Diamondbacks HD Daktronics scoreboard to be widest in MLB

By Andrew Lippe
The Arizona Diamondbacks will install the widest scoreboard in Major League Baseball history in time to open the 2008 season. Rob Weinheimer, director, Arizona Diamondback Game Operations, says Daktronics, which installed the ribbon board currently in place at the stadium, will replace a Sony Jumbotron that has been part of the stadium since its opening in 1998. Daktronics hired Mortenson Construction to design and install the new HD-X scoreboard that will measure approximately 136 feet high and 46 feet wide. That makes it the widest in Major League Baseball.

Maricopa County Stadium District, the company that owns the Arizona Diamondbacks, hired Acoustic Dimensions to consult the Diamondbacks during the video board picking process.

The new HD board is approximately eight times larger then the old Sony CRT video board. The new video board will have the capability to display two 16:9 HD images side by side and will display video in 880 native lines of resolution. The board can serve as one giant display or be divided into multiple zones to show a wide variety of statistics, information, graphics, animation and video. The Scoreboard will display video in 720p. “Our broadcast partner is Fox Sports Net Arizona and they are 720p so it made sense to match our broadcaster,” says Weinheimer.

The video for the scoreboard will be captured using three Sony HDC1450 cameras and a Sony XDCAM handheld camera. Installing a new video board also meant a new control room.

“We have to survive in house,” adds Weinheimer. The control room features two Avid Adrenalines, a Daktronics Venus controller, an EVS replay system, a Chyron graphics system and a Sony production switcher.