New video board to display stats, replays, ads
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BY BRIAN ROSENTHAL / Lincoln Journal Star
The HuskerVision crew today is doing a final game-day dress rehearsal with Memorial Stadium’s new video board.
Things like testing the clock, running stats, showing graphics, playing the Tunnel Walk …
“Last year’s Tunnel Walk,” said a smiling Shot Kleen, HuskerVision’s director of technology, in a clarifying tone.
The fear, of course, in playing the secretive new Tunnel Walk is that somebody might see it.
Say, most of downtown Lincoln.
That’s no exaggeration.
Yes, the new video board atop the North Stadium expansion is that high, and that big. So big that residents of some downtown dwellings could look out their windows Saturday morning and get a clear “ESPN College GameDay” view of faces such as Mark May and Lee Corso.
But back to the board’s positive traits …
It’s 33½ feet tall by 117½ feet wide. It can broadcast in high definition. And it’s not just a video board. It’s also a scoreboard, a stat board and the stadium’s newest vehicle for displaying advertising. Gone are all of the ads that hung throughout Memorial Stadium.
Kirk Hartman, HuskerVision’s creative director, has spent the past month creating a format that will display all images cleanly and attractively.
Need the score, time, down and distance? That’s on the left-hand panel, or west end, of the board. Game statistics for each team appear on the right-hand panel. The middle portion of the board –– roughly 60 percent –– will be the video screen showing live game action and replays.
The scoreboard and statistic sections are in video format, as are the five advertisements that will accompany them.
“We can change things after the first week if people don’t like something,” Hartman said. “Hopefully, not too much. But we can tweak it.”
With some multiuse boards, the vital information –– score, time, etc. –– sometimes disappears when the board goes to a full video format. That won’t happen much during the game with this board, Hartman said, if at all.
The only times the board will go completely widescreen with video is for the Tunnel Walk, possibly with some special replays and roughly four times with advertisements, but not during game action.
And although still very clear, the new board won’t be broadcasting game action in high definition. While the board is hi-def capable, HuskerVision’s control room and cameras are not. Yet. Kleen said the plan is to propose a budget to upgrade that equipment and someday be able to generate a hi-def signal.
“Then it will really be spectacular,” he said.
Original plans proposed the new board go atop South Stadium, thereby avoiding direct sunlight. But expenses would’ve been too great to build the footings and supports; it was cheaper to put in the frame as part of the new construction.
The sun, as it turns out, isn’t an issue.
“It handles the sun really well,” Kleen said. “Those old screens, the sun would shine on them, and it would cut them down by half. These handle it pretty well.”
Speaking of the old screens –– installed in 1994 as the first video boards in a college stadium –– they, too, have been replaced. The two new video screens –– 525 square feet, compared with the old screens’ 375 square feet –– appear in the southeast and southwest corners. They have nearly four times the resolution of the old screens, Hartman said.
As for the ticker that flashes scores from other games?
“We’re still working on that,” Hartman said. “That’s one of the last issues we’re working on.”
Hartman and Kleen credited their staff of 30 people. That includes seven full-time people and many student helpers.
But just in case, a representative from Mitsubishi –– the company that installed the new board –– will be on hand Saturday to help with any potential kinks.
Now, about that new Tunnel Walk … any changes? Surprises?
“It’s fun to read rumors and listen to rumors, because no one knows,” Hartman said. “I love it when it’s that way.”
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.
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