The Capitals played a strong 44 minutes tonight, redeeming a shaky third period with Nicklas Backstrom’s OT gamewinner. In addition to the team’s home-ice debut, fans also got a taste of the the Phone Booth’s new HD screens and multimedia displays.
The Good
- As I walked into Section 426 and saw the screens, my first impression was simply, “Wow.” The whole overhead display really grabs your attention and is absolutely breathtaking in its clarity. There were times I found myself staring at the game onscreen rather than the action on the ice. I really can’t adequately express how vivid the images are; it’s a terrific enhancement to the hockey arena experience.
- Above the main screens are four 5-foot, 3-inch high by 25-foot 6-inch wide LED video matrixes that show in-game information like remaining time, penalties, and shots on goal. These displays are huge improvements over the old bulb-based indicators, both for aesthetics and readability.
- Fans might want to follow the lead of television personalities in the HD era and start wearing extra makeup–the crowd shots show every detail, both good and bad. At one point a 10-ish child was shown jumping up and down, and it felt like he was about 15 feet away; as I said before, the clarity is stunning.
- The ribbon displays at the front of the 400 level now wrap a full 360° around the arena; the ones on the lower level appear to be about the same size. The images are crisper and brighter than before. Perhaps it was partly due to the mostly-empty preseason crowd (or just something to which we’ll soon acclimate), but the quickly-moving images sometimes shown on the ribbons were a bit distracting. Fortunately, during gameplay the ribbons’ images were generally not animated.
The Work-In-Progress
Like the team itself, some elements of the arena are still in pre-season form. Most of these items will likely be improved/corrected before the regular season begins, but are worth mentioning nonetheless.
- The real-time clock is gone. As my fiancee observed, “It’s like a Vegas casino–you have no idea what time it is in the outside world.” The old out-of-town scoreboards are gone as well. I suspect a clock & the scores will return in some form, either along the sides or on the overhead screens.
- Some of the cameras used for along-the-boards views and crowd shots are not yet capturing HD video; the images shown via these cameras are “stretched” to fit the HD screens’ aspect ratio, just like non-HD signals are stretched to fit home HD televisions.
- There’s a spinning Capitals logo that zooms in close on one of the stars, then pulls back to show the whole logo. It was played after both Carolina goals. For some reason the color is way off: the red is hot pink, and the blue is teal. Color is perfectly balanced (to my eye) for other special effects and the game/crowd shots.
- An odd side effect of the expanded and brightened ribbon displays ringing the arena: When they predominantly display a single color (e.g., the red Verizon logo, or a bright yellow realtor ad), there’s a slight but noticeable change in the color of the ice surface. I wonder . . . will that ice tint be visible on television broadcasts as well?
Overall the new video display system is truly groundbreaking–when you first see it, I think you’ll be suitably impressed. Soon enough fans will simply take it for granted . . . until they go see a game in another arena, when they’ll likely be struck by how minor-league their screens seem. Nice work by Mitsubishi, ANC Sports, and the Verizon Center to pull it all together.
13 Comments
Glad it wasn’t just my eyes causing the odd color problems with the displays. I thought the new screens were great as well, though I missed the real time clock. Most comical though was the spelling of IMMEDIATELY on the puck warning - IMMEDIATLEY - too funny!
The picture on the screen is impressive! Going to take some time to orient to where to find the stats, etc., but the images were great.
Have to agree about the ribbons being distracting, especially with 2 levels; true, little change during play; having seen the Caps game in Vancouver with GM Place’s new scoreboard last season, the ribbons were dizzying and distracting; I’ll give it a few games and re-evaluate.
Funny, I noticed the lack of a real-time clock, too. I hope/assume the out of town scoreboard info and a real time clock will be available during the regular season.
And steph, there were several spelling mistakes, they might have changed the scoreboard, but there is still a person (obviously without spellcheck) loading the info… the other one I noticed last night was ‘thier’; and I think one of the players names, too, but I only caught it right before it went off the screen.
Can’t wait to see the new displays. They sound fantastic. I’m just pumped in general about the new season. The caps should be much improved I hope.
The ribbons around the edge were distracting to me because it seemed like the lights in the arena kept going up and down. I am sure once we get used to them it won’t be so noticeable. Can we offer to spellcheck the stuff for them?
Great round up. Last year I saw the Caps up in Philly and they had a similar screen set-up there. However, the picture clarity was not even close.
Did anyone else notice when the board said we signed the Defenseman Viktor Kozlov?
We can say that Kozlov can play wing, he can play center, and now he can play defense too.
Now, if they will just show more replays on the screens, including penalties.
They showed some replays, like the dump-into-the-bench check.
I do like the readability of the scoreboard part, but I preferred that being lower — a smaller distance to avert my eyes to check for times left on penalties etc.
The non-HD ribbons tinted the ice too; that’s not a new side effect.
Other things to notice (or not), the bright yellow with dark blue writing is leaving if not totally gone (not sure about all the concourse signs though). The section numbers on the wall, the section number in the concourse, the signs at the entrance about waiting to be seated… they’ve switched to a delicate baby blue color.
A change in speaker-stacks and their arrangement have markedly improved the sound (at least where I was sitting).
I’ll add the other observations when I remember them.
Bad news–from having watched the game on NHL.tv (in which they broadcast what was being played on the scoreboard), the pink and teal monstrosity of a logo isn’t to be attributed to a scoreboard adjustment. It showed up the same way on my computer monitor. Hopefully that’s a mistake and isn’t something that will be seen all year…
Frasnap, not to worry — it’s just a faulty non-color-balanced image I’m sure they’ll correct soon. I didn’t think the scoreboard was out of whack for just one image.
Norm,
According to league policy, it is against the rules to show any replays that might be considered controversial, including any penalty. Some teams show these replays and just pay the fine that goes along with it, the Caps do not as a matter of team policy.
If the Caps/Flyers game at the Wachovia is any indication, the ribbons do, indeed, turn the ice funny colors.
There’s nothing quite like orange ice, eh?
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New Hi-Def Scoreboard at Verizon Center…
After work on Tuesday I headed over to Verizon Center to catch a couple of periods of the Caps-Canes game…….
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