10.06.2008 — TBS HD got a national stage this past week when it started broadcasting the Major League Baseball playoffs.

Unless you're a fan of the Atlanta Braves, you've probably watched very little baseball on the network, which was awarded the contract to broadcast the postseason in 2006.

The broadcast, done in 1080i, looks better than Fox and ABC do with their sports (both in 720p). TBS HD is using lots of cameras to bring viewers as close to the action as possible.

The sound, which is being done in Dolby Digital 5.1, is satisfying enough to hear crowd noise mixed in with the play-by-play calls.

But there have been a couple of oddities; during the pre-game show and off-and-on during the actual games, the sound has been out of sync with the visuals.

We checked out the games on different HDTVs connected using different service providers, and noticed times where you'd hear the ball hit the bat before the player even swung.

Overall, for a network that's more known for its re-runs of "Saved by the Bell" and "Home Improvement," TBS managed to out-fox Fox, which has broadcast the playoffs for the past few years. While TBS has shown all of the Division Series games, Fox will be broadcasting the National League Championship Series and the World Series.

TBS HD's production style is somewhere in between Fox's and ESPN's, without as many bells and whistles as a Fox broadcast.

As for the on-air talent, it's nice for baseball fans across the country not to have listen to Joe Morgan's need to call the pitches -- "it's a cutter" -- or Tim McCarver's stream of conscious rambling.

While assembling a pre-game broadcast crew that includes host Ernie Johnson, Hall-of-Famers Cal Ripken and Dennis Eckersley, and current Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson, TBS is using a selection of local-market broadcasters such as Don Orsillo and Skip Carey to call the games.

Now if TBS would ditch Ripken and allow Eckersley to be as brutally honest as he is during his analysis of Red Sox games on NESN, TBS HD's broadcasts would really raise the bar of MLB productions.

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