“Fake It ‘Til You Make It” Doesn’t Work for Sports Video Displays

Pre-game videos and inspirational speeches can motivate athletes to dig deep and give 100%. But no matter what technique a team uses to get pumped up, a “fake it ‘til you make it” attitude can never replace true performance. This applies to athletes but also has relevance when choosing sport video displays and scoreboards.

TRUE PERFORMANCE
When choosing a video board in your arena or stadium, start by considering pixel pitch. A pixel is a cluster of LEDs, usually one red, one blue and one green. Pitch is the industry term used to describe the distance between pixels. The closer the pixels, the tighter the pitch, which results in a sharper image.

An LED sign with true pixel pitch measures between the centers of each pixel without relying on shared LEDs. This configuration produces a high-quality display that provides exceptional resolution for crisp, vivid content and wide viewing angles. Watchfire’s true pixel configuration will out perform, out hustle and out last others.

HOW OTHERS FAKE IT
Some manufacturers offer alternative pixel configurations. You can spot them by the use of words like “virtual,” “enhanced” or “optimized” pitches. Here is a look at a few different pixel options and how they impact image quality.

• Who washed the white jerseys with a red shirt? When you invest in a large video display, you want colors that are vibrant and accurate. Some manufactures try to pass off a lower resolution product by measuring the distance between LEDs, not pixels, and then claim it’s an “optimized” sign. This is commonly done by adding a second red LED to each cluster. And those extra red LEDs? They’ll cause white graphics and text to look pink because the red LEDs will dim at a slower rate than the blue and green LEDs.
• Does that look fuzzy to you? Another practice that plays with “virtual” specifications is known as LED sharing. In this configuration, LEDs are shared with neighboring pixels to complete a grouping. As the result, one LED can be counted in as many as four different pixels. This layout can look like an LED is missing, resulting in a display that looks fuzzy and washed out. That doesn’t reflect well on you or your sponsors.
• Why does it look so much better when I sit over there? Some sport displays place a single LED where a cluster should be. For example, instead of placing LED groupings 6mm apart, they place individual red, green and blue LEDs 6mm apart. This causes LED lenses to block the light of neighboring diodes. It limits viewing angles and can makes the display look discolored when it is viewed from off-center.

When it comes to performance, your team doesn’t cut corners and neither do we. Indoor and outdoor, Watchfire’s sports products feature true pixel configurations to give you the best-looking, most reliable video displays and virtual scoreboards available. 

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