Texas Motor Speedway, Dallas, is now home to Big Hoss TV – a colossal 218 x 94.5ft Panasonic LED display, which is recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest HD LED video board.
Texas Motor Speedway commissioned Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company—a division of Panasonic Corporation of North America—to build the display. Panasonic worked with Montreal-based provider of live broadcast graphics services, Astucemedia, to provide visually rich graphics design with real-time data integration services to Big Hoss TV.
The Panasonic LED screen delivers broadcast-quality coverage of racing events as they take place at the track. Content includes field interviews with drivers and their pit crews, 1080p HD camera footage, instant replays of high-speed race action and interactive features and games for the fans at Texas Motor Speedway. The big board also displays live tweets and visually stunning real-time graphics depicting the drivers’ MPH, RPMs, speed, leaderboards and other vital racing stats.
Big Hoss TV is the first instance where uncompressed 4K-resolution video renders directly out of Viz Engine— a 3D live graphics/video compositing rendering engine from real-time 3D graphic provider, Vizrt — to the HD LED display. The HD LED drivers extract a 3K center-cut from the 4K Vizrt video output to generate an impactful display. This installation also utilised another Vizrt live graphics system – the Viz Trio CG — that complements the Viz Engine for rendering. The solution is controlled by Panasonic’s exclusive new stadium controller designed for complete Vizrt Integration.
For the Big Hoss TV graphics workflow, Astucemedia provided a solution that leveraged elements of its unique Data Platform. Four high-frequency live data feeds from NASCAR Scoring & Timing, Sportvision, IndyCar and SMT (Cosworth Live-To-Air) were captured to create a real-time “blended feed” REST API. The real-time data, including race statistics and car telemetry such as MPH, RPM, GPS and track temperatures, was easily embedded into the graphics scenes using Astucemedia’s Vizrt plug-ins. Viz Trio operation was performed via a custom GUI template that uses a push-button interface as well as a responsive HTML5 app that was used to monitor data, trigger graphics and switch between feed providers.
“We were delighted to work with Astucemedia on Big Hoss TV and their unique technical expertise in the broadcast graphics arena proved very valuable to this project,” said Michael Rocha, director of content solutions for Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company.
“Astucemedia took on this challenge with enthusiasm, a positive attitude and a spirit of cooperation,” Rocha said. “From the start of the project, it was clear that they fully understood our needs, and dovetailed with our team in a very proactive and responsive way.”
