A cool company in Beijing is promoting its motion-picture subway tunnel ad-projector system that can play movie-like commercials underground, although without sound as of yet. From Forbes Asia magazine (video clips taken last December in Beijing’s subway and edited by Michael Zhao):
One afternoon last December riders on Beijing’s eastbound subway line 1, which runs under Tiananmen Square, noticed some unusual activity on the walls outside their train. An MSN butterfly flapped its colorful wings, drawing outlines of a jacket, a car and a cell phone as the train sped by. The animated ad, meant to depict the trappings of an upper-class lifestyle, ultimately invited well-off Chinese commuters to participate in an online survey so MSN’s Chinese Web site could offer them better products and services.
MSN is trying the latest phenomenon in outdoor advertising: underground moving-image ads. The technology, installed by Beijing Topflash Media and promoted by its relentless founder, Cao Bin, is triggered when a sensor detects a train approaching. Immediately 300 vertical LED tubes flash lights that depict the pixels of still images. The technology depends on the speed of the train: As it reaches full velocity (40mph in Beijing), the subway simulates a movie projector, showing riders individual frames of the ads in sequence, at the ideal rate of 17 to 18 per second. The human eye naturally connects the images so that they appear continuous. “We are able to present one digital image after another by harnessing the speeding train,” says Cao, 46. [Full Text]
