Are You Ready for Some Football? Watch the Game in Style!

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TV’s for watching sports are not entirely different from all the other TV’s out there, but there are specific details you can look for to best enhance your viewing experience. When watching live sports, there are fast-moving objects that a TV needs to react to on the fly, literally……the ball is flying across the field and the screen needs to be clear so you can catch that interception at the same time as the player! Buying a TV for watching sports, therefore, is going to need a proper consideration to ensure everything is crisp and focused from the first quarter/inning/period to the end of play.

What makes a “bad sports watching tv”?

There are three things that can cause a blurry or smeared picture when watching fast-moving sports.

  1. One is slow pixel response time, where the pixels just don’t react quickly enough to the changing instructions from the TV.

  2. Another is a mismatch between the frame rate of the content and the refresh rate of the TV — that’s how many times per second it draws a picture on the screen

  3. . And the third is poor motion processing — the brains of the TV are just not that sharp.

  4. Not surprisingly though, the most common cause for a blurry picture is all three of those things happening at the same time. And why, you may ask yourself, does that happen? Well, the simple answer is that it’s a cheap TV. (not necessarily that it’s just inexpensive), it is of generally poorly built with poor quality, flimsy and cheaply made parts.

What Makes Good Sports Watching?

The best color

It’s easy to see bad color on a TV when watching sports. The fix for bad color on a TV is usually not using the Vivid or Sports mode. I know it sounds backwards since you want your TV to look vivid and you’re watching sports — why wouldn’t you use those picture modes?The answer: they sacrifice picture quality to make sure the picture is bright as can be.

Pick the Standard picture mode or use the Cinema or Movie preset, and then pump up the backlight. This will get you a brighter picture while maintaining color accuracy, and we think you’ll be happier in the long run.

Motion Processing

Good pixel response time and good processing are a must! Your best bet is a 120Hz native panel. There is a distinction, and we bring it up because TV brands are confusing. If you see 120Hz Clear Motion Rate, or 240 Hz Motion Flow, or some other such nonsense — that’s the TV maker intentionally confusing the consumer with similar words that don’t mean the same thing. Look at a spec sheet and make sure it says 120Hz panel because the better panel is the indicator that it’s a better TV. Yes, it’s worth the hassle of taking a look at a spec sheet.

How to watch

Now what about how you watch the game? Are streaming apps better than cable? What about an antenna?

The sad reality is that one of the most common ways to watch sports is also one of the worst in terms of picture quality: Cable or Satellite. If that is the only way for your to watch the game, obviously, you should still watch the game! But if you are able to livestream the game or match over the internet, you might want to check into that option go with that option for a few different reasons. The biggest one is compression. Cable and satellite operators have to cram a ton of signal down a pretty small pipe. Even if you have fiber-based cable with loads of bandwidth, cable operators are usually still sending the same bundled signal down that pipe, too. It’s highly compressed so it fits, and lower bit rate and bit depth mean less pixel information and less color information.

Also, if the game is going to be on a big network like ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox, then you might want to try picking up one of your local broadcast stations with an antenna. The reason either one of those options will probably look better than cable or satellite comes down to a few factors. Using an antenna, as old school as it may sound, can also be a good move to get better picture quality. It’s also less compressed than cable — and it’s free!

So there you go! That’s our advice on what’s really important if watching sports is your first priority. And the bonus is that a TV that’s great for sports tends to be great for just about anything else you like to watch. As always, if we can help you find the perfect tv for football season or any other reason….. just CONTACT US here anytime. We look forward to hearing from you soon!