Wilshire Media Systems, a division of Wilshire Home Entertainment will provide a “quantum leap” upgrade to the capabilities of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to display ultra-high resolution images from JPL’s active missions across the solar system. This includes images coming from the Mars Science Laboratory, known as “Curiosity”.
Wilshire will install an Ultra-Definition Video Wall consisting of 16 video panels in a 4×4 configuration (stacked four high and four across) for a total size of 13.5′ x 7.5′. The video wall will provide unprecedented display capability of imagery from JPL’s spacecraft and planetary rovers. Wilshire Media Systems’ design is in response to JPL’s desire to have an affordable state-of-the-art system that provides clear, crisp, and sharp resolution that would dramatically advance JPL’s ability to view this imagery and further its desire to educate the public about our solar system. The resolution is far beyond its current systems, and over twice the resolution of Digital Cinema 4K.
Curiosity will provide a large amount of images that can be combined into one large file in excess of 250 MB in size. With a traditional projection-style system, these images can appear grainy the more you try to zoom in on a particular feature. Wilshire designed and integrated a system that allows you to blow up an image and not lose resolution, right up to the inherent native resolution of the original image. It’s spectacular to see Hubble Telescope or Mars Rover imagery spread across a massive video wall that possesses the internal capabilities of this system.
This is the second project Wilshire has been involved in at JPL. Earlier this year, Wilshire was competitively selected to provide integration services for JPL’s upgraded Space Flight Operations Facility, enabling the center to input data to 36 monitors from sources on Earth and in space. Much of this capability was seen during the broadcast of Curiosity’s landing.