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Poll: "Almost there" HD sporting events, what's your take?
There's a great matchup tonight in college hoops pitting two Texas teams against each other: the Longhorns (11) will host the Aggies (#16). A cinema in Tyler, TX is going to be showing an HD feed of the game on the big screen (we shudder to think of an SD feed stretched out to about 70-feet). So, you get to enjoy HD and crowd interaction for $10. Bringing sports to theater/stadium type venues is nothing new, but it makes us wonder -- if people prefer HDTV to live sporting events (and EHD readers agreed), where do these "hybrid" offerings fit in? The price is way lower than the live venue, you still get crowd interaction and the creature comforts are not bad, either. So where do you weigh in? Sound off below! %Poll-9883%
"Godzillatron" goes live at Texas' Royal-Memorial Stadium
We've seen Varsity Blues and Friday Night Lights enough times to know that bragging rights are an important part of Texas football culture, so it's no surprise that the UT Longhorns are filled with pride over their ginormous new stadium display, nicknamed Godzillatron. At 134 feet wide by 55 feet tall, the $8 million dollar screen needed to be mounted to tree trunk-like support columns with 5-inch diameter grounding bolts, and requires 40 five-ton air conditioners to keep it cool in the sometimes unrelenting Texas heat. Problems start to arise, though, if and when school officials refer to Godzillatron as the world's largest HD display -- not only is that plain false (the Tokyo Racecourse's new Mitsubishi monster trumps it in both square footage and diagonal length), but as we noted before, it may not even be the largest display on American soil. You see, although the Longhorns' screen can boast a total area of 7,370 square feet, the other Daktronics-built display at Dolphin Stadium still has it beat on the diagonal measurement: 1,750 inches to Godzillatron's 1,738. However, as a wise man once said, "Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family, and your friends." That may be true, but if the Longhorns don't bring home another championship trophy this season, the alumni who shelled out millions of bucks for that scoreboard are gonna be pretty darn pissed.
Texas Longhorns 'big as Texas' display completed
While this scoreboard never really fit into the category of "largest-built HD display", it is still a huge high definition display and therefore worth mentioning on our site. The gigantic planned high-def scoreboard at the Texas Longhorns stadium is now complete and prepared to offer shade to half the neighborhood. This scoreboard is just huge and measures in at 134- x 55-feet that works out to be 144.85 diagonal screen. This HD scoreboard does pale in comparison to the 221 diagonal screen that is installed at a Japanese horse track, but high-def and football go together a lot better then high-def and horse racing.[Thanks, Clay]
Texas Longhorns prepare to steal biggest HDTV crown
It was good while it lasted Miami. Daktronics, the same company who built the Dolphin Stadium twin-monster HDTVs has been contracted by the University of Texas to make one even bigger. As a part of renovations to their south end zone they are installing a 134x55-foot scoreboard, 370 square feet bigger than Miami's. As Engadget points out, it's actually slightly narrower and a little taller, bringing some conflict to the question of who is the biggest. All the same, if you want to check it out while everything is still bigger in Texas, you better hurry as a horse track in Tokyo is installing a 197-foot wide display.If they had announced this last year, maybe Vince Young would have returned to lead them to another National Championship.[Thanks for the tip Scott M!]
Longhorns to snatch "world's biggest HD display" title from Dolphins?
It's been a bad year for the Miami Dolphins: first they lost Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ricky Williams for the upcoming season, and soon their "biggest HD display in the world" may have to play second fiddle to a new scoreboard being installed this summer for the University of Texas Longhorns. At 7,370 square feet, the 134-foot by 55-foot 'board being built for the school by Daktronics (who also manufactured the Miami display) has a slightly larger screen area than the current 7000-sqaure-foot title-holder, but nitpickers may argue that since the UT model will be almost a foot shorter diagonally, that it doesn't qualify as the "world's biggest." The argument may turn out to be moot, though, as a horse track in Tokyo is supposedly planning to install a ridiculous 197-foot-wide monster of a screen later this year that will overshadow all who came before it. UT's project comes as part of a multi-million dollar overhaul of their stadium, which will also include several other large displays, a new sound system, and a $150 million renovation of the north end zone meant to enable a 90,000 person capacity.[Thanks, Brian]
