A/V Setup at the Championship

[ahecht]

While I thought that most of the field set-ups in the Georgia dome were pretty nice, I was rather disappointed with the audio on the two fields flanking Einstein. Each of the two fields had a total of 4 speakers set up for their audio, and those four speakers were totally overpowered by the massive speaker system set up for the finals on Einstein, which were being used by the LEGO league announcers. Of all the fields, there were probably the least number of people in the stands for LEGO league, but that was all you could really hear on that side of the arena. Oh, and don't get me started on the lack of dynamic range on that speaker system when sitting in the balcony.

I hope that next year, they can install an additional small speaker setup on Einstein for LEGO League, and save the huge one for opening and closing ceremonies.

The video in the pits was also rather lousy. Two of the fields only had black and white video, and all the screens were so washed out that they were barely visible.

On the other hand, I thought that the video in the dome was excellent this year. Having screens down on each field was a major improvement over Houston, and using JumboTron style screens instead of projection screens really increased viewability. I also liked that FIRST finally figured out how to mirror the Einstien video on the Galileo and Curie screens during closing ceremonies (something we had complained about during the opening ceremonies on Friday). At least on Curie, the camera work was also very good (I didn't get much time to watch other fields). I was, however, a bit confused as to why there were crane cameras on the field for a few matches on Friday and Saturday, but the video from the cranes was never shown on the screen, and they weren't present during finals.

Sorry if I come out sounding negative here. There was so much about this year's event that was wonderful, but much of it has been covered already in other threads.