed jack by jack before anything was unplugged, because the tables had to go back exactly as they were. Even so, the data contractor certifying cable mid-project unplugged every AV data cable and reconnected them in a different order — one line in a daily log, and a full re-patch to put right.
How we designed it
The wall is 20 Sony FW65BZ40L 65 inch professional displays in ten columns of two, on 64 inch centers, with the lower row centered 74 and a quarter inches above finished floor and the upper row at 108 and an eighth. Twelve fixed 15 degree brackets tilt the top row. These are 700 nit, 24/7-rated panels rather than consumer televisions, which is the specification that matters in a room that never turns off.
Two Sony FW85BZ40L 85 inch displays went on the side wall by the IDF door, on Chief LVS1U ConnexSys rails, behind a cutout in the acoustic fabric wall cut by others. Five more 65 inch displays run down the exterior corridor on swing-arm mounts at eight foot three centers, and a client-supplied 50 inch signage display at the entry runs digital signage content from a BrightSign player. The five world clocks came back under the lower row, evenly spaced, on new data runs.
Audio was rebuilt around the new wall rather than left where it was. Three QSC AD-S8T commercial loudspeakers on AD-YMS8 yoke mounts carry left, center and right at a height that keeps the 5.1 imaging honest without blocking a sightline; two AD-S6T surrounds went on the south wall; the existing subwoofers stayed and were reconnected. A QSC CX-Q 4K8 network amplifier replaced the old amplification in the in-room rack.
The decision we would point to on any future control room is the one that costs little now and a lot later: six additional runs of 14 gauge speaker cable were pulled, loomed, labeled and left unterminated in the soffit for a future Atmos expansion — front left and right, center left and right, surround rear left and right. Cable is cheap while the ceiling is open. Our design and integration team treats spare capacity as part of the design, not as a change order waiting to happen.
Control was reworked to match: new Q-SYS drivers and logic for the Sony displays, every video destination remapped so the decoder behind each panel matches its display number, a new UI page for the side wall displays, and the old LG control and quad and tile logic removed.
Equipment, by location
| Location | Displays | Mounting | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main video wall, LCC | 20 x Sony FW65BZ40L, 65 in | Forecast speed-rail, 12 fixed 15 degree brackets on the top row | 10 columns x 2 rows at 64 in centers |
| Side wall at the IDF door | 2 x Sony FW85BZ40L, 85 in | Chief LVS1U ConnexSys with rails | Behind an acoustic fabric cutout by others |
| Exterior corridor | 5 x Sony FW65BZ40L, 65 in | Chief TS525TU dual swing arm | 8 ft 3 in centers |
| Main entry wall | 1 x 50 in LG, owner-furnished | Chief TS325TU dual swing arm | Driven by an owner-furnished BrightSign XT1144 |
| Function | Model | Qty | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video wall and corridor displays | Sony FW65BZ40L | 26 | 65 in 4K HDR, 700 nit, rated for 24/7 operation; includes one spare new in box |
| Side wall displays | Sony FW85BZ40L | 2 | 85 in 4K HDR, 650 nit, 24/7 |
| Video wall mounting system | Chief LVS1U | 2 | ConnexSys landscape system with rails, for the 85 in pair |
| Corridor display mounts | Chief TS525TU | 5 | Large THINSTALL dual swing arm |
| Entry display mount | Chief TS325TU | 1 | Medium THINSTALL dual swing arm, 25 in extension |
| Left, center and right loudspeakers | QSC AD-S8T-BK | 3 | 8 in two-way surface mount |
| Loudspeaker mounts | QSC AD-YMS8-BK | 3 | Yoke mount, black |
| Surround loudspeakers | QSC AD-S6T-BK | 2 | 6.5 in two-way, south wall, 105 degree coverage |
| Amplifier | QSC CX-Q 4K8 | 1 | Eight-channel Q-SYS network amplifier, in the room IDF rack |
| Speed-rail system | Forecast FC-SL-ANGLE15-400 and rail sections | 12 brackets | Supplied and installed by Forecast Consoles |
| IPTV decoders | Vitec, client-provided | 1 per display | On HDMI 1 behind each panel, matched to display numbers 1 to 20 |
| Camera | Panasonic AW-UE50 | 1 | Existing PTZ, relocated from the front of the room to the rear wall |
| Signage player | BrightSign XT1144 | 1 | Owner-furnished, behind the entry display |
| Subwoofers | Owner-furnished | — | Existing units retained and reconnected |
Forecast Consoles supplied the rail system, Netflix supplied the Vitec decoders and the signage player, and the camera and subwoofers were existing equipment we reused. For comparable rooms, the relevant categories are commercial displays, LCD and LED video walls and display mounting systems.
Network and IT
Netflix owned the switch fabric, provided the IP addresses and VLAN access for control system commissioning, and kept the networking hardware out of AV scope. What we owned was everything hanging off it: a decoder behind each display on HDMI 1, the Q-SYS control logic, the rear camera, and the labeling that ties them together.
That labeling turned out to be the most valuable work on the job. Near the end of the install, the crew recorded, for every cable, the device, the switch number, the port on that switch and the VLAN, and wrote it on the label. A few days later the cable certification contractor unplugged all of it and put it back in the wrong order — and it was recoverable because the labels said where each run belonged. Every control room deserves that record.
Our Q-SYS control and DSP programming went further than a driver swap. Video destination mapping was rewritten so decoder assignments follow display numbers 1 to 20, a new control page was added for the side wall, the Sony display drivers were written and the LG drivers and the quad and tile view logic were decommissioned. Data drops for the corridor and side wall displays, and the new 20 amp circuits, were the low-voltage and electrical contractors' scope and had to land before we could.
The rollout
Twelve days on site across six weeks, with the room decommissioned by Netflix beforehand rather than worked around. The sequence:
- Day one: demolition. Operator tables unplugged, moved to the center of the room and covered; every floor box jack documented and photographed; all 24 displays and their mounts removed, the mounting structure dismantled, wall brackets taken down.
- Day two: delivery. Equipment loaded at the shop and staged in a nearby room, with a site walk for the move.
- Days three to six: the easy walls first. Corridor displays, the entry signage display, the amplifier into the rack, then the two 85 inch displays, the rear speakers and the camera, then the first twelve video wall panels.
- Days seven to ten: the wall and the room. Remaining panels and decoders, tables returned and reconnected to their floor boxes, subwoofers reconnected, then cable management and labeling across the whole wall. Acceptance testing passed on day ten with the control programmer on site.
- Days eleven and twelve: punch. Items closed, wall and displays cleaned, and the displays sorted onto their correct switch ports with the client's on-site technician.
Punch was short and specific: a display needing a longer power cord for its pop-out mount, two panels needing lateral adjustment, a few panels adjusted for side-bezel clearance, and the 85 inch pair sitting visually high from a seated position — lowered as far as the mounts allowed and signed off at the revised elevation. One item stayed open: a dead pixel on one 85 inch panel, handled as an advance replacement with Sony. The client signed off once the punch visits were complete, with the replacement panel tracked separately.
The labor behind those twelve days was 516 hours sold across senior technicians, engineering, CAD and project management — a useful benchmark when scoping a control room wall of this size.
Support from here
Manufacturer warranties on the displays and audio hardware pass to the client with coverage starting at final acceptance, and the installation carries an installer and workmanship warranty on the executed scope. The control programming carries its own 90-day warranty from project acceptance, covering defects in logic or functionality and corrections to the behavior the scope defined — which is the right way to buy programming, because the bugs that matter surface in the first weeks of real operator use, not on the commissioning day.
The spares position is deliberate: one 65 inch display was purchased new in box and left as a spare. In a room where a failed panel is a hole in an operator's view of the service, a spare on a shelf is worth more than a fast RMA. The dead-pixel 85 inch panel went through an advance replacement precisely because there was no spare at that size.
What a wall like this needs afterwards is attention it will not ask for. Panels drift in color against each other, a decoder loses its mapping after a firmware push, a display comes back from a power event on the wrong input. Our maintenance and support program covers scheduled sweeps, firmware management and remote diagnosis, and for a 24/7 room it is the difference between noticing on a Tuesday morning and noticing during an incident.
Frequently Asked Questions — Control Room Video Wall Design and Installation
Answers to the questions operations managers, facilities leads and AV teams ask most often about building and replacing control room video walls.
How do you size a video wall for a control room?
Creation Networks sized the Netflix Live Command Center wall from operator sightlines rather than wall width, replacing 24 fifty-inch displays with 20 Sony FW65BZ40L 65 inch panels in ten columns of two on 64 inch centers, because fewer and larger panels read better from ten operator desks than a dense grid of small screens.
Start from where people sit, what they have to read at a glance and how high the room lets you build. The panel count follows from those three answers.
Why tilt the top row of a two-row video wall?
The top row of a two-row control room wall sits well above a seated operator's eye line, so on this project we mounted it on fixed 15 degree brackets aimed down at the consoles, with the drawings showing viewing angles of 16 and 26 degrees seated and 17 and 29 degrees standing.
An untilted upper row looks right on an elevation drawing and wrong from the chair. Check the angle from the actual seated eye height before the rails go up.
Do control rooms need commercial displays rather than televisions?
A control room that never turns off needs displays rated for continuous duty, which is why this wall uses Sony FW65BZ40L professional panels at 700 nits and the side wall uses Sony FW85BZ40L panels at 650 nits, both rated for 24/7 operation rather than the limited daily hours of a consumer television.
A consumer set run around the clock is working outside its intended duty cycle. In a command center that means earlier failures and a harder warranty conversation.
How long does a control room video wall replacement take?
The Netflix Live Command Center wall replacement took 12 days on site spread across six weeks, made up of one demolition day, one delivery day, eight installation days ending in a passed acceptance test, and two punch-list days with the client's on-site technician.
The elapsed time was set by the trades around us. Backing, power and data had to land before the wall could, and the console vendor's rail installation sat between those trades and ours.
Can a 24/7 operations center stay live while its video wall is replaced?
On this project the client decommissioned the Live Command Center before construction, so our crew could remove the wall, the structure and the floor-box connections at once, with operator tables moved to the center of the room, covered, and every floor-box jack documented and photographed before anything was unplugged.
Phasing a live room is possible with a temporary operating position elsewhere, but it stretches the schedule. Planning that window is part of how we scope audio visual services for rooms that cannot simply close.
What usually goes wrong on a control room video wall install?
Coordination between trades caused the problems on this job rather than the equipment, because the console vendor had to reposition the speed-rail horizontals so panels could reach their drawn elevations, and the cable certification contractor unplugged every AV data run and reconnected them out of order.
The second problem was recoverable because every cable had already been labeled with its device, switch, port and VLAN. Without that record, the re-patch would have meant tracing each run by hand.
Should the audio system be replaced when the video wall is?
Moving from 24 small displays to 20 large ones changes where loudspeakers can go without blocking a sightline, so this project installed three QSC AD-S8T loudspeakers on yoke mounts for left, center and right, two QSC AD-S6T surrounds on the rear wall and a QSC CX-Q 4K8 network amplifier.
The existing subwoofers stayed and were reconnected. Leaving the old speakers where the old wall put them is how a new room ends up sounding worse than the one it replaced.
Is it worth pulling spare cable during an AV refresh?
Pulling spare cable while the ceiling is open costs little, so this project added six runs of 14 gauge speaker cable, loomed, labeled and left unterminated in the soffit for a future Atmos expansion covering front left and right, center left and right, and rear surround left and right.
The alternative is a second mobilization later, ceiling access in a room that never closes, and a change order that costs far more than the cable.
What happens to control programming when the displays change brand?
Control programming gets rewritten rather than patched when displays change brand, so the Q-SYS system here received new Sony display drivers and logic, remapped video destinations matching each decoder to its display number, a new side-wall control page, and removal of the LG drivers and the quad and tile view logic.
Removing features nobody used mattered as much as adding the new ones. An operator interface that offers several routes to one outcome slows the room down.
How are punch-list items handled on a control room build?
Each punch-list item on this project was recorded with its resolution, including a longer power cord for one pop-out mount, lateral adjustment on two panels, and the 85 inch pair lowered as far as its mounts allowed and signed off at the revised elevation, with one dead-pixel panel handled as an advance replacement with Sony.
The dead-pixel panel was the item still waiting on the manufacturer at sign-off. A punch list with a blank resolution column is not finished, however good the wall looks.
Should a control room hold spare displays?
A video wall that runs around the clock should hold at least one spare panel at its most common size, which is why this project bought one Sony FW65BZ40L new in box as a shelf spare for the 25 installed 65 inch displays on the wall and in the corridor.
A failed panel in a command center is a hole in an operator's view. The 85 inch size had no spare, and that was the panel that needed an advance replacement from Sony.
What support does a 24/7 video wall need after handover?
A 24/7 video wall needs scheduled attention after handover, because panels drift in color against each other, decoders can lose their mapping after a firmware push, and displays can return from a power event on the wrong input, which Creation Networks catches through scheduled sweeps, firmware management and remote diagnosis.
The control programming on this wall also carries a 90-day warranty from acceptance. Issues can be raised through our support help desk, and on a room that never closes, the question is whether drift shows up on a quiet morning or during an incident.
Technology partners on this project
Creation Networks, Inc. — nationwide commercial AV integrator, CTS-D certified, based in Concord, CA and Incline Village, NV. Design, engineering, programming, installation, and support from a single point of contact. Call 888-230-3661 or email sales@creationnetworks.net.
CONTROL ROOM VIDEO WALLS
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