University of Minnesota orders up 108- by 48-foot HD scoreboard from Daktronics
By Richard Lawler 
posted Mar 4th 2008 2:22PM
posted Mar 4th 2008 2:22PM
posted Mar 4th 2008 2:22PM
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
what a waste of money, at least right now for them. Considering they are a horrible team right now. It's sad when my college made a fool of them this year at the metrodome. Whats even more sad is we were considered pretty much their toughest team of the season, we brought the largest attendence to the metrodome this season, our running back broke a school record in the metrodome, we put almost 600 total yards on them
and oh yeah we are a Division I-AA team!!
Granted we were ranked #1 at the time, North Dakota State University.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=272930135
lol, 30,000 people drove down from fargo, nd to the metrodome.
somebody should fire brewster, guy is an idiot.
What on earth does you comment have to do with this article?
Oh, and when did they get the internet in North Dakota? Pathetic.
Makes perfect sense glenn s. Because their team is so horrible why the hell are they spending an outrageous amount of money on a big screen tv, they should be using the money towards player scholarships or funding for the football program. Big screen tv's arent going to bring fans in(well some just to see it), a good football team is what brings fans in. They didnt make a lot of money from ticket sales this year, and they just blew it all on a tv, smart.
glenn you just made an ass of yourself, smooth.
that kid from north dakota was actually smarter than you.
@mojoboy011
I don't see what spending a ton of money on a jumbotron (or whatever you want to call it) has anything to do with whether a team is good or not. It is there because it is a big school, U of MN has one of the largest student bodies in the country, and will in turn be a big stadium. It is pretty much a standard to have a large jumbotron in a large stadium, it would kind of be stupid to not do it.
On top of that, as far as the money. The money was raised, TCF Bank putting up a large portion along with a lot of private funds coming into pay for the stadium. The school is not pay too much for it. As far as scholar ships go, that money is locked up and also regulated by the NCAA. It is not like because they had a bunch of extra money laying around, they can toss it at kids for scholarships.
Sure, jumbotrons are not going to bring in the fans or make the team great, but it is going to add to the atmosphere to being at a big sporting event in a big stadium. That right there is the point for the jumbotron.
As far as NDSU, they are not a Division II school for Football (they made the switch a few years back) or Hockey. So a Division I school beat a Division I school. It is all gravy, the Gophers sucked last year and have not had a good program for a long time, is it really something to be proud of to beat a bad team? Maybe the new administration and coach can change that, only time will tell. All I know is I will be enjoying a game or too in the new stadium to cheer on my Gophers for good or bad.
Awesome, this stadium should finally help bring some of that college feel back to the the U of MN. I look forward to going to a few Gopher games, whether the suck or not, in a nice open air stadium. Sounds like they are doing this stadium right, like they did with the Xcel. Though games late in the season are going to be brutal. I may just tough those out in a warm place, especially after experiencing a few late season games in Green Bay (no, not a Packer fan and excited to see Favre finally hang up the cleats).
The big inflatable toilet (Metrodome) sucks. It is horrible is a baseball stadium, which really seems like a second though and is almost as bad for football. I really don't like going there and can't wait until it is gone.
I'm with you, Zargon!
You from the area? I graduated from the U of M in '98. :)
@Xyzzy
Born and raised in the great Gopher state! I attended the U of M, but like 10+ years after you. Regretfully, I have also never bothered to finish up my college degree due to a good full time job offer. Luckily, I hasn't hampered me... yet, but I do plan to finish up, especially since my current work has a great tuition re-reimbursement program.
At 108 feet by 48 feet wouldn't using light bulbs as pixels be HD? Pretty much HAVE to be HD at that size.
My calculations show that if that screen has a resolution of 1920x1080, each pixel will be a maximum size of .68" x .53" (WxH). Not as big as you'd think, huh? That's quite a testament to the sheer amount of pixels in an HD image. From a reasonable distance that thing will probably look awesome.
A bigger problem is that this screen has an aspect ratio of 2.25:1. Either 16:9 (1.77:1) video is going to be really stretched, or part of the screen will be reserved for graphics, etc. Hopefully it will be the latter!
Think they'll show the Michigan game?
TEXAS'S is still bigger :)
Ok, I work at a stadium that used Daktronics,(Miami Dolphins) and I will tell you this from experience....their products are the biggest pieces of shit. It will never work right. Our stadium has had it installed for three years now and it CONSTANTLY fails and crashes during games.
You can argue if a team doing well or not should or should not spend that kind of money on a video board...however if it's a Daktronics board then it's a waste of money even if they spent $1.50 on it.
U of Min is going to seriously regret that purchase.
I work freelance for many facilities that also have Daktronics products and I have to ask you one question first. Do you work for Mitsubishi or are you just a major stock holder? Seriously, what specifically was the problem? I have seen many successful control rooms using Daktronics products and I am not sure what you are seeing there.
nice patio carpet in the fargodome.
Laughable that you're bitching about our new 288 million dollar stadium.
GO GOPHERS!
No I do not work for Mitsubishi (nor stockholder) and I am also a freelancer doing video work for the stadium. However, from what I have personally seen in games and how their technicians work have not been impressive.
The problems I have seen are the boards scrambling during games, they replaced about 1/2 of the modules cause they all failed, their game clocks freezing, the video boards downright crashing (with full screen scramble and then cut to black), their cheap computers and servers catching fire in the control room, the boards often flicker during transitions, Computers controlling the signs crashing, board goes to static, ribbon board can't do full 30 frames per second, Color quality is poor, they can't calibrate modules from ones they have replaced, color is off and tiled, they use cheap ass computers that fail. Their Stats software package that does more crashing than does keep track of the game.....shall I go on?
And speaking of stocks, Daktronics stocks have dropped from $35 down to $16 in just the past six months.
Also, they have to have a technician at every game because something goes wrong during every game. I have seen them mouth off to supervisors when they complain about the boards not working, their software crashes all the time and then blame it on user error, and even their scoreboard the don't even have the teams written in the right order and despite that there is a standard layout for professional sports their answer was "oh well we thought it looked better this way."
I have not seen their products at other stadiums so I will not speak for those, but these video boards compared to what the stadium used to have (an old 20 year old standard def jumbotron), are highly inferior and do not work properly.
Again, this has just been what I have observed while freelancing at games. Lord only knows how much more is going wrong behind the scenes.
These comments on Miami really surprise me. I have been bouncing through stadiums and arenas for a about 15 years and the Daktronics stuff is usually pretty tight, at least compared to the other options. Sounds like Daktronics needs to stop pointing out the other guys problem installs and focus on Miami for a while. Good luck.