Mitsubishi, Sony bring HD to Nationals Park

By Andrew Lippe

While New York Mets and Yankees fans await state-of-the-art stadiums, Washington Nationals fans just have to wait until Sunday. Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN will give MLB fans the first glimpse of Nationals Park, including its new 4,500 square-foot Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision HD scoreboard that is 101-feet wide and 47-feet high and a new scoreboard control room based on Sony gear. “There is just no comparison between our scoreboard and the one in RFK,” says Dave Lundin Washington Nationals scoreboard producer.

ANC Sports Enterprises and Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision Systems collaborated on the creation of the scoreboard and the video display system that displays more than one million pixels.

“It is unbelievable how crystal clear the images on the scoreboard are,” adds Lundin. The scoreboard uses line doubling so images are displayed in an enhanced resolution. The Video screen is part of a LED display that also features statistics as well as sponsor graphics. The LED Displays are operated by ANC’s VisionSOFT software.

ANC Sports Enterprises built the control room that contains a Sony MVS-8000 production switcher. Sony cameras, including HDC-1400 and Sony XDCAM units, capture images. The control room also has an Avid Deko 3000, Adobe After Effects, three Apple Final Cut Pro editing systems, and an EVS replay server. The Nationals also use ScorePAD software to provide stats. 

The new stadium also includes an LED out-of-town scoreboard on the outfield wall; an LED fascia on the main level, LED signage in the concession club area and fascia in the bullpens. “RFK was not built with modern presentation in mind,” adds Lundin.

Nationals Park required more than 180,000 hours for installation of all electrical systems. The stadium is equipped with more than three million feet of cabling and is outfitted with 14,000 lights. The stadium capacity is 41,222 seats which is a little bit less then RFK Stadium where the capacity was 46,000.