When one of our existing clients acquired the luxury yacht Escape II, we were engaged to upgrade the outdated, existing system.
Built by Palmer Johnson and with interiors and exteriors by Nuvolari & Lenard, Escape II is the ultimate luxury experience and the client wanted state-of-the-art audio-visual and the latest technology on board.
M/Y ESCAPE ii
The Ultimate Yacht Experience
To accommodate this, along with overcoming the limited space for hardware in a yacht environment, our team had to be resourceful in creating a high performance, small form factor video server that can playback the client’s extensive movie collection. For group entertainment and socialising, an outdoor cinema was also installed on the deck which has become a very popular feature amongst guests.
Beyond guest entertainment services, Couture Digital implemented an intuitive control system utilsing onscreen instructions so that guests would not require any training to operate the system.
Without the opportunity to implement new structured wiring, our main technical challenge was providing the owner and guests the onboard entertainment options, including high definition video, on legacy cabling. Through creative technical system design, our team was able to deliver a robust and uncompromised multi room audio visual system to no less than twelve independent zones.
Along with the scope of the entertainment system, the client also wanted to provide all cabins with a broad choice of audio video content, even with limited internet connectivity at sea.
In addition, various innovative programming features were configured, such as bandwidth priority to the owner’s cabin, one-touch room ambience scenes, and guest safety briefings on iPad controllers. This last custom feature operated at the start of a new charter; all the iPads would reset to the Health & Safety briefing that detailed what to do in case of an emergency. Guests were required to read and agree to the safety briefing before being able to use any of the entertainment features.
For further guest convenience, our team integrated our control system with TransNav technology so that the client and guests could see in real time the yacht’s exact location in the world and follow their journey at sea.
Integration of our security system also enabled guests to view from the cabin iPads the four exterior CCTV cameras that monitored the front and back of the yacht.
If the technical challenges were not already sufficient, to accommodate the imminent yacht cruising season our project delivery window was significantly compressed, approximately half the time usually required to design, install and programme a system of this specification. An average 20- hour day on rotation schedule meant our team were proud to handover on time as planned. This project was deeply rewarding for the challenging parameters, and the creativity and effort needed to successfully deliver the client’s wishes, and to the schedule required.