http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/0...nkees-new.html
Yankee Stadium's New HDTV Is Bigger Than Yours -- Way Bigger
By Jose Fermoso
March 25, 2009
Anyone walking into the new $1.3 billion stadium for the New York Yankees this spring is bound to be amazed by the size of the center field LED scoreboard, as the first photos of the screen reveal.
Taken by a local CBS affiliate in New York, the pics show early tests of the 103-by-58-foot, 1080p HD Mitsubishi Diamond Vision LED display, which is six times larger than the screen at old Yankee Stadium. According to Mitsubishi, the display is embedded with 8,601,600 LED lamps (covering a total of 5,925 square feet), and can put up to four simultaneous images, with picture-in-picture capabilities.
Some fans are worried that the screen will overshadow the game itself. Since it's located at the same height as the stadium's second deck and seems to occupy a quarter of the whole outfield façade, this seems quite possible. That is prime viewing position for nearly everyone inside (including the players), and it's only natural to continually glance over at a giant flickering thing rather than the serene pastoral slowness of the game.
So you'd think that with that enormous screen, umpires will be using it with the new replay system, right? Alas, no.
According to Major League Baseball, teams are forbidden from showing "a replay of any play that could incite either team or the fans." Judgment calls will continue being made by the umps, as they always have. It's possible that once a play has been decided, the scoreboard will show versions of disputed plays, but with a screen that size, any possible mistake by the umps could be compounded.
The giant screen is part of a big display tech development for the new Stadium, which also includes about 1,400 other video screens of all sizes, and about 550 of them are flat-panel Sony Bravias.
All displays will be managed by an IP-based network from Cisco Systems. Every one of those TVs will have a singular IP address that can be manipulated for specific MPEG-4 compressed video.
Expect the system to be used to sell ads within the stadium and to show awkward baseball-themed marriage proposals.
Last but not least, big-screen specialist Daktronics also built a video/scoring system that manages a 1,280-foot long color LED ribbon board mounted to the facade of the second deck and will be one of the longest continuous displays in sports. Just like the giant Times Square screen we featured months ago, the LED ribbon board is made out of hundreds of smaller LED 'cubes.' This one will show lineups and other team info and will occasionally show psychedelic light shows during the night (see pic above).
We'll see if the Yankees break from old-school baseball tradition and use all of those displays to put on the first legitimate pre-game light-show-in-the-dark introductions, just like the NBA does in most of its arenas.
