This week’s Killer Tech finding came on Saturday night at Highland Park, a bar in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City. Many bars equip their interiors with walls of TVs for patrons to watch sports, and Highland Park is no exception. But as the night carries on, many bars will rightfully turn off the TVs in order to create a different atmosphere that rivals that of a nightclub. But this creates a problem, since some of the people at the bar like to watch sports on those TVs, especially when there’s a compelling game happening at the time. This past Saturday was a particularly good sports night, with the Dallas Cowboys playing in a rare Saturday night NFL game, and my beloved New York Rangers playing a late-night game on the west coast. So, the big question: How can bars appease the sports fans that want to watch the big games while keeping a distinct atmosphere for everybody else?

Highland Park found an amazing solution by putting TVs on their beer taps (which were showing the aforementioned Cowboys game). As you can see, the screens were small, but they had tremendous resolution, and the picture was actually of a higher quality than the HDTVs that were on above them early in the night. In all, the bar had over a dozen of these small screens on their taps, which were big enough and shone brightly enough for sports fans to keep up with the games without being a distraction to others. One drawback to the TV screens was that it prevented the logos of the beers from being on the handles of the taps, which meant that people that wanted a beer needed to look at a menu or ask the bartender what beers were available, which can become difficult as the bar gets more crowded and the music gets louder as the night wears on.

But despite that problem, this was a definite crowd pleaser. The TVs kept the sports fans (like myself) by the bar happy while not detracting from everyone else’s night. As long as the price of these TVs isn’t too high, this is a piece of technology that should spread in the coming years. Watching a game on a piece of killer tech has never been this...refreshing.