Las Vegas Weekly

May 27, 2010 · 4:19 PM

That yellow is in your imagination

By Rick Lax

That yellow? It's an impostor.

Sulu is messing with my mind.

Possibly with yours, too. I mean, have you seen Sharp Electronics’ new TV commercial? The one starring Star Trek alum George Takei? The one promoting the new Aquos Quattron television?

The premise of the commercial is this: Most TVs don’t have yellow.

I listened as Takei said, “Introducing Quattron quad-pixel technology—it adds a fourth color, yellow, to the standard RGB color system.” As he said it, I kid you not, I was looking at a big a yellow fish on my (non-Quattron) TV screen.

Takei ends the commercial by saying, “You get the picture. Actually, you don’t.” What he means, pretty clearly, is that that I only think I see yellow on my TV screen.

Plato’s Cave is probably the most fitting analogy (i.e., I only think my TV projects yellow because I’ve never seen a Quattron TV that really projects yellow, so I have no conception of what real TV yellow looks like)… but I can’t get past the 1984 analogy.

In it, I’m Winston Smith; George Takei is O’Brien; and Sharp is The Party. Just as O’Brien tried to convince Smith that 2+2=5 if Big Brother says so, George Takei is trying to tell me that this yellow fish I’m looking at isn’t really yellow if Sharp TV says that it isn’t.

Well, guess what, George Takei? I ain’t buyin’ it. Not figuratively and not literally. (The Quattrons begin at $1,800.). Sell it to Julia instead.

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