Panasonic PT-RQ25K projectors and HIVE media players transform National Museum of Qatar

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Client: The National Museum of Qatar

Location: Qatar

Product(s) supplied: PT-RQ25K

Challenge

The National Museum of Qatar is renowned for its immersive visitor experience, combining cinematic projection, artefacts and exhibition design to tell the story of Qatar's history, culture and future ambitions.

As immersive experiences have become more common since the museum opened in 2019, the installation required a technology upgrade to deliver greater brightness, improved operational efficiency and simplified long-term management, while maintaining the exceptional image quality and storytelling experience visitors expect.

Solution

HIVE and Panasonic upgraded the museum with 128 Panasonic PT-RQ25K 3-Chip 4K laser projectors and a next-generation HIVE platform of 172 Beeblade media engines.

By embedding HIVE technology directly into each projector via the SDM slot, the solution eliminates the need for external media servers, reducing installation complexity, cabling and potential points of failure. Projection alignment is managed using VIOSO software, while HIVE provides centralised monitoring, reporting and control across the site.

HIVE and Panasonic have helped deliver one of the world's most technologically ambitious immersive museum experiences at the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ), where more than 170 HIVE media engines drive 128 Panasonic 20,000 lm 4K projectors across a series of large-scale projection environments. The deployment processes more than 21 billion pixels of visual content every second, bringing Qatar's history, culture and future ambitions to life through immersive storytelling.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, the National Museum of Qatar is renowned for its striking desert rose-inspired architecture and immersive visitor experience. The museum's galleries combine cinematic projection, artefacts and exhibition design to guide visitors through Qatar's journey from prehistoric landscapes and early settlements to the nation's modern development and future vision.

At the heart of the system is a distributed playback architecture comprising 150 Beeblade Pluto media engines, 30 Beeblade Minima media engines and 14 Beehive enclosures. Together, they deliver 8K 10-bit HEVC playback, projection mapping and site-wide scheduling, ensuring synchronised content playback across the museum's immersive galleries.

Projection alignment and blending are managed using VIOSO software, while HIVE's platform provides centralised monitoring, reporting and control to simplify long-term operation.

The visual experience is to be delivered by 128 Panasonic PT-RQ25K 3-Chip 4K projectors installed throughout the museum's immersive galleries, projecting cinematic content across complex curved architectural surfaces and exhibition environments. With 20,000 lumens capability, the PT-RQ25K provides approximately double the light output of the PT-RQ13K projectors being phased out as part of the upgrade programme. This additional performance headroom allows the museum to operate the projectors at substantially lower output levels while maintaining exceptional image quality.

Unlike many projection-mapped attractions, visitors can approach the projected surfaces directly, placing exceptional demands on image quality and system performance. Purposely filmed for DLP content, the films, captured largely in 8K resolution using multi-rig camera systems, are projected across dynamically curved gallery walls and architectural surfaces at monumental scale, creating a seamless blend of architecture, content and storytelling.

The deployment demonstrates how modern media server technology can support large-scale immersive environments while simplifying installation, operation and long-term maintenance. Processing more than 21 billion pixels of visual content every second, the system enables the museum to deliver cinematic storytelling across multiple galleries while maintaining synchronised playback and consistent image quality throughout.

For HIVE, the project represents a major milestone and a powerful reference for immersive cultural installations worldwide.

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