Times Square Goes HD

As Toshiba have begun claiming to be the first company in the world to sell modular HDTV screens for outdoor rentals, they’ve decided to back up this claim by replacing their advert in Times Square with an upgraded board.

This screen, they claim is truly HD, but at the distance it is from the ground, it’s hard to tell. It looks like a small poster from down below, but the new screen is a whopping 52 feet in both directions, and consists of a grand total of 1,597,440 LEDs. I’d love to know how much that cost them, considering when I’ve bought LEDs they’ve cost me about $1 each.

Toshiba have installed their Technovirtual Pixel-Sharing technology to bring the advert to life, and this system creates what they call ‘virtual pixels’, and allows the LEDs to produce over a billion different colors as well as reducing power consumption.

However, despite the new technology and fancy names, the new board hasn’t been entirely well received. Critics reminisce over the way Times Square used to be, when you could drive through and be blessed by neon, rather than dazzled by the modern LED displays which dominate the junction, only made worse by this new generation of advert.

There’s also the concern that the board is a huge waste of money. When something is a hundred feet in the air, does it really need to be HD? Probably not, as you can barely make it out anyway, and as for the huge range of colours – human eyes can’t even detect a billion different colors, which shows great planning on Toshiba’s part.

Anyway, it’s still a pretty cool concept, so have a look if you pass through any time soon. No doubt the rest of Times Square will be in hot pursuit.