Walgreen's 17,000 square foot display turned on in Times Square
Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:44PM EST
See Comments (18)
17,000 square feet. 340 feet tall. 13 60-inch plasma televisions. 8,000 nits of brightness. And 12 million light emitting diodes.
Even with these incredible specs, the new 17-story Walgreen's sign located at 1 Times Square isn't the worlds largest display, but its the most complex display ever, construction-wise and operation-wise, according to its developers (via The New York Times).
D3 LED, the developers of the sign, decided to use a mixture of display types, ranging from LEDs to standard Plasma HDTVs, to create "a single moving image with 20 times the resolution of standard HDTV."
Moving images are produced by a group of 32 custom-built computers feeding 150 GB uncompressed of data (wow) every 30 seconds to the display. The New York Times also adds that the data is left uncompressed due to the fact that the compression and decompression process of the data would take far too much raw computing power.
While the display is obviously very data hungry, it also requires tons of electrical power to function. Average power usage is somewhere around 250 Kilowatts (250,000 watts, whereas your average HDTV uses anywhere from 150-300 watts), although the display's power usage can climb up to 1 megawatt, depending on what image is displayed.
Other cool facts about the display: It has a range of color that far surpasses standard televisions and even exceeds the number of individual colors a printer can create. Also, the display does not have a uniform resolution—the area that is closer to the ground where there is high foot traffic has a higher resolution which gradually decreases as you elevate.
I could ramble on and on about how unbelievable this beast of a sign is, but of course, pictures do it much better justice than my words ever could. Gothamist (via Gizmodo) and The New York Times Blog have some great images up as well.
Since I'm unfortunately located on the west coast, I have yet to see this behemoth with my own eyes. Are any of you located out in the Times Square area? What are your impressions? Fill me in with your comments below.
The New York Times - LEDs Light Jumbo Sign in Times Square
Gothamist - Times Square Brightens Up with 17-story Walgreen's Sign
Comments on Walgreen's 17,000 square foot display turned on in Times Square
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Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
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2 Posted by brector96 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:12PM EDT Report Abuse
do we really need stupid crap like this when our economy is in the crapper? Not to mention the boat loads of electricity this thing is sucking. Yea it's great looking, but so what. Couldn't they find something better to spend the money on? That's all I got to say!!
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3 Posted by dcsoccer25 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:39PM EDT Report Abuse
Want.
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4 Posted by smithman0909 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:28PM EDT Report Abuse
its not that cool in real life but its still huge
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5 Posted by msannep50 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:29PM EDT Report Abuse
Enery waste. Space waste. Distracting. More of the same wastefulness from those with the money. Why can't they donate to the poor,those that eat pet food or go without food to be able to pay rent or for their medication? Or the homeless, or even to an about to go bankrupt hospital or clinic? Where does the stupidity and selfishness stop?
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6 Posted by jonjon19752001 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:40PM EDT Report Abuse
It's an eyesore!!!
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7 Posted by somebodys_here on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:32PM EDT Report Abuse
Ah... only in America. We're a monument to our own excess. I love it.
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8 Posted by sccrdude2120 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:07PM EDT Report Abuse
thats whack i have that in my living room except i got 14 - 62 inch plasma televisions
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9 Posted by mylover_man on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:31PM EDT Report Abuse
I agree with the others. What a waste of power and money. When the rest of us are trying to conserve not only energry and money the people with to much ,waste what we save, thus canceling all our efforts to conserve.
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10 Posted by nbp2013 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:34PM EDT Report Abuse
without a dought the biggest waste of time, money, energy, and thought i have ever seen. They could have used that money on building homes for the homeless. Just like Obama could have spent his campiagn money on the homless. That would have gotten my vote.
1 Posted by biodragon1 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:08PM EDT Report Abuse
what an incredible waste of power.