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Fremont Street Experience's Viva Vision, The World's Largest TV Screen
Rated #2 for all Las Vegas things to do.

425 Fremont St (Cross Street: North Las Vegas Bl. Las Vegas, Nevada) View Map

A world of super sized animation, and high-resolution special effects. A one-of-a-kind screen that sits 90 feet above a street in Las Vegas. Every night just after dark, on the hour every hour, the ceiling over the street is suddenly covered with a multitude of creations, from star ships to snakes.
The Fremont Street Experience canopy is 1,500 feet long, which is equal to about four soccer fields, and about 45 feet wide. It is the world's largest LED screen and is powered by 550,000 watts of concert-quality sound."
Tourists and families stroll under a 90-foot-high, four-block-long electronic canopy that flashes colorful graphics and animations. Dubbed Viva Vision, the world's largest LED screen is paired with a 550,000-watt sound system to show specially produced shows played every night at dusk.
In the evening every half hour or so the outdoor ceiling has a video/light show with background music.

The $17 million Viva Vision screen was installed recently as an upgrade to the original 1995 screen, which was covered with incandescent bulbs. Each digital video clip, which lasts only a few minutes, takes several months to produce.
The new Viva Vision technology is run by 10 high-speed, state-of-the-art computers - operating the system from a dedicated control room - with 9,600 gigabytes of storage, providing greater control, reduced maintenance costs and increased storage capacity, allowing the system to store and rotate a larger selection of shows. An additional $2 million in ambient lighting within the Viva Vision canopy includes 180 computer-programmed high-intensity strobe lights, 64 variable color lighting fixtures capable of producing more than 300 colors, sixteen 7,000-watt skytrackers and eight robotic mirrors per block - each capable of being individually programmed to pan and tilt to reflect light during the show.

The screen itself is a technical wonder.
It has 12.5 million red, blue, and green synchronized LED (Light Emiting Diode) lamps that are constantly being replaced, and an image that runs at 60 frames per second. That is about double the number of frames from a typical TV set. These LEDs emit 16.7 million colors.
The footage on The Fremont Street Experience is shot with a Digital8 camcorder and is supplied in flattened QuickTime format. Time lengths range from 2 seconds up to 15 seconds and 4.3 MB to 78.8 MB file size. It is shot and captured in NTSC format dimensions, 720 x 486 pixels, at a frame rate of 30 fps.
It also has 180 computer-programmed strobe lights and 64 variable color lighting fixtures.
208 remote speakers disperse the sound throughout the shopping area below.

Each digitally reproduced movie is specially made to take the perspective and curve of the surface into consideration.
In fact, a series of mini-movies are created and then joined up to fit seamlessly onto the extremely long screen. Each segment goes through a multilayered encoding process and finally becomes a huge MPEG clip.

View Video (1.752 Megs)

This also has been televised on the History Channel program, Modern Marvels:

Download Video File (9.992 Megs, not the same video...)

Another Video:
Download Video - Real 9 - 340x248 (19.53MB)
Download Video - Windows Media - 192x144 (2.01MB)
Download Video - Windows Media - 340x248 (29.75MB)
Download Video - Windows Media - 640x480 (85.27MB)

Yes, More Videos!
Click here to watch a video of Viva Vision at the Fremont Street Experience.
(Note: This video is about 5 minutes long. The following clips are 20 to 30 seconds long.)

Click here to watch video clip 2.
Click here to watch video clip 3.

If you do not get sound and video when you click on the links above, you may need a later version of the Windows Media Player. You can download it here.

* Parking:
This is a popular activity on holidays, so be sure to arrive early--especially if you have to park.
Park in one of the municipal parking lots. You can get your ticket validated in any one of the surrounding hotels.
The Fremont Street Experience Parking Plaza is located on the corner of 4th and Carson.
Parking may be validated up to 5 hours at the following properties:
» California Hotel & Casino
» Fitzgerald's Hotel & Casino
» Four Queens Hotel & Casino
» Fremont Hotel & Casino
» Golden Gate Hotel & Casino
» Golden Nugget
» Las Vegas Club Casino Hotel
» Main Street Station Casino, Hotel & Brewery
The Parking Plaza at the eastern end of Fremont Street is a 1,430-space parking structure built to accommodate an increase in visitors to downtown.

* Pros: It's Free, Nothing like it
* Cons: Can be too crowded
* Hours: Light and sound shows, on the hour, dusk to midnight daily
Cost: Free

If the music is not your era, wait for the next show. Never a Bad viewing position. Never someone standing in front of you causing a blocked vision.
The streets are blocked off and tens of thousands of bright lights form cool patterns overhead on Fremont Street.

Fremont Street Experience is a public-private partnership formed in 1995 between the City of Las Vegas and The Fremont Street Experience Company, LLC - owned by a group of 10 downtown casino/hotels that underwrite operating expenses for the venue. Member properties include: Binion's Horseshoe Hotel & Casino; Boyd Gaming (Fremont Hotel & Casino, California Hotel, Main Street Station Casino, Brewery & Hotel); Fitzgerald's Casino Hotel; Four Queens Hotel & Casino; Golden Gate Hotel & Casino; Golden Nugget Las Vegas; Lady Luck Hotel Casino (associate member); and Las Vegas Club Hotel Casino.

From midnight to dawn each day, workers are changing burned out LED lights so that the world's largest LED screen provides the light show. What makes a good LED go bad is heat and rain.
Every hour from 8 p.m.-midnight, the Viva Vision screen displays one of 10 different seven-minute shows, straining the necks of 16 million viewers a year.

Further details and show times are available at www.vegasexperience.com

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