Kansas City Royals Prep for Home Opener With New HDR Videoboard at Kauffman Stadium

Kansas City Royals Prep for Home Opener With New HDR Videoboard at Kauffman Stadium The analytic side of baseball will be featured on displays installed in the offseason By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor

Thursday, March 25, 2021 - 10:43 am

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The Kansas City Royals were unable to clinch a playoff spot during last year's 60-game MLB season, but, heading into 2021, the franchise has a lot of excitement happening on and off the field. When newly re-signed catcher Salvador Perez trots behind home plate for next week's home opener vs. the Texas Rangers, the team will finally christen the brand-new HDR videoboard at Kauffman Stadium.

From a fan's standpoint, there's going to be a lot more opportunities to take in the in-stadium experience, says Steven Funke, director, event presentation and production, Kansas City Royals. [This videoboard] is going to be quite an improvement from where we were before.

Offseason Project: Construction Makes a Quick Turnaround Kauffmann Stadium has seen its fair share of offseason projects and renovations. The previous videoboard, built prior to the 2008 home opener vs. the New York Yankees, debuted the recognizable crown atop the structure's highest point. Thirteen years later, the crown-adorned videoboard is trading in its LED panels for ones with HDR capability. In a project beginning last November, the Daktronics videoboard was carefully installed during the cold winter months in the Midwest.

Enjoy this satisfying timelapse of our new video boards. #TogetherRoyal pic.twitter.com/ZbbdVbFABH

- Kansas City Royals (@Royals) March 23, 2021

After four months, the physical construction was complete. Measuring 105 x 85 ft. and featuring Daktronics' 15-mm SMD technology, the league's fourth main HDR videoboard (after the Texas Rangers' and Cincinnati Reds' in 2020 and Colorado Rockies' in 2018) will have a pixel increase of 138% and eclipse a handful of in-venue achievements in the professional ranks, including the tallest videoboard in Major League Baseball.

In addition to the main videoboard, the Royals have upgraded other LED displays in the venue. The Hall of Fame display, an area located behind the left-center-field fence where retired numbers are prominently shown, will also have an HDR-capable board. This 20.5- x 108-ft. videoboard will feature 2,200 sq. ft. of LED real estate and 900,000 pixels and will be five-times larger than the ribbon board that it replaces.

In addition, two 7- x 127-ft. ribbon boards will occupy the outfield wall running from left center field to center field and right center field to center field, respectively.

Center of Crown Vision: AJA Powers HDR Backbone in Stadium Control Room Along with the new HDR main videoboard, the franchise installed an HDR-capable Hall of Fame display and two LED screens on the outfield wall.

With a grand total of more than 5.1 million LED pixels, Kauffmann Stadium will be shining all season long. Besides this new project, Funke and his team decided to invest in new production equipment as well for the upcoming season. The space's most important addition is an AJA FS-HDR 1RU rackmount converter/frame synchronizer, which converts the camera feeds to HDR on the videoboard. Other notable upgrades include a slate of products from Ross Video (a 5M/E Acuity production switcher, three outputs of XPression graphics, and the new Kiva live-production server), EVS XT4K and XTSK replay servers and IPDirector, Evertz EQX10 router, four Sony HDC-5500L and three PXW-Z750 cameras, Riedel Communications wireless intercom, and Wave Central wireless camera support.

The Royals decided to go with new equipment inside the control room at Kauffman Stadium.

These examples illustrate a massive turnover in the control room, and another technological supplement will change the way in-game prompts are designed and presented.

The only holdover that we have from the old room are our EVS replay servers from 2018 and some experience with Ross XPression from 2017, Funke says. We're bringing something new to game presentation that probably hasn't been seen in baseball, and we're looking forward to working with Ross Video's Rocket Surgery to come up with a new and creative way of displaying stats.

Similar to the project seen in Colorado, Cincinnati, and Texas, Diversified played a huge role in the process in Kansas City. With the addition of the new equipment, the Royals needed to make adjustments to the physical structure to accommodate for these changes. On Diversified's end, Director, Sports and Live Events Stuart Reynolds drew up the plan that would allow the franchise to mix their pre-existing technologies with new tools. For the boots on the ground, including Project Engineers Matt George and Sean McFarland, employees needed to follow stringent COVID-19 protocols.

This was a design project where we worked with the Royals to implement new workflows with some of their legacy equipment, says Brad Fisher, senior account manager, Diversified. We had to limit the number of installers that we had in the control room at a single time to account for social distancing.

Along with the brick-and-mortar adaptations in the space, Diversified overcame other infrastructure challenges to make significant upgrades to air ventilation in the control room.

The big challenge was the original layout, adds Fisher. The Royals had some heating and cooling issues, so we went in to develop a new method of air flow along with the structural work.

Adjustments in Production: New Workflows, Content in Vertical Video Large-scale renovation isn't new to Funke, but being at the front of the line is a different perspective. The crew has used Spring Training and the remaining time in the offseason to practice, but he

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