Churchill Downs, the home of the world famous Kentucky Derby horse race, unveiled the world's largest 4K LED videowall on Saturday, for the Spring Meet 2014. The videowall, dubbed 'the Big Board', measures 171ft tall by 90ft wide, cost $12 million and was constructed by Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company.
"One of the complaints people would always make," Churchill Downs president Kevin Flanery said, "was that they went
to the Derby and never saw a horse."
It is positioned midway down the finishing straight of the
course, and is within view of the clubhouse, grandstand and infield spectators.
The resolution of the videowall is somewhere
in the region of 2,160 x 4,000 pixels.
Construction of the videowall started in December and was completed
in March, in time for the Spring Meet, the Kentucky Oaks and the 140th running of the Kentucky
Derby.
Installation challenges posed by an underground river were solved by digging deep enough to bury 12 steel support
beams into 45 feet of bedrock.
Weighing 1.2 million pounds, the structure is built to withstand wind speeds up
to 90 miles-per-hour.
The videowall is designed to display more than nine million lines of resolution, giving operators
an array of creative capabilities ranging from replays, image close-ups, betting odds and race results to advertising, recorded programming and multiple split screen views.