ARLINGTON – Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones gave the media a peek Thursday afternoon at what a $40 million HDTV looks like in action.
The 600-ton Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision System has the world’s largest HD video boards. Hanging 90 feet above the field, each screen facing the sidelines is about 60 yards long and 72 feet tall.
“It will create an experience of watching a player like Marion Barber or like Felix Jones or Tony Romo in a way that no fan has ever seen it,” Jerry Jones said, just before he called for a custom video presentation to be played.
The short video featured classic and recent Cowboys game footage, shots of the new Cowboys Stadium and video of team practice. In the game video, the players were about 70 feet tall and as crisply rendered as footage on a regular size HD television. This one however cost more than the entire construction budget of Texas Stadium.
Each sideline board has about 10.5 million light emitting diodes or LEDs that the draw the images fans will see. In the footage played Thursday, it was easy to pick out every detail from the individual strands of artificial turf to the contours of the parking lot surface at Cowboys Stadium.
Mark Foster, a Mitsubishi general manager, said it was both an exhilarating and stressful challenge. He said that Jones asked Mitsubishi to break through some technological barriers, such as hanging it over the center of the field and increase the viewing angles.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some sleepless nights,” Foster said.
BY THE NUMBERS
• 25,000 square feet – size of the video displays
• 4,920 – number of 52-inch flat panel TVs needed to equal its size
• Three inches – diameter of the steel cables supporting the video boards
• 30 million – number of light bulbs in the displays
• Nearly 11,000 square feet – size of the ribbon video boards circling the inside of the stadium