From TF1 to France: Bringing Unreal Engine XR to Life with INFiLED LED Displays

TF1 is France’s largest and most prestigious television channel, broadcasting quality programming to millions daily. Its strong CSR values and commitment to social responsibility have made it France’s No 1 news medium for responsible reporting. It goes without saying that it’s also a pioneer in broadcast innovation.

So, ambitious to set new standards in depth, realism and viewer engagement, TF1 developed a project to create an immersive space,  integrating extended reality sequences generated in real time using Unreal Engine technology.

Having successfully collaborated with INFiLED in 2023 on the “Bonjour!, the morning show” show studio and for immersive sequences for daily News shows 13H and 20H in 2024, TF1 knew exactly INFiLED is the one to trust to bring this next project to life.

Together with our partner CACV, a leading audiovisual system integrator in France, we upgraded TF1’s broadcast studio with a 10.5m x 3m curved LED screen built using LED panels from our Xmk2 Series — helping bring their bold vision for next-generation broadcasting to life.

About CACV: Expert System Integration for Broadcast Innovation

Founded in France, CACV specializes in designing and integrating high-performance audiovisual systems for broadcast, production, and corporate environments.

Their in-depth understanding of studio workflows and advanced XR systems made them an ideal partner for TF1’s virtual newsroom project.

From planning to integration, the team at CACV played a key role in ensuring the seamless performance and long-term stability of the entire system — bridging creative ambition with technical precision.

The Vision: more-than-real viewing

TF1 wanted to improve their viewers’ experience and understanding by offering more immersive, dynamic presentations. It wanted the freedom to create detailed worlds for their viewers to step into. The vision was to give presenters the power to evolve virtual environments by integrating augmented and extended reality through Unreal Engine 5 – and all during live broadcasting.

TF1 needed a performance-ready LED screen that would support this big ambition.

The Challenge: perfection every time

Live broadcasting is not a forgiving medium. One mistake, one glitch, or five seconds of crappy visuals and your reputation is shot. So much can go wrong. With presenters newly trained on the system, and a live audience of millions, making sure the tech can’t go wrong is one less thing to worry about.

But LED screens used in live broadcasting have their own challenges:

• Camera sensitivity: studio cameras are sensitive to color shifts, so LED displays need uniform color across every pixel. Cameras also pick up flickering, blurring and scan lines super-easily.
• Bright studio lights: these cause glare or washout, destroying those fine details and deep blacks of a quality experience.
• Moiré: Beautiful on silk, but not so good on screen. Poorly calibrated or chunky pixel pitches can create those distracting migraine-inducing wavy lines.
• Flexibility: the visuals must zip along as fast as the news, and handle different formats – live interviews, graphics, in-the-field reporting, the works – effortlessly.
• Reliability: Post production doesn’t exist in live broadcasting, so LED screens must function perfectly every time.

The INFiLED Solution: visually impressive reliability

We were delighted to provide TF1 with the modified IRX1.95M2mk2 Ultra LED display. This model, from our flagship broadcast-grade and ultra-thin Xmk2 Series, is engineered to perform beautifully and flexibly, whatever’s thrown at it.

We chose the LED display product from our Xmk2 Series for its superior color accuracy, contrast, and smoothness — critical for virtual production in real time. The team’s set-up was based around a curved screen, scaled up to 10.5m x 3m, founded upon two of INFiLED’s proprietary technologies, Armor LED and  CBSF(Color & Brightness Shift Free):

• CBSF: this resolves the age-old problem of color shift like blueish or reddish hues distorting images when viewed from a wide angle. CBSF harmonizes RGB across pixels, stabilizing color temperature, whatever the angle of view. It also stabilizes brightness, giving the LED display picture consistency. And, because it’s energy-saving, it aligns with TF1’s values (and ours!).
• ArmorLED: In a busy studio, LED display screens need to be robust to withstand the high traffic, high-energy and constant reconfigurations of 24hr live newsrooms. ArmorLEDs have 3 to 5 times the thrust of standard LEDs, and we used 4 different techniques to achieve this, giving TF1’s LED screen built-in robustness and reliability.

This wasn’t all. INFiLED’s LED screen rose to the challenge of live broadcasting’s standard problems and TF1’s unique ambition through:

• An adaptable, ultra-flexible modular LED screen build tailored to the studio requirements and camera angles.
• 95mm pixel pitch and pixel density of 262.144 pixels per square meter to eliminate moiré, and create sharper, ultra-realistic visuals.
• Seamless integration with TF1’s XR and Unreal Engine array.

The result: high-pressure reliability and rock-solid visuals

We were beyond excited to support TF1’s groundbreaking adventure into real-time XR for millions of viewers, and proud to continue our partnership with France’s premier broadcaster.

Looking to enhance the realism of a virtual environment, or add more creative opportunities to your livestreaming, broadcasting or filmmaking? We’re used to high-stakes environments, such as the French presidential debate, or immersive one-site 3D filmmaking, such as Tendot’s virtual studio or X3D, South East Asia’s largest virtual production studio.

We invite you to speak to one of our team members across France about how our solutions can benefit your broadcast or virtual production studios.

You can also try our Product Configurator tool to help you design the right displays for your space.