Trying to find a TV....

Homer-Simpson · 3 Aug 2006 at 20:11

Well I am in the market for a TV - I am looking for either a 37" or a 40". Today I decided to go and look at them. I am unsure about whether to go for Plasma or LCD.

I had to travel 20 minutes to a Curry's store, got to the store and walked through the doors. They had a huge selection of TVs, walked over to them and noticed that the picture quality was shockingly bad.

I had to stand around for 15 minutes before anyone could come over to help, I asked them if they could hook one up to a HD signal. I was told that they were already running a HD signal.....

I asked him if we could at least hook it up to a DVD player. He said that was fine, it took him 10 minutes to find a dvd player and hook it up to the TV. He put it on and it was a Curry's advert DVD. Even that picture was awful. By this time I was fed up and just wanted to go :mad:

Can anyone recommend a shop that I can go to that WILL give me a proper HD demo. Anyone got any recomendations on a TV (Plasma or LCD however it cannot be bigger than 40"). I was looking to spend between £1000 and £1600.

Voy06 · 3 Aug 2006 at 20:32

One thing to remember is that the picture shown on these in store TV's are quite bad due too TV's not being tuned in propely or several TV's running off the same standard aerial.

What TV's did you look at. Me myself would rather look at the LCD range as opposed too the Plasma range.

Simian · 3 Aug 2006 at 21:06

Voy06 said:
One thing to remember is that the picture shown on these in store TV's are quite bad due too TV's not being tuned in propely or several TV's running off the same standard aerial.

Yeah all they do is take em out of the box and fire em up!... no tweaking (which is always necessary!)

Check out the standalone displays!... usually with a PC or DVD player (sometimes an upscaling one) connected!... these have usually been set up to nearly how they should be!...

img · 3 Aug 2006 at 22:53

but the stand alone are usually playing something that will shine on that tv. bette idea is going to a AV shop thats not a big chain as they will more likely be able to put what you want on it to watch

Tesla · 4 Aug 2006 at 08:39

Simian said:
Yeah all they do is take em out of the box and fire em up!... no tweaking (which is always necessary!)

There is actually a valid reason for this which I have first hand experience of when I worked in electronics retail a couple of years ago.

Basically, the average Joe does not adjust the settings on the TV. They just plug it in and go.

When I was working for the retailer I was configuring the better spec'd TV's correctly with various test patterns and the like. The difference is huge, I am always preaching it on here, a much better investment than an upgraded cable is to get your TV set up correctly.

Anyway, I had the TV's looking great, running via progressive component DVD or HD via a Media Centre.

This helped sell the TV's, however, loads of people were coming back saying they got them home and everybody is the wrong colour or the picture isnt as clear. When you have two TV's next to eachother in a store it's easy to see the minor differences between correctly calibrated colour and perhaps something that is too rich in red. So, the customer knows what they are looking at/buying, the natural coloured TV.

Get them home and everybody is off-colour.

Therefore, it was not worth setting them up properly as most people don't have a clue how to themselves and were always arguing it should look as it did in the shop.