Tonight marks the 80th All-Star Game and TV makers including Sharp are making a lot of hay over the event. Most of us won’t make it to St. Louis to see the historic game now entering its eighth decade, so we will be relegated to watching the TV—preferably a large flat screen in HD.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

Like LCD technology, Sharp has bet on baseball in a big way and is currently running an All Star Game promotion with the MLB (click here for more details.) The company is even considered the "Official HDTV of Major League Baseball." But don’t take my word for it, here’s what MLB commissioner Bud Selig has to say… "Sharp’s leadership in HDTV in general, as well as their expertise in LCD TV technology, made them the logical partner for us. We wanted to make sure when fans can’t watch their favorite team in person, that they’re able to enjoy almost "in-person" picture quality, and Sharp delivers for MLB, and for our fans, each and every day. We’re truly proud to call Sharp the Official HDTV of Major League Baseball" click here for more details.

Nice to know that Bud went the extra mile for fans to vet out the best technology for viewing baseball—or did he? Turns out that a new study called the LCD-Plasma Display Technology Shoot-Out doesn’t quite jibe with Bud’s assertions. The study was conducted by DisplayMate President, Dr. Ray Soneira, in collaboration with Insight Media, and has been reported on by the New York Times and Engadget in recent days. According to Soniera, the summary on Engadget drew top-10 viewing status and the full version of the summary, posted on www.displaymate.com, was read by over 6,000 people in 57 countries in the last few days. Seems Ray has poked a hornet’s nest.

The findings of the shoot-out show that LCDs have a much narrower off-axis viewing angle than the plasma sets. So narrow in fact that even 15-degrees off center gives a noticeable shift in color, click here for the specifics.

Here’s how Soneira put it, "All of the LCD units have a noticeable color shift at less than ±15 degrees, while the Panasonic Plasma is visually indistinguishable from face-on viewing well beyond ±45 degrees. This is true for both the measurements and the viewing tests. The significance of this is enormous, because it means that the ’sweet spot’ for seeing an accurate picture on an LCD HDTV is only one person wide, even for these top-of-the-line models, so essentially everyone looking at an LCD HDTV will see a picture with noticeably different coloration."

So Bud’s choice can deliver "almost in-person picture quality" but apparently, for only one baseball fan at a time. These results are not news to most readers of Display Daily. We’ve been harping on the superior display characteristics of emissive plasma technology over the light gating LCD for quite some time. And to LCD’s credit, the technology has come a long way in addressing the issues of display speed, contrast and viewing angle (well perhaps not so much the latter.)

If anything, the Soneira report should serve as a rallying cry to plasma makers like Panasonic, Samsung and LG, the final three major companies still making PDP sets and carrying the plasma banner into the CE space. LCD’s have bludgeoned plasma in the market with powerful messaging and slick promotions like the All Star campaign even though plasma offers a superior picture for viewing fast action sports. Just one look at a BestBuy ad tells the story with 10 LCD models for every one PDP advertised.

We think shoot-outs like this one go a long way to giving consumers the real story on the benefits and limits of TV technology. Let’s hope the plasma set makers take this data and run with it. Then maybe this time next year Bud will be offering his "almost in-person picture quality" to more than one fan at a time.