10 Largest HDTV Displays

The HDTV arms race is on. And bigger is better. Since
high-definition TVs (HDTVs) started becoming more affordable
-- and HD-quality content more common -- larger versions of
these devices have exploded in popularity.

But the marked increase in clarity and color makes a lot of
TV owners wonder, "Wow, if it looks this great on a 42-inch
HDTV, I wonder how it would look on a TV three times as big?"
You may think that's an exaggeration, but it's not. What if
you really could watch HD-quality movies on a screen as big
as your garage door? Or bigger than your entire house?

Manufacturers with cutting-edge HDTV technological prowess,
working with PR-savvy companies (and millionaires with cash
to blow) are making HDTVs with screens of incredible size.
Although public relations types measure their screen sizes
differently, for the purposes of this article we're going
with square footage. Though most of these TVs are located in
sports stadiums, we threw in a home TV and a portable HDTV
just for fun. Read on to see how huge HDTVs are taking over
the planet, and where you can go to see these high-resolution
monsters for yourself.

10: A Huge HDTV for Your Home

Let's start with the baby-sized HDTVs. At the 2008 Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., Panasonic unveiled its
enormous, 150-inch plasma unit. Also known as the Life
Screen, this HDTV is around 11 feet wide. Sound too big for
your house? Well, perhaps you can tilt it to get it in the
door. After all, it's only one inch (2.5 centimeters) thick.

If you can't quite imagine an 11-foot TV screen, consider
this -- the Life Screen has the same display real estate as
nine 50-inch plasma TVs. It also sports 3,996 by 2,160 pixel
resolution for crisp images [source: Mahoney]. That's nearly
9 million pixels of pure HDTV goodness.

But you can't just run out to a local superstore and load one
of these giants onto your flatbed truck. Remember,
Panasonic's previous monster plasma TV was only 103 inches
and it sold for around $70,000. There's no official word from
the company on pricing for the Life Screen, but suffice it to
say, if you have the kind of money you'd need to buy one, the
company may contact you first.


9: The Biggest Portable HDTV

But what if you want a really huge HDTV that you can take to
a friend's house, even if that friend lives 2,000 miles
(3,219 kilometers) away? Well in that case you'd want to
check out the iCONIC 100 HDTV, a 42 x 24-foot HDTV that's
portable -- thanks to the semi trailer it rests on.

The iCONIC 100 has 1,008 square feet (93.7 square meters) of
display area. You can also measure the screen's diagonal size
as you would for a computer monitor. The specs? About 48
feet, or 14.6 meters. There's so much hardware in this unit
that it weighs in at 72,000 pounds (32.7 metric tons).

As if that's not impressive enough, this HDTV requires
a built-in generator so as not to tax its clients' electrical
systems. It also rotates 360 degrees so that it's always
facing the crowd.

If you opted to rent this portable unit from ADI, you'd find
that its crew can set up the TV less than 30 minutes, and
that there's a full production room built into the trailer,
too.

8: Turner Field

Turner Field is home to the Atlanta Braves baseball team.
It's also home to a really big HDTV screen. In 2005, stadium
owners spent $10 million for an HDTV the likes of which the
world had never seen before.

With nearly 1,300 inches of diagonal (5,600 square feet, or
520.3 square meters) display area, this Mitsubishi Diamond
Vision screen is really, really big. It was recognized at the
time of its installation as the largest in the world, as
verified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

It weighs roughly 50 tons and contains more than 5 million
LEDs to create bright, clear pictures encompassing one
billion colors. It measures 79 feet (24.1 meters) wide by 71
feet (21.6 meters) tall.

The 400,000-watt screen requires 10 cooling fans that move
about 60,000 cubic feet (1,699 cubic meters) of air every
minute. And it's so big that the back side of the screen has
a nine-tiered catwalk for service access.

7: Yankee Stadium

In a rare act of frugality, the owners of Yankee Stadium
didn't go for the biggest and baddest HDTV screen when they
opened their new park in April 2009. Instead, they opted for
a screen that at the time was the third-largest screen in the
world.

Similar to the Braves, the Yankees also opted for
a Mitsubishi Diamond Vision screen. This one, however,
measures 101 by 59 feet, or 5,925 square feet (550.5 square
meters) of display area. If you were to measure this screen
diagonally like your desktop's monitor, you'd be looking at
117 feet (or 1,404 inches) of high-definition action. What's
more, it can project up to four simultaneous HD images.
Believe it or not, this screen is still just a pint-sized
version by contemporary standards. Keep reading to see even
more massive HDTVs.

6: Chase Field

The Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team plays at Chase Field,
which is home to another giant screen. This 136 by 46-foot
screen has 6,256 square viewable feet (581.2 square meters)
of HD pleasure.

And of course, it didn't come cheap. Between production and
installation, the Daktronics screen cost around $1 million.
The screen's landscape orientation (and the fact that it's
eight times bigger than the team's old scoreboard) means it
can display two true HD images side by side at a 16:9 aspect
ratio. It also produces around 4.4 trillion colors.

The HDTV was just one of the high-tech components added to
Chase field. As part of a major renovation project, the
stadium also added a brand-new sound system and LED ribbon
boards to show scores and information throughout games.

5: Land Shark Stadium

In 2006, Dolphin Stadium (now named Land Shark Stadium)
installed a truly colossal HDTV screen overlooking the
gridiron. Manufactured by Daktronics, the board measures 137
by 50 feet, for square footage measuring approximately 6,850
(636.4 square meters).

At the time, this screen was the biggest HDTV on the planet.
It features more than 4.6 million red, green, and blue LEDs,
for a resolution of 2,112 pixels wide by 736 pixels high.

The display is made of two Daktronics ProStar screens that
use an aspect ratio that's wider than the16:9 wide-screen
ratio of HD television broadcasts. That means fans are
treated to a super-wide, almost panoramic, view of the action
on the field.

4: Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium

Everyone's heard the cliché about things being bigger in
Texas. Well, sometimes that's true, several times over. The
University of Texas went for worldwide recognition when it
installed an HDTV at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Nicknamed "Godzillatron," and created by Daktronics, the
screen measures 134 feet wide by 55 high, for a square
footage of 7,370 (684.7 square meters). Diagonally, the
screen measures 145 feet (44.7 meters), or roughly 1,740
inches (4,420 centimeters). At a cost of nearly $8 million,
it probably goes without saying that this display is the
biggest of any in a collegiate arena.

Part of $150 million in stadium renovations, the screen needs
so much power that the university had to install new power
utilities to run it. And keeping this baby cool in blistering
Texas heat is no easy task; the school bought no fewer than
40 5-ton air-conditioning units to make sure their new toy
doesn't fry in the sun.

3: Tokyo Racecourse

While Americans were having most of the outrageous HDTV fun,
Japan decided it wanted a piece of the action, too. The Tokyo
Racecourse, a horse-racing venue, decided to up the huge-HDTV
ante.

The owners went for broke by installing a display measuring
218 feet wide by 37 feet high, or 8,066 square feet (749.4
square meters) [source: Lawler]. If you were to measure this
screen diagonally (misleading due to its extreme length),
you'd come up with 221.2 feet.

The cost for this Mitsubishi Diamond Vision display? A measly
$28 million.

The screen is so big it can show action from three different
horse races simultaneously. It's as big as three tennis
courts. In fact, the screen is so big that Mitsubishi had to
deliver it in 35 separate pieces.

2: Kauffman Stadium

Before opening day in 2008, the Kansas City Royals baseball
team bought an HDTV screen that was the largest in the world
upon installation. At 85 feet wide by 105 feet tall, the
screen is topped with the Royals' signature golden crown.

But the Kauffman screen isn't a single screen. It's actually
three high-definition screens fitted together as one. And you
won't find just one person running the display during a game,
either -- it takes a production team of 20 people to input
data, update stats and sort endless display options.

1: Cowboy Stadium

Of course, the nine preceding HDTVs were just a warm-up for
our final entry. The current biggest HDTV on Earth is in
Cowboys Stadium and belongs to Jerry Jones, owner of the
Dallas Cowboys.The television was certified as the largest
HDTV in the world on Sept. 25, 2009, by the Guinness Book of
World Records.

There aren't enough adjectives in a thesaurus to describe
this collection of Mitsubishi Diamond Vision displays, which
can create a single image stretching nearly from one 20-yard
line to the other. It took Mitsubishi more than a year to
construct the screen; and installation required another four
months. This HDTV really is the heavyweight champion of the
world -- and even though it's directly over the playing field
(about 90 feet or 27.4 meters up) it tips the scales at 600
tons.

The screen uses 30 million LEDs and has more than 11,000
square feet (1,022 square meters) of viewable surface area.
It consumes 635 kilowatts of power. The entire shebang cost
right around $40 million.