After an offseason that saw the Houston Rockets part with six of their top-eight minutes-getters from the 2011-12 campaign, bring in restricted free-agent bookends Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik, import four rookies and fail to swing a deal for a superstar center, we don't really have any idea what the team will actually look like on the court this year. But we do know, at least, that they'll be easy to see from pretty much anywhere in their home arena. (And maybe even from outside.)

The Rockets announced Tuesday that they will unveil this season a brand-new, "state-of-the-art video scoreboard" at the Toyota Center that will stand as "the largest indoor center-hung scoreboard in the United States." The monster screen will reportedly be in place and operational in time for the Rockets' Nov. 3, 2012, home opener against the Portland Trail Blazers. From the Rockets' statement:

The new scoreboard will be manufactured and installed by Panasonic and will feature the largest combined viewing area of any indoor center-hung scoreboard currently used in the U.S. The scoreboard will contain four large screens — two rectangular-shaped displays that will face the east and west seating areas and a pair of square-shaped screens that will face the north and south ends of the bowl. The larger boards will measure approximately 25 [feet] high by 58 [feet] wide. The two end panels will measure approximately 25 [feet] high by 25 [feet] wide. All the boards will display a full HD signal with 1080 lines of resolution.

As you can see in the mockup above, those 58-foot-long sideline-facing screens mean the entire scoreboard will stretch from lane to lane, covering nearly 62 percent of the length of the 94-foot NBA court. The Rockets' new video board is larger than a similar indoor, center-hung HD scoreboard being installed at Bankers Life Fieldhouse by the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers' new screen, which team spokesman David Benner confirmed to BDL on Tuesday, will be installed and operational in time for Indy's home opener — also slated for Nov. 3, against the Sacramento Kings — and will feature twin 21-feet-by-50-feet screens facing the sidelines and 25-feet-by-14-feet screens facing the baselines.

"Hold on," you might be thinking. "If the new Toyota Center board will have 25-by-25 and 25-by-58 screens, and the genre-defining center-hung video board at Cowboys Stadium has two sides that are 29-by-51 and two that are 72-by-160, then how is this the 'largest indoor center-hung scoreboard in the United States?'" The answer lies in how you define "indoor."

"The board will be the largest in an arena in the U.S. [...] the Dallas board is much larger, but we do view that as an outdoor board since it has a roof," Rockets spokesman Nelson Luis told BDL on Tuesday morning. "Our designation was for arenas in the U.S."

Regardless of whether you think the domed enclosure in Arlington constitutes an indoor space, the new big screen at the Toyota Center will represent a huge upgrade over the existing scoreboard — 600 percent more screen space, according to the team, enabling "limitless configurations for displaying live action, game statistical information and animations."

In an interview with Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, Rockets senior production manager and producer Joe Abercrombie detailed what the team might do with all that "real estate," including showcasing some of the nitty-gritty numbers that Houston's general manager so loves:

"We can go full screen. We can have three windows. We can have stat panels on the sides. We can have enhanced replay layouts where we have multiple angles of one replay. We can have one window that shows you the live game in progress, and the other window shows you the replay of the previous play. [...] In keeping with general manager Daryl Morey's emphasis on analytics, they also could bring information that cannot be found in the box scores he considers more inadequate than the old scoreboard. "Daryl and I have already talked about getting with his staff to provide more information about the way they look at the games and getting that information to the fans as well," [Rockets CEO Tad] Brown said.

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