Only last week, online readers of Studio Live Design, a platform for designers and technicians of live events, chose the Eurovision Song Contest 2013 as the winner of the Annual Excellence award in the ‘Live for Broadcast’ category. The award is a credit to Barco, as Eurovision 2013 was an all-Barco show powered by a total of 60 Barco projectors, including 26 units of the high-brightness HDQ-2K40. That same HDQ-2K40 will now play a starring role in this year’s Eurovision too. The 16 HDQ units will be combined with 16 HDX-W20 projectors to display the brightest images. Three Barco Encore presentation switchers will be used to control and map the video content. 

Projecting onto the cube 
This year’s 35m x 20m Eurovision stage is designed around a glowing cube, showcasing the industrial heritage of the B&W Hallerne venue - a former shipyard. The cube itself consists of 120 modules with a special surface of projection film, which allows the display of pictures or animation. Mediatec Solutions took care of integrating the Barco gear into this setting, just as it did last year. Niclas Ljung, Project Manager: "It was an absolute delight to work with Barco’s HDQ-2K40 projectors at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo. We are confident that the projectors will perform as flawlessly this year. The HDQ-2K40 projectors are so bright and powerful that they can project high-resolution images from the most extreme angles. The HDX-W20 projectors are equipped with class-leading on-board image processing for extreme scaling. They are, therefore, perfectly up to the challenge of projecting onto the cube from a very short distance.” 

Largest TV show in the world 
“Barco is delighted to be the Official Technical Event Sponsor of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, together with Mediatec Solutions. Year after year, the ESC show manages to amaze 120 million spectators, dotted around the world, with its incredibly creative set-up,” says Richard Marples, Strategic Marketing Director Venues and Attractions at Barco. “This year again, every projection the TV spectators will see on their screen will be powered by Barco. We can’t think of a better way to showcase our innovative projection solutions.”