The stadium for the Houston Astros features a state-of-the-art Digital production studio for delivering images throughout the facility for baseball fans.  Professional Products, (PPI), designed and integrated a live video production facility to support the 16:9 LED scoreboard screen and standard 4:3 video monitoring throughout the facility.

The control room is built around a digital production switcher and a digital video effects generator.  The switcher brings in both 4:3 and 16:9 signals and outputs in both 16:9 on the scoreboard screen and 4:3 on the house monitors.  The 16:9 signal from the switcher is taken through an aspect ratio converter to adjust back to 4:3.

Minute Maid Park has all the capability of a broadcast production facility.  Four broadcast cameras provide coverage of the game and are linked back to the control room via triax feeds. In addition the room can take advantage of numerous truck feeds.  Frame synchronizers stabilize and convert to digital, all of the truck fed video.

The control room also contains a character generator for graphics, a digital effects generator, and a multi-channel video server for stills and video clips.  All of these devices are networked together to provide file transfer capabilities and to enhance workflow.

Instant replay and slow motion is done through a video server.  The advantage to using a server is that is can record and playback multiple channels simultaneously.  Cue time for replay is instantaneous, as compared to using videotape which is much slower to cue and prone to head clog.  Video from the server is monitored using an image processor which enables four true-color images to be shown on a single large SVGA display for operator viewing ease.

For post-production editing a non-linear edit system is used for both graphic creation and video editing.  On non-game days, the suite functions as post-production facility.