How we bring order to the world of LED overload with 7thSense Spectator…
Ever looked at a giant LED display and wondered how on earth all those pixels stay perfectly in sync? We're talking about the sort of mega canvasses you see in places like planetariums, dome theatres, and of course, the jaw-dropping Sphere in Las Vegas. These aren’t your average screens - they’re feats of AV engineering, stacked with dozens of video feeds that together create seamless, mind-blowing visual experiences. But here’s the thing: if you're behind the scenes making that all happen, how do you keep tabs on what’s going on across every square inch of that display?
That’s where confidence monitoring - and 7thSense - come in.
So… what is confidence monitoring?
It’s exactly what it sounds like: being able to see and trust that your content is showing up exactly how and where it should. If something goes wrong - if a feed drops, a server is displaying the wrong media on a section of the screen, a colour looks off, or a frame skips - you want to know right away. And if you’re working with mega canvasses made up of 20, 30, or even 50 feeds? That’s a lot to keep track of!
Why it matters: What you see isn’t always what you get…
Here's the catch: high-resolution video signals sent to LED displays are often “pixel-packed” to be super-efficient - but that makes them totally unintelligible to the human eye. If you're an operator looking at the raw feed, it might just look like digital soup. You know the data's in there, but good luck making sense of it.
Meet Spectator: Seeing the Bigger Picture (literally)
Spectator is 7thSense’s answer to this modern challenge. Built on our Juggler pixel processor and Delta Media Server platforms, Spectator is a solution that takes all those complex, high-spec video feeds and turns them into something you can actually seeand understand - in real time.
Let’s say you’ve got a display with 32 synced-up 4K ST 2110 feeds (yes, that’s a real thing…). Spectator scales each one down just enough to preserve clarity while reducing the total bandwidth load. These lighter-weight streams are then composited into a single, information-dense view. Want to zoom in on one specific feed in its full glory? No problem - Spectator’s got you covered there, too.
Real-World Impact: Sphere Las Vegas
Let’s talk about Sphere. If you've seen the viral videos, you know - it’s an LED marvel with a 160,000 sq. ft. wraparound screen inside, and an eye-popping external LED display outside. Behind all that magic is serious tech, and 7thSense plays a role in making sure it all works seamlessly.
At Sphere, confidence monitoring isn’t just a nice-to-have - it’s essential. Operators need to know, second-by-second, that every feed is hitting its target. That’s where our technology - especially Spectator - comes into play. It helps make the invisible… visible - giving teams the real-time insight they need to keep things running perfectly, even when the display is anything but simple.
Contextual Monitoring: More than Just Boxes on a Screen
Traditional monitoring shows you video in standard rectangles. That’s fine for troubleshooting, but not exactly helpful when your canvas is a 360° dome or a planetarium. Spectator takes it a step further: by wrapping the video feeds onto a 3D geometry that matches the actual display surface, you get a live digital twin of your system. You can rotate it, zoom in, view it from any angle.
This kind of contextual monitoring changes the game. Operators can finally see what the audience sees, in the same context and shape - no more guessing how that warped video will look when projected onto a curved surface.
The best part? Spectator’s final output can be streamed via NDI, so your confidence monitor can be on a regular display, a laptop, or even wrapped onto a digital 3D model displayed in a VR headset so operators can look around at a “digital twin” like they are actually in front of the displays.
Wait, what’s NDI?
In simple terms, NDI (Network Device Interface) is a way to send video over a standard network. As a network video transport protocol, it is like SMPTE ST 2110 but instead of needing a high-speed network to handle the uncompressed ST 2110 signal, NDI uses a visually lossless codec to compress the data so it will work on standard networks. Rather than special cables and equipment for monitoring live video feeds, NDI streams video over standard Ethernet networks and uses software running on regular computers (even laptops or VR headsets) to view it. It’s fast, flexible, and a great solution for confidence monitoring.
Why Spectator Matters
If you’re working with massive displays that blend art and technology, you need tools that help you make sense of it all. With Spectator, 7thSense delivers exactly that - a scalable, intuitive confidence monitoring solution that makes complex systems understandable and accessible, and ensures that your content looks as good on the canvas as it does in your head.
It’s not just about feeds and pixels - it’s about clarity, confidence, and creativity without compromise
Read more about 7thSense Spectator here >