If you have been to a ball game recently, you know about the Jumbotron. In the past, these were made up of lots of little LEDs (light emitting diodes), similar to the daylight readable road advertisement signs, but if you are far enough away, you don’t notice that the individual pixels are fairly large.

But in the last couple years, that has changed. As many of you know, I attend lots of events in support of a well known motivational speaker, and he often has some of the very best tech at his shows. They have recently grown rather dramatically, when I first went 12 years ago there were a few thousand, the most recent LA show was more than 10,000. But the event I attend most is one that has grown from about 1500 to now about 4500; and the tech has grown dramatically.

As recently as 3 years ago, the display screens were rear projection, and there was a significant lag between the live person on stage and what was shown on the screen. But that has changed.

The main display is about twenty feet across. And the two side bars are also digital displays. How do they do this? There are a couple of companies that make ‘video walls’, and you can customize them to just about any size. I am a bit of a geek, so I was looking behind the display to see how it worked. Each display is an HD LCD display that is borderless, and about 24×42 inches. And they bolt a bunch of them together (God knows what the thing weighs!)

The result is a huge, incredibly bright, responsive LCD display. And there is almost no lag between the speaker and what we see on the display. As his events grow, more and more of these displays are added – in a stadium for a 12,000 person event, there might be 12-15 of them so that each person has a great view of what is happening.

And the sound systems have improved as well! The combined sound and light show is better than any rock concert I have ever attended (and I have been to a few, including Pink Floyd, U2, Led Zep, Trans-Siberian, and others.)

So if you decide to attend one of his events, you won’t be disappointed!