Northcote Baptist Church

Forward Compatible Video Solution for a Cutting-Edge Church

Today's churches and their congregations increasingly require flexible and future proofed audio-visual solutions. Northcote Baptist Church, located in the suburb of Hillcrest on Auckland's North Shore, is no different.
Although quality sound is undoubtedly indispensable to today's church activities, video projection too is becoming essential not only for displaying song words, PowerPoints and videos clips in the main auditorium but increasingly to be distributed around the church buildings. Northcote Baptist Church offers an array of community programmes from mother and baby music groups to a "Kid's Rock" Sunday School and is a popular venue for weddings and funerals, which can take place in rooms off the main auditorium.

The church decided to replace the data projector, looking for a considerably brighter model to improve accessibility, particularly for the older members of the congregation or those seated near the back. However, John Gilbert, the Church Maintenance Manager wanted to ensure any solution was future-proofed.
John recalls, Our main concern regarding the data projector was that whatever we did was forward compatible. The system needed to be expandable because at some point the church plans to distribute video around the building, allowing people in areas other than the main body of the church to see what is happening. For example, we would like families with young children in Sunday school to be able to listen and see the sermon.

Northcote Baptist Church already had an existing relationship with AAE and trusted the team to give the church leaders the best advice. They listened to the church's current requirements, discussed with them their future plans and recommended installing a Video-over-IP system to replace their outdated VGA projection system. Video-over-IP can run over any network cable infrastructure which means it is easy to expand in the future. The network switch that was installed enables up to 16 devices to be connected including IP cameras. Built-in LEDs provide quick and easy monitoring of all devices.

Following the successful installation, John commented, There was the odd technical hiccup as there always is with a job of this size, but it was all done pretty quickly. John was particularly impressed by AAE's flexibility. AAE scheduled the installation around some work that needed to be done on the church fire alarm system and allowed the church to use the scissor lift for both jobs, saving the church considerable time and money.

We have achieved everything we initially wanted. We have a high-resolution data projector that means that even when people use small font sizes, those of us who used to struggle, can now see the words. And we have the capability to add cameras and video switches and provide video across the site.
John concludes, I guess I am seriously biased about AAE! I found them highly professional, easy to work with and they went the extra mile, for example in the case of the scissor lift. That's the kind of gesture that you really appreciate as a community church.