Minute Maid Park
MLB - Houston Astros
Houston, Texas
Seat Count: 40,950
Construction Type: Renovation
Opening: 2011 Season
Construction Cost: $13 Million
AD Scope: Display Systems, Video &
Production Control Systems
An iconic part of the Houston skyline, Minute Maid Park is the home of the Houston Astros. The downtown ballpark has a lot of innovation to live up to considering that the club's first home was the Astrodome. Minute Maid Park's retractable roof technology brought open-air baseball to Houston for the first time in 35 years, and the natural grass surface and classic architecture give Minute Maid Park the feel of the great ballparks of baseball's Golden age.
Acoustic Dimensions worked with the Houston Astros to upgrade their stadium video displays and control systems to high definition. The new board—dubbed El Grande—is the among the largest video boards in the Major Leagues to feature a 1080i display format. The scoreboard is 54 feet high and 124 feet wide. As part of the $13 million in upgrades, a new secondary LED HD video board -- dubbed El Nino -- was installed in left field. Both boards are made by Daktronics. The ribbon boards are above the Club Level, running from foul pole to foul pole and the outfield mezzanine area add up to over 1200 feet of LED.
To support the new boards the control room was moved to a new location and upgraded to a 1080i HD system with 4 Sony manned cameras and 5 Canon PTZ cameras to cover every seat in the facility. Astros broadcaster Jim Deshaies termed the new master control "the ultimate man cave."
