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Jerry Jones, owner of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, has encouraged his architects to make the new Texas Stadium a bigger, better facility.

The new facility still has the rectangular hole in the roof, although it can be covered by a set of sliding doors. The wind makes a fierce howl as it whips through the construction site. In this YouTube video, the howl is audible over the freeway noise.

Beneath the hole is a set of 4 HDTV monitors that are suspended 110 feet over the football field:

The board will run from the 20-yard line to the 20-yard line — measuring 180 feet in length and 50 feet in height - making it the largest video board installation in the world.

There’s more information in this article from the Dallas Morning News, including a graphic that compares the board to city buses (Stack 4 large city buses. Repeat 6 times!), as well as the stadium’s web site.

Image of the stadium construction site courtesy of Brandon Cripps through a Creative Commons license.

If you have a television in the state of Hawaii, and you want to see if your set is ready for digital television, tune into KGMB during its Monday 19 May 2008 newscasts at 5, 6 and 10 pm.

The station will do a 10-second switchover to its DTV signal, simulating what will happen on 17 February 2009 when the analog television channels go dark.

If you have more than one television set, test them all.

It doesn’t matter how you get your TV signal. The test will work with local cable, satellite and antenna systems.

If your TVs show the picture and audio, not static, during the KGMB test, you’re ready.

If not, you’ll need a new set top box from Time Warner Cable or a local electronics store.

See KGMB’s article, FAQ and the Honolulu Advertiser for more information.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

• Digital television
• 25 March 2008: Digital TV is coming
• 5 July 2004: San Diego Padres promote HDTV

Wired, Engadget Mobile and The Register have posted their updates on the FCC’s 700 mHz auction. Bidding started last Thursday for the right to use these frequencies, which include the UHF band that is used by US broadcast television channels 14 and higher. US television stations will stop using these frequencies in January 2009 as part of a long-planned conversion from analog to digital television that will support high-definition television.

In other words, this kind of auction is a rarity. It’s like finding new beachfront property in Waikiki. Of course, no one owns the airwaves. By international agreement, the radio-frequency spectrum is tightly regulated. This helps manufacturers and governements prevent radio-frequency interference (RFI), so that devices don’t overwhelm each other with static and overlapping signals. Specific portions of the spectrum are allocated to certain uses, and countries control how some frequencies are used within their borders.

This FCC auction will decide which companies rent the 700 mHz or C block for the next few decades in the USA.

These frequencies would provide better mobile phone reception than the current bands of 800 mHz to 1900 mHz. Users might get better reception inside a building, for example. As part of the deal, the FCC has mandated that the winners must allow open access to the new networks. That’s not the same as free or inexpensive access, but that requirement does mean the winner won’t have a monopoly. Someone has to design, build and sell the new hardware to use these frequencies.

AT&T, Apple, Google and Verizon have each been rumored as bidders. Current mobile telcos covet the additional bandwidth and coverage. Apple and Google could develop their own mobile data services together or independently.

Google executives have stated the company will match the US$4.6 billion reserve price of the auction, if the FCC agreed to certain conditions. The FCC said no, but there’s no good estimate on how high the auction might go. Perhaps Google was signaling that it was willing to meet the reserve price, but is the company or any other bidder willing the exceed it? Whoever wins the auction has to build out the network and earn enough money from their new services to satisfy stockholders and the market.

In today’s Honolulu Advertiser, a story revealed Hawaiian Telcom’s plans to sell DSL accounts without a traditional voice landline. In the industry, this is called naked DSL, and it has been available from HawTel since July.

It’s another attempt to recapture former HawTel customers while the company’s upcoming IPTV service languishes in testing. Many households have switched off their HawTel landlines, eliminating them from HawTel’s current DSL service.

These residential customers rely on cell phones for their voice service. Oceanic Time Warner has captured many of the residential Internet customers statewide, while Clearwire is making some gains in Honolulu.

A baffling enrollment process

Customers who don’t have a landline will have to call Hawaiian Tel to get their naked DSL, as the current signup page asks users to enter their landline phone number. Wouldn’t HawTel want to make the signup process as easy as possible for customers who don’t have a landline, especially after HawTel’s poor performance in answering customer service calls during 2006?

Based on CEO Mike Ruley’s comments in today’s article, HawTel management wants to take advantage of recent reports that rated HawTel’s DSL at a faster speed than Oceanic Time Warner’s Road Runner service. HawTel plans to increase its download speeds to peaks of 7 t0 11 mbps next month, with upload speeds of up to 1 mbps. This is assymetric DSL, which is suitable for home service. it’s not a good choice for businesses. These are faster speeds than Oceanic Time Warner’s current residential service. However, Time Warner offers a turbo option for some mainland customers that offers comparable speeds to HawTel’s new levels.

TV through your landline

HawTel’s IPTV service will need the faster connections, especially as consumers demand more HDTV channels. HawTel could sell customers a bundle that includes DSL, TV and voice services. Oceanic Time Warner has been selling a similar bundle in Hawaii for the last 2 years. Customer lock-in is easier to achieve with bundled services.

Pacific LightNet has been testing a symmetric DSL service that offers 2 mbps speeds for uploads and downloads. At US$150 per month, PLN’s SDSL is expensive, but it can support a small or home office.

Sports: The New York Times > Business > Ball Club Drives an HDTV Bandwagon: “But as good as the pictures and audio are, cable providers, broadcasters and television makers have struggled to convince consumers that the service is worth higher monthly cable fees and the high cost of the sets. Cox Communications and Sony are hoping to make their case to consumers by teaming up with the San Diego Padres to promote high-definition television to a specific audience. ”