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Many football fans who can't go to Super Bowl can have a high-definition experience instead(Beaumont Enterprise, The (Texas) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 1--Years ago, "the next best thing to being there" was the slogan AT&T used to hype its long-distance service. Now it's far more applicable to the latest video technology -- especially as football fans use it to transport themselves to Arizona for Super Bowl XLII, pitting the N.Y. Giants against the New England Patriots. "Attending" the game via high-definition broadcast from a favorite armchair or sofa already is a possibility for as many as a third of American households, according to the Consumer Electronic Association. The association says it expects electronics dealers will sell another 2.4 million by the post-5 p.m. kickoff. "It gets a little busier here, nothing like Christmas, but busier than most times of year," Jason McMillan, a Best Buy manager in Beaumont, said by phone. Beaumont-based Brock Audio and Video Systems store manager Allen Levy said he has seen increased volume as well, but said he was not certain it could be attributed to the Super Bowl. Officials from Conn's Inc. also indicated store activity has been higher in the past few weeks. "It's a whole different viewing experience," Bill Nylin, a Conn's executive vice chair, said. "Once they've seen it at a friend's home, they really want to have it in their home." Both varieties of flat-panel, high-definition television sets have been popular -- plasma and liquid crystal display (LCD) -- but representatives from the three stores indicated the latter has been the strongest performer lately. McMillan said a plasma screen features "more natural" and "much darker" colors than an LCD screen, but the latter is more resistant to glare. A plasma screen might be preferable in a dark room and an LCD screen in a room with more sun exposure, he said. Levy said some consumers are convinced that the faster refresh rate on plasma screens provides a better viewing experience than LCD screens, particularly for fast-paced programs such as sporting events, but he said he believes the human eye cannot truly discern the difference. A disadvantage of plasma screens that might be driving consumers to favor LCD sets is the risk of stationary images becoming "burned" permanently into the display. "When they burn in, there's nothing you can do about it," Levy said. The price of high-definition sets has dropped by about half in the past year, Levy said. A 52-inch LCD set typically will cost around $2,500, while a plasma set of the same size will run about $2,000. Walter Broussard, Conn's senior vice president of store operations, said an LCD set 40 inches or less has dropped into the low $1,000 range and similarly sized plasma screen televisions are on sale for less than $900 at the moment. The market for television sets larger than 60 inches has been dominated by plasma screen manufacturers due to the higher cost of producing larger LCD screens, but a third option, digital projectors, is becoming increasingly popular, according to Levy. "A lot of people are moving to projectors because they're getting better images and you can make your screen as big as you like," he said, adding that an image projected onto a 156-inch mounted screen is just as good as the image found on a comparable flat-panel television, both of which would cost at least $5,000. To see more of The Beaumont Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.www.beaumontenterprise.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |