The 2009 Display was the biggest, best display yet. After two years without a major addition, the display was losing its edge. Therefore, I decided early on that this year would include new features. After much though, I also realized that the display needed new music.

Planning for the 2009 display began in March 2008. Initially, I was planning to implement these additions for the 2008 display. I spent 7 months selecting and editing the music for the display. Unfortunately, the music editing process took so long that I no longer had time to implement the other major enhancement. Frantically, I tried to complete everything in time, but by late October, I realized that it was not going to happen for 2008. I decided that, in order to do it right, I would have to delay it by a year.

The other major enhancement was the addition of video. Although it was not difficult to build, like the MegaTree was, it was complicated to design and integrate. The original show controller did not support video, so I had to design a communication method so the video would remain synchronized with the rest of the show. Unfortunately, this link had some bugs that took a few days to fix. This meant that the display did not go live until December 10, 2009. During the run of the display, the video playback link also suffered some trouble that prohibited the video from playing during a few shows. Fortunatly, this was an infrequent error and the rest of the display went as planned. With the level of complexity inherent in frame-synchronized high definition video playback, it is a wonder we did not have more trouble.

During one of the seven songs, I showed videos and photos from my neighbors' past Christmases. I am very thankful that the community has supported the display for these many years, and I believe that it is only proper that I include them in the display itself.