WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.840 If you've ever been to a sporting event or concert, you've undoubtedly enjoyed watching 00:00:03.840 --> 00:00:09.360 an instant replay or an awkward kiss on a Jumbotron. And if you're a great big nerd, 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:13.120 like me, you've probably wondered how exactly they make those things. 00:00:13.680 --> 00:00:19.760 Great question, fellow nerd. Because they're engineered to be so massive, Jumbotrons are not 00:00:19.760 --> 00:00:24.320 just super-sized versions of the kind of TV that you would find at the local Walmart, 00:00:24.320 --> 00:00:29.120 and they are in fact built quite differently than regular TVs or monitors. 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:33.760 To find out how, we reached out to some manufacturers of these displays and ended up 00:00:33.760 --> 00:00:38.400 hearing back from Daktronics, who weren't able to tell us any proprietary information, 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:46.080 but definitely helped us out. So, early Jumbotrons from the 1980s used cathode ray tubes or CRTs, 00:00:46.080 --> 00:00:51.760 similar to what you'd find in old-school home televisions. But, unlike normal TVs, 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:57.520 which used only one cathode ray tube, these Jumbotrons had many of them, 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:03.120 with each one only being responsible for a handful of pixels instead of the thousands 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:08.400 of pixels that were produced by standard TVs at the time. This meant that early on, 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:16.080 even large Jumbotrons had pitifully low resolution. In fact, one early Jumbotron model with a diagonal 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:25.280 size of 30 feet had a resolution of 240 by 192 pixels. That's well below even a VHS tape, 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:29.040 not to mention that it was extremely heavy and thick, 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:34.400 making mounting it above an arena very difficult. Oh yeah, and it consumed thousands of watts of 00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:40.800 power. Now, one intermediary solution was to use plasma displays, but they too had issues with weight, 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:45.600 and they were prohibitively expensive. Now, in hindsight, the solution to all of these 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:51.280 problems seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? Why don't you use lightweight, cost-effective, compact, 00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:57.200 red, green, and blue LEDs? Then you can have your full-spectrum color cake and eat it too. 00:01:57.200 --> 00:02:02.800 But unfortunately, blue and green LEDs, particularly bright ones, were much more 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:07.600 complicated to manufacture back then due to complexities with the required chemicals. 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:13.200 Now today, those problems are mostly solved, and most Jumbotrons work by using exactly that 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:20.160 principle. So, they'll have one LED module per pixel, with each module containing proprietary 00:02:20.160 --> 00:02:26.720 wiring, so not like an HDMI connection, and then a number of red, blue, and green LEDs along with 00:02:26.720 --> 00:02:31.600 a certain amount of video processing hardware depending on the manufacturer in order to make 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:38.640 fine adjustments to the image quality. Now, some screens use through-hole LEDs with reflector cups. 00:02:38.640 --> 00:02:43.920 This makes them brighter and helps them deflect sunlight for outdoor and long-distance applications. 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:49.520 Others use surface-mounted LEDs without the reflector cups giving them better viewing angles 00:02:49.600 --> 00:02:53.760 for places that don't have to contend with the sun, like indoor arenas for instance. 00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:59.280 These modules then can be up to several centimeters across for larger screens, 00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:05.760 meaning that at typical HD resolutions, modern Jumbotrons actually end up being really big, 00:03:05.760 --> 00:03:10.560 which they can get away with because most of the viewers will be sitting far enough away from the 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:16.720 screen for the picture to still look pretty darn sharp. Many venues are actually more interested 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:22.640 in upgrading their Jumbotrons to HDR versus 4K, because at typical viewing distances, 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:27.840 greater contrast and dynamic range is believed to make a bigger difference to the perceived 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:33.520 image quality. But back to talking about size. The largest indoor Jumbotron covers nearly 00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:41.200 65,000 square feet. It can be found in Atlanta at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and its ring shape is a 00:03:41.200 --> 00:03:48.000 great example of how the modular construction of modern Jumbotrons out of these little LED modules 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:53.680 can make them highly customizable. But being huge and modular aren't the only ways that 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:58.880 Jumbotrons are different from smaller screens. They're also driven differently from an entire 00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:04.560 control room that has to have equipment powerful and flexible enough to change what's on the screen 00:04:04.560 --> 00:04:10.320 quickly and accurately, depending on the display's aspect ratio. Hence all the little buttons that 00:04:10.320 --> 00:04:15.200 you see on a typical Jumbotron control board. This enables the right camera feed or visual 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:21.520 effect to be displayed at the right time. And because Jumbotrons have to be visible from far away, 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:27.360 as well as in bright outdoor conditions, their brightness goes far beyond what you'd see on 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:34.480 a regular display. It's not uncommon, in fact, for Jumbotrons to have thousands of nits of available 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:41.280 brightness, like the scoreboard at TIAA Bank in Jacksonville, Florida, which can get up to 9,000 00:04:41.280 --> 00:04:48.640 nits. To put that in perspective, the average home TV will output around 300 nits, with a fancy 00:04:48.640 --> 00:04:55.440 HDR home TV doing about a thousand nits and change. So this requires a special grade of LED 00:04:55.440 --> 00:05:01.280 that can even require special cooling due to its immense power draw. Even though modern 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:07.920 LED-based Jumbotrons are much more power efficient than 80s and 90s technology, the screens are still 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:14.400 notorious power hogs due to their sheer size. The well-publicized sideline displays at AT&T 00:05:14.400 --> 00:05:22.080 Stadium outside Dallas each require 635,000 watts of power. That's roughly a thousand times more 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:28.240 than an average gaming PC. Good thing that Jerry Jones still has enough money to pay for that power 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:34.080 bill. So thanks for watching guys, like, dislike, check out our other videos, and leave a comment 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:38.880 if you have a suggestion for a future fast as possible. Oh, and don't forget to subscribe.