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Field's TVs: All that's missing is the recliner
By Mark Wolf, News Staff Writer Fans don't come to a Broncos game at a brand-new stadium to watch TV. However, between plays, during timeouts and at other moments when large men aren't colliding with one another, fans can shift their gazes to the Invesco Field scoreboard for views they could never see at Mile High. "The product is the football game. Our job is to inform fans as far as stats and a view they might not be able to see from their seat," said Eric Brummond, owner of Ruckus Production, whose 22-person crew is responsible for the images fans will see on Invesco's three scoreboards. The main scoreboard, mounted above the south stands, is a Mitsubishi LEDer board, the first of its type installed in a sports stadium in the United States. The screen is 96 feet by 27 feet; Mile High's screen was 32 feet by 24 feet. Two smaller boards (48 feet by 27 feet) are mounted in the northeast and northwest corners. The new boards have wide-screen aspect ratios similar to movie screens; Mile High's screen was shaped like a standard TV screen. The Invesco screens use 25-millimeter light-emitting diodes (LEDs), compared with 40-millimeter LEDs at Mile High. The smaller number produces a crisper image. "It uses dynamic pixel sharing that gives the board a higher resolution," said Gary McAuliffe, senior consultant for Pelton, Marsh and Kinsella, and project manager for Invesco's audio and video installations. "These systems are more like big computers than big TV screens. Everything from the in-house cameras all the way to the processing is 100 percent digital." The sound system includes more than 370 speakers serving the stands, more than 200 more in concourses and walkways, and almost 1,600 ceiling speakers in bathrooms. The images on the board are Brummond's responsibility. On game days, most of his team will operate from what is essentially a TV studio control booth on Invesco Field's media level. Brummond, acting as producer, along with a director and technical director, will send images from five field-camera operators to Invesco's screens. Three more crew members will feed replays from a separate console. "Everything you see on replay will come from our cameras," said Brummond. "If we take something from the (network TV) truck, we have to manipulate their image to convert it to the 16-by-9 (wide-screen) aspect." The only exception is when a coach challenges an official's ruling and asks for a review of the play on instant replay. "The NFL only allows us to show the network feed because that's all the official sees," said Brummond. He brings a fan's perspective to the game because he is one -- he attended his first Broncos game when he was 18 months old. Brummond graduated from Overland High School, earned a master's degree in sports administration from Ohio University and joined the Colorado Rockies in 1991 as an unpaid intern. He eventually became the team's director of broadcasting and left to form Ruckus a year ago. No commercials as such will be shown at Invesco. "Everything that's sponsored will be football-related, such as follies, trivia questions and replays," Brummond said.
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