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Not to be outdone in the technology department, the Giants have fired a preemptive shot across the Cisco/A's bow Tuesday, when they announced the construction of a new high definition video/scoreboard. The Mitsubishi-made, 28-ton behemoth will replace the old monochrome scoreboard and Panasonic video board combo in centerfield. They're also adding 220 feet of color LED matrix boards to replace the old monochrome "in-game" boards down each base line, along the club level.Some specs on the new scoreboard:- 103 feet wide x 31.5 feet high (3245 square feet)
- 32:9 aspect ratio (double-wide HD)
- 1480 x 832 resolution above the line score (128 pixels high)
- 20 mm physical pixel pitch
It's not as large as the board installed at Turner Field in 2005 (5760 square feet), but it's still impressive. It's wide enough to put two HD feeds side-by-side. Or show Ben-Hur without letterboxing stripes at the top and bottom of the screen (2.76:1 aspect ratio). The display promises to be amazingly sharp. I suppose that will help the Giants' increasingly geriatric lineup check out their highlights. Or at the very least they could show a neat widescreen video of how Barry Zito's curveball travels.How can the Cisco/A's match this? 1080p, baby.
It looks like the "A's real estate investment trust" is closing in on the important 25-acre parcel (blue rectangle in middle of pic below)
Total holdings could grow to 200 acres or more when all is said and done - about the size of CSU-East Bay.
During a Wednesday conference call, Wolff hinted that the financing mechanism could involve rebates of taxes associated with the ballpark village. Is that simply a repackaging of a tax increment financing (TIF) or PILOT (payments in lieu of taxes) plan? We'll soon find out.
