So... Stadium gigs. Rock 'n' Roll. Big stages, big screens, loud music. If you're at the front, ROCK ON! You can see the singer's tattoos, smell the drummer's BO, and the guitarist is spitting on you. Neat.

If you're at the back, well, the band are tiny people off in the distance somewhere, and you've got to stare up at those big screens to see what's going on.

And of course sound travels slower than light. So by the time the sound from the band gets to you, the light from the screens has been and gone. Which really adds to the feeling of not-quite-watching-it-live, since the guys up on the screen are all out of sync with the music. It's kinda disappointing, and makes you wish you'd stayed at home and watched it on TV.

Simple solution - put a slight delay on the video feed, so it matches the sound for the people at the back. For the people at the front it's now going to look out of sync, but who cares? - they're having enough fun as it is.
-- iivix, Jun 23 2004

Good idea. But would you sync it to the very back? What about the people in the middle? It seems like in a venue big enough for this to be an issue, someone will end up being neither able to see the stage well nor see the video in sync with the sound.
-- evilmathgenius, Jun 23 2004


Well, OK, the middle is more reasonable. I just feel sorry for all those poor sods right at the back.
-- iivix, Jun 23 2004


Don't feel sorry for them. They probably came by their tickets a lot easier than those in front of them (either less money, or less waiting in line).
-- luecke, Jun 23 2004


Oh that is so not true, [luecke].
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Jun 23 2004


This is very well written; thank you!

But - if you're at the way back of a large rock concert, doesn't your sound come out of nearby speakers, not from the stage? Where it travelled via wires? At the speed of electrity, not sound?
-- jutta, Jun 23 2004


If you put a type of polarising screen over the video screen (I think that's the right term), you could split the video feed into horizontal stripes of different delays that could only be seen if you were at the right angle. So...you'd lose a lot of resolution and if you weren't in perfect alignment, you'd get distortion from the edges of another feed maybe, but then you could have it synced for different areas of the stadium. Assuming that this is a concert without speakers near the back, as mentioned by [jutta].

(For those who know it, I'm just thinking horizontal slots on the device using a vertically slotted screen to make 3D LCD screens. It was reported in New Scientist, but doesn't seem to be on their website.)
-- inc_b, Jun 24 2004



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