Modern technology turns Olympic stadium into large screen

LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 27: Performers during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Roger Sedres/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

London, July 28 (IANS) Modern technology helped turn the Olympic Stadium into one huge screen in the London Games opening ceremony here Friday.

In the opening ceremony, one of the most exciting new ideas used is the “audience pixels”. The pixel screen extends around the audience seating area and is made up of 70,799 small panels mounted between the seats, reports Xinhua.

Each of these panels has nine LED pixels — there are nearly 640,000 in total — which are controlled by a central computer.

At certain points, the audience will be asked to hold up the panels and amazingly complex images and beautiful effects will flood in the Stadium via the 317 km of cable that connects to the central control.

It took a team of 40 almost two months to install the system. And three people spent 40 hours lining up the images to the irregular shape of the seating bowl.