Longhorn's new Texas-sized HDTV

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

"Everything is bigger in Texas." And the new behemoth HDTV scoreboard at Royal Memorial Stadium, measuring a massive 55 feet tall by 134 feet wide, is a perfect testament to this.

The $8 million HDTV display, (already nicknamed "Godzillatron"), built by South Dakota-based Daktronics Inc., along with the accompanying sound system, are the most noticable upgrade so far of the $150 million facelift that the home of the defending national champions is receiving.

The HDTV display - nearly as wide as the field itself - will for a short time anyways be the largest high definition video display board in the world.

And the Texas Longhorns cannot wait to watch the super-sized replays of their touchdowns. "Oh man, that thing's big," said wide receiver Quan Cosby. "At night, we don't need the lights, it's so bright."

The scoreboard is so large, it took some Texas-sized adjustments to fit it into it's new home. The university had to upgrade its utilities capacity to supply the board with enough juice. Keeping it cool in the Texas heat was another issue.

Whether it's a typical 100-degree Texas afternoon or the heat generated by the board itself, both would damage the board over time. UT officials had to install forty (40) 5-ton air conditioning units to keep the world's largest HDTV cool.

And because "Everything's bigger in Texas", the support columns are as large as redwood tree trunks, and the heads of the grounding bolts measure about 5 inches across.