Pro Football Hall of Fame

In 2009 the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH completed a major upgrade of the GameDay Stadium theater. The goals: streamline program content updates, improve the theater’s acoustics, and make the rooms accessible for special events. Working with NFL Films, RBDG provided architectural, acoustic and infrastructure design consultation and completed the upgrade in 4 short months, just in time for the Hall of Fame Enshrinement.

The theater’s two rooms display separate yet synchronized programs, with a turntable floor to move the audience. From opening doors to rotating the theater, a controller synchronizes and triggers every element of the show, including all aspects of lighting and video playback. RBDG brought in Altel Systems Group to provide systems integration.

Projection was converted from 35mm film to high-definition video. In the theater’s larger room, a 1080p 15,000 ANSI lumens projector displays programs on a custom 30’x16’ Cinecurve screen. The 6000 lumens projector in the smaller theater needed to be housed within the room, so RBDG commissioned a custom soffit sound enclosure to control noise from the required ventilation and the projector itself. All new Electro-Voice theater speaker systems and DSP processing create top quality audio for the theater’s two rooms. RBDG was able to place speakers behind the perforated screens for an ideal surround experience.

A combination of Crestron and Alcorn McBride systems allows operators access to controls for the NFL Films program. Monitors provide views of the two audiences and the screens, so the operators can ensure that the screen images are correct and visitors are safe as the theater rotates. RBDG and Altel devised a method to provide access to additional media sources to make the theater suitable for third-party rentals for special events.