Frank's 2000-Inch TV



"''The picture's crystal clear and everything is magnified

''Robert DeNiro's mole has got to be ten feet wide

''Everybody in the town

''Can hear those 90,000 watts of Dolby sound

''And I'm mighty proud to say

Now I can watch The Simpsons from thirty blocks away"

- Weird Al Yankovic, "Frank's 2000" TV"

Frank's 2000" TV. Still a relatively uncommon sight, but starting to gain in popularity as larger and larger screens are possible. This is really little more than a giant television, usually on the side of a building. There's one in Times Square in New York, at least one in Tokyo, and often their slightly smaller cousins are present in Elaborate Underground Bases. Jumbotrons are a close, but comparatively tiny, relative.

Often used for advertising in the sort of Dystopian future that has a lot of Corrupt Corporate Executives in it. In a particularly bad one, it could also be used so that Big Brother Is Watching You.

In Real Life a 2000" TV would be about 80 feet (24.1 meters) high, assuming a 16:9 aspect ratio; the older 4:3 ratio would make it 100 feet (30.5 meters) high.

Not related to the Frank of TV, or the 2000 Inch TV's Frank.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

 * Gigantic television screens are often seen in futuristic Anime, from Akira to Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex.
 * They're everywhere in Code Geass.
 * The image above is from Kemeko Deluxe and is the Mishima Industries headquarters. It appears to be a 2,000-foot screen.
 * Often seen in Death Note, the most visible case being the broadcast of L's taunting of Kira - visible not only on TV, but also on large outdoor screens.
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has them, both in mid-air film projectors (which works... how, exactly?) in the first half of the series, and on the building-mounted screens apparently all over the place in Kamina City in the second half.

Film

 * Blade Runner, with the huge screens on the sides of skyscrapers showing endless looped ads for sushi Coca-Cola.
 * The gigantic digital time-and-date clock in Freejack that tells the hero he just woke up in the future. Also, the gigantic screen with his Wanted Poster displayed on it.
 * The huge screen from which the Chancellor addresses his top lieutenants in the movie version of V for Vendetta.
 * Seen in Times Square during the World Unity Festival in the first Spider-Man movie.
 * In The Simpsons Movie, Big Bad Russ Cargill speaks to the citizens of Springfield through a giant video display on the dome enclosing the town.
 * Repo the Genetic Opera has one that floats in the air and broadcasts ads for the eponymous Genetic Opera.
 * The walls of the GeneCo building show various ads.
 * In the Ralph Bakshi animated movie Wizards, the Big Bad Blackwolf uses a magic movie projector to project old Nazi propaganda movies onto the sky to dishearten his enemies and boost the morale of his own troops.
 * Used here when the main character leaves the building there are loads of TV screens everywhere. Clearly a shout-out to Half-Life 2, where Dr Breen broadcasts messages to the masses via large TV screens dotted around.
 * Avatar's supplemental materials mention that every dwelling on earth has at least one wall-sized TV.
 * Wall E's Buy N' Large corp has giant hologram ads everywhere, including the moon.

Literature
""Look at this flatscreen, Bob! Forty-seven thousand five hundred ninety-nine bucks, biggest one they make!""
 * The telescreens in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
 * Held up as an example of male behavior in Denis Leary's Why We Suck; specifically, the tendency of men to buy the biggest, most powerful, most expensive item available for bragging purposes.

Live Action TV

 * Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother has a television in his room which takes up the entire wall. Lily notes it hurts her eyes and Barney replies that the pain of watching it never goes away.
 * There's always a monster-sized viewscreen at the front of The Bridge in the various incarnations of Star Trek. The TNG screen looks particularly grand and impressive. Justified as this screen is intended to double up as the traditional car windscreen (a huge sheet of glass on a spaceship expected to enter combat isn't very practical).
 * The screen also had holographic 3D depth. You can notice it when we are looking at the characters and the screen in the same frame.
 * Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Shown in establishing shots of Cardassia Prime to give their society an Orwellian look.

Music

 * As demonstrated by the page quote, The Trope Namer is Weird Al Yankovic's song "Frank's 2000-Inch TV", which is entirely about neighbour getting such a huge TV. Maybe a good thing if you share Frank's taste in viewing material, incentive to move to another town if you don't.

Professional Wrestling

 * The Titantron on WWE shows, besides being used to display entrance videos, the match going on in the ring, and any backstage antics to the crowd, is often used by characters to address the crowd or other characters directly.

Video Games

 * The World Ends With You features an early mission that involves helping a young businessman advertise a certain pin brand, and making sure that people watch an ad for it played on one of these in Shibuya's famous scramble crossing. In fact, the Real Life scramble crossing has three of these.
 * Half-Life 2 has jumbotron screens all over the city. Initially, Dr Breen makes announcements on them, then (after the fall) Dr Kleiner.
 * And with Garrys Mod, you can put whoever you want in the picture.
 * The SeeDs interrupting a national broadcast and blowing their cover on one of these kicks off most of the plot of Final Fantasy VIII.
 * Syndicate Wars features several billboard-size videoscreens showing ads as well as a digital drive-through theatre.
 * You can potentially win one -- a 2600" one -- in the second arena of Smash TV.

Western Animation

 * Much as they often show up in futuristic anime, they're also all over the place in the future Earth of Samurai Jack. 90% have Aku endorsing some product or other. How many times is he going to eat that burger!?
 * Played with in various ways by Futurama, from the big screen the Planet Express Delivery ship crashes into during the opening credits Couch Gag, to the huge LCD digital clock display on clock towers.
 * There was a 300 inch screen on board the Planet Express Ship during the events of Into The Wild Green Yonder. It was smashed in frustration after it broadcast an ad for a 301 inch screen.
 * Even later, in a blink and you'll miss it gag, they are watching a 308 television. Only for it to be advertising a 312.
 * In the recent Goofy short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, Goofy buys a 1200" set, so big his house has to be lifted up in order to deliver it.
 * On Jimmy Two-Shoes, several large screens hover over Miseryville, which Lucius uses to address the public.

Real Life

 * Real life example: Many Strip-facing signs/marquees at the newer/better hotels on the Las Vegas Strip include giant TV screens (usually one for each side of the sign), each at least the size of a Jumbotron, airing looped ads for their shows, restaurants, etc. Much of the Strip exterior of Planet Hollywood consists of giant screens, each airing a different set of ads; Wynn Las Vegas adds the twist that its marquee is taller than it is wide, and the hotel sign travels up and down it to "change" the ads.
 * Giant screens are common at stadia and other sports venues. The world's largest video screen is at the Dallas Cowboys stadium, at over 25,000 square feet (according to their official publicity, that's equivalent to 4,920 52" flat-panel TVs).
 * 2105 inches diagonally. It qualifies.
 * At times, Doctor Who has been shown on big screens.
 * Giant electronic billboards are becoming more and more common by the day in Los Angeles.
 * And in many other cities considering that Mobile, AL has about 20 or so.
 * This picture from Ukraine shows the surreal consequence of such a device breaking down at night: a giant Windows error message floating in midair.
 * Piccadilly Circus in London has multiple neon and video signs covering an entire street.
 * The Mahoning Drive-In Theatre has a 120 ft wide screen. This is just a tad smaller than a 2000" HDTV screen, which would be 44.3 m (145.3 ft) wide by 24.9 m (81.7 ft) tall, or about twice as wide and tall as an IMAX screen.
 * They are building the world's largest HD video board (EVEN BIGGER THAN THE SCREEN AT THE DALLAS COWBOYS STADIUM) at Charlotte Motor Speedway. They say it will be finished in May 2011.
 * At 200 by 80 feet, it will be a 2584" TV.
 * Considering it's now September of that year at the time of this posting, is it done?
 * It is. They unveiled it with... a NASCAR driver playing a computer game on it: