Furman and Diversified Systems Keep the Slow Motion Video Going for the Fast-Moving Oakland A's!

The red-hot Oakland Athletics are sitting atop the American League West just after the mid-season All-Star Game break, and ESPN doesn’t refer to the team as the “Surging A’s” for nothing. But another kind of power surge, one that could have had dire consequences for this winning’s team’s stadium video display show and live in-stadium entertainment, was avoided in mid July, thanks to the timely installation of a Furman F1500-UPS uninterruptible power supply and battery backup/power conditioner.

Earlier this year, AV systems designer and integrator Diversified Systems installed a new Grass Valley slow-mo video playback system, consisting of a Grass Valley® Dyno slow-motion controller and Summit video server, replacing an older Grass Valley Profile slow-motion system at the Athletics’ 35,000-plus-seat O.co Coliseum, which it shares with the NFL Oakland Raiders. As part of this system upgrade, a Furman F1500-UPS uninterruptible power supply and battery backup/power conditioner was included, to protect the rack containing the Summit server.

“The slow-mo video system is crucial to the A’s in-stadium video operation,” observes Mark Sackett, Project Manager and Systems Engineer for Diversified Systems’ work on the stadium’s AV systems, noting that the slow-motion replays on the stadium’s huge Diamond Vision video displays are substantial revenue generators for the team, attracting additional advertising between clips of tight plays. “It really keeps the fans in the stands engaged.” 

The Furman F1500 sat in its rack unnoticed, as it’s supposed to do, until one day in mid July, when a power surge due to an electrical storm hit the control room racks overnight, taking several of them offline — except for the rack holding the Summit slow-mo server, which never even blinked during the power surge. “The [video] switcher and the router were knocked off line briefly, but the Furman F1500 protected the server, exactly as it was designed and intended to do,” says Sackett. “Surge protection and power conditioning seem like very small parts of a complex system like a stadium’s slow-motion video, but if there comes a time when you really need it, it’s suddenly the most important component in the rack. We were very happy we had a Furman unit in there. It really made the difference.”