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The Confluence

Interview with Penguins’ Director of Media Technology, Chris DeVivo

by Tony on 03/31/10 at 11:08 AM ET
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If you’re as pumped as I am to see the Consol Energy Center in its final stages, then you’ll enjoy this Q&A I recently had with Chris DeVivo, the Penguins’ Director of Media Technology.  Chris is involved with every intricate detail when it comes to all of the fancy new bells and whistles that will be a big part of the fan experience when the new arena opens its doors later this summer.

Chris was gracious enough to withstand my constant pestering and answer some common fan questions in his area of expertise, as well as detail some of the more technical aspects that the Consol Energy Center will offer.

So enjoy the interview after the jump, and I’m pretty sure after reading it you’ll be even more excited.

1.  The new arena’s webcam has been fantastic to watch over the past 19 months, with the site transforming from a big pile of dirt to a state of the art structure.  That said, the real action now of course is taking place indoors, from the seat installs to the 66 luxury suites to the vast concourses.  Do you envision activating an additional webcam indoors, or perhaps moving the existing webcam?

(CD)  We’re working on it as we speak.  Two big challenges we have right now is that we don’t yet have internet service in the building and there’s a lot of construction going on all over the facility. That being said, we think we may have found a solution and – no promises – we hope to have this implemented soon.  If we end up with the solution that I’m hoping for it will have been well worth the wait.  It will definitely be a unique view of the inside of the building.

2.  From everything we’ve heard lately, the huge scoreboard that will be installed in the Consol Energy Center will be the best thing since hot-buttered popcorn.  What can the fans expect to see on that scoreboard that wasn’t possible with the current scoreboard at Mellon Arena?

(CD)  Well, the displays from Mitsubishi are absolutely stunning.  We put a lot of time and effort into selecting this product, looking at screens in Boston, Cleveland, Montreal, Toronto, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.  One of the other bidders set up a giant display in Mellon Arena during the playoffs last season, and we spent months configuring and reconfiguring the specs to get exactly what we wanted.  But what to expect?  The change is going to be so radical that it’s hard to narrow down one specific thing.

First, it’s true physical HD resolution.  There’s enough pixels on each of those displays to give you over 720p in physical resolution.  No gimmicks, no pixel sharing, no saying that the board is HD when it really isn’t.  Pure, indisputable, high definition video.  Next, the contrast ratio is impressive with the “black package”.  As LED technology has advanced, companies are putting the pixels/lighting units closer and closer together.  So when you see so and so has a 10mm board, 15mm, etc, that means the physical spacing between the pixels.  The smaller the number, the better.  For example, Mellon Arena has a 10mm board.  The Pete over at Pitt has a 16mm, the outdoor screen we use is a 15mm.  At Consol Energy Center, we’re putting in a 6mm board.  A side-effect of putting the pixels this close together is that the boards start to get a slight ‘sheen’ to them, because all of the white pixels are so to each other.  Mitsubishi has addressed this with the IDT-6a “Black Package”.  Essentially, all of the lighting units and matrices are wrapped in black, to give a stunning contrast ration.  More contrast means more separation of the images and graphics.  The separation gives it more depth overall, almost a 3D type look.

Let’s not forget the size of the main video boards.  Almost 3 times as wide as the video screen at Mellon Arena and nearly twice as tall.  The impact that’s going to have is hard to imagine until you see it hanging there.

3.  On your new website, BackTeching, you’re absolutely giddy when talking about the new equipment being installed in your control room at the new arena.  While the new equipment will obviously be state of the art, what new capabilities does this give you and your staff?

(CD)  Well, we took a different approach when putting together the control room.  I think some facilities tend to look at their video control room in a vacuum, instead of treating it as the central nervous system of all media operations.  That’s what we did.  When you look at some of the technologies we will deploy—IPTV and expanded Yinzcam for example, and couple it with some other day-to-day functions like web video and the TV shows we produce (Inside Penguins Hockey, Dan Bylsma Show, Penguins Report, and in-arena pre-game show) we had to look bigger than just the game night presentation.

Look, if we can’t pick good equipment - cameras, replays systems, graphics, switcher -  with the budget we had to work with we should all be fired.  That stuff is a no-brainer.  My biggest focus with all of this was to have a seamless work flow that touched all parts of of the Penguins media world.  And that’s what we did.  I firmly believe that the way we will manage and distribute our media will be unparalleled for a sports team.  Sure, other places have spent a lot more money than we did in this area, but that wasn’t our goal.  My goal from the outset was to have the smartest work flow in sports, and I’m confident we’re going to accomplish that.

So from the fan perspective, expect to see a lot more content hitting all of our platforms - scoreboard, LED’s, Yinzcam, and the IPTV systems throughout the building in a more timely manner.  There’s nothing worse than having great technology getting stale content.  And on a practical level—more replays, better cameras, more camera angles, better graphics, and greatly enhanced sound.

4. Keep hearing about IPTV.  What exactly is it?

(CD)  IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television.  Basically we’ll distribute all of our TV signals in public places at Consol Energy Center this way.  It’s all HD and it’s all digital, and gives a lot more flexibility in how and what we distribute on all the displays. 

So we’ll be showing the game on the displays, with updates sports ticker style information running along the bottom, and room for advertising on the right side.  We can put whatever video signal we want in there and have about 100 times the flexibility we do at Mellon Arena.  If you’re in the suites, you’ll have your cable/satellite feeds running over the system, and we have five “house channels” that we can send out whatever we want - a channel of just replays, an ISO camera following star players, etc.  Possibilities are pretty endless.

Also, did I mention that we’ll have 700-800 TV’s in the arena?  I think we’re in double digits at Mellon.  And since this is all digital, all of the displays will look good.  At Mellon, it’s an analog system so some TV’s look better than others, depending on how far the cable run is.

5. Anything else you’d like to add?

(CD)  Well this one isn’t as much about in-arena as it is to the home viewer.  We have a lot of people watching from home, and we wanted to enhance that experience as well.  So from Day 1 of arena design the goal was to get the main camera angles much lower than they are at Mellon Arena to try to better show the speed of the game.  We have twice the amount of center-ice camera positions as we do now, which means more cameras for the networks, which means more closeups and ISO cams.

We’re also testing several new camera positions in the bowl which would be unique to U.S. arenas.  Can’t say much on them now as we’re still testing, but hopefully some news soon.

And finally, the sound.  There’s nothing worse to me than reading a blog or a message board post or tweet that says “wow, it sounds so dead there” when in fact I know it isn’t.  Part of the problem is that you have a lot of microphones down on the boards, but none up high.  The ice surface is sort of in it’s own little sound vacuum down there, so the crowd never comes across as true as it is.  We’re putting a lot of microphones up high and on the scoreboard structure and deliver that to the TV trucks so they mix a better show.

6.  OK Chris, I’m sure you could talk about the new arena until you’re blue in the face, but that should about do it, thank you.  By the way, I’m starting the rumor right now, Van Halen will open up the Consol Energy Center, I dare you to debunk it.

(CD)  Sad to say that one is not even an E1, my friend.  Van Halen will not be opening the building.  I’m sure everyone will know soon enough who our first act is.  [Tony’s note:  Damn!]

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