Last week, I got to play Xbox 360 on the world's largest, highest resolution screen. At 11 feet tall and 120 feet long, it was ridiculous. It made Panasonic's 150-inch plasma look like a toy.
I was lucky enough to be invited on as a guest on CollegeHumor's video game show, Bleep Bloop. Apparently, after extensive work, uh, "testing" Panasonic's 103-inch and 150-inch plasma screens, I'm somewhat of an expert on playing video games on ludicrously large monitors. Badass.
Click to viewAccording to the folks at IAC, who house this monstrosity in their headquarters' lobby, it's the largest, highest-definition screen in the world. That is to say there are larger screens with lower resolution and smaller screens with higher resolution, but this bad boy has the highest combo of both specs. Yes, it is large.
Unfortunately, due to it being 120 feet long, it has a ridiculous aspect ratio that's not designed for regular things like TV or video games, instead acting as a strange art space most of the time. Because of this, we could only use one chunk of the screen. I was told, however, that they have the ability to hook up multiple Xboxes at once, possibly linking them together side by side for some sort of epic multiplayer showdown. I want very much to make that dream a reality, but that's for another day.
Mahoney and I got an opportunity to go behind the wall and check it out, and it's a crazy setup. It has 21 projectors aimed at 42 mirrors. The projectors are actually aimed away from the screen, bouncing down and back off of two mirrors each to combine to fill up the massive screen.
As for playing on the screen, it was pretty killer. Obviously, playing video games on large screens is really fun. But in all honesty, it gets to a point where you aren't even really paying attention to the large screen anymore. You know, it's only a novelty for so long, and then you're just focusing on not falling off the damned buildings anymore in Mirror's Edge. I guess you can get used to anything.
What huge screens like this are really great for is split-screen gaming. If we had played Call of Duty 4 on this thing, for example, all four players would have the equivalent of a 134-inch TV to stare at. But really, a screen like this isn't even an option for anyone other than Barry Diller to use on any type of real basis, but if you ever get an opportunity to spend an afternoon dicking around with one, you won't want to skip it. Trust me.
Thanks to John Mahoney for taking pictures and to Jeff Rubin and Pat Cassels for having me on Bleep Bloop! [CollegeHumor's Bleep Bloop]