Buying a new TV- showrooms

alys_2

Hi - Newbie here - hope this is the right place to ask!
Need to buy new 32 ich LCDTV (9 year old Sony CRT just died on us) & used reviews to narrow to a "Best Buy" Panasonic. Went into Currys & Comet to have a look before buying online and was a bit startled to find that the picture on the Sony & LG models looked much better, which was definitely not reflected in the reviews I had found. Apart from the obvious explanation (my vision is totally defective!) is this likely to be because of the way the TVs were set up in store? Or should I rely on what I actually saw and buy the one that appeared to me to have the best picture? (I should say that all the TVs were displaying the same thing.) I should be very grateful for any advice - thanks.

iniltous

The cynic in me might say that the store may 'set up' the models they
want to ' push' excess stock/ manafacturer incentives etc to have the best picture ( use a hd source etc and those that they dont, get a SD source) , but why would two stores have the same over/lack of stock etc ???
Was the one that had a better a picture cheaper than the one you went
to look at ?

alys_2

Yes, that thought had crossed my mind - along with sheer lack of care! - but there was nothing in the prices. I'm afraid I'm not tech-savvy enough to have susssed out whether the source inputs were the same, but the images were.

scotsbob

alys wrote: »

Hi - Newbie here - hope this is the right place to ask!
Need to buy new 32 ich LCDTV (9 year old Sony CRT just died on us) & used reviews to narrow to a "Best Buy" Panasonic. Went into Currys & Comet to have a look before buying online and was a bit startled to find that the picture on the Sony & LG models looked much better, which was definitely not reflected in the reviews I had found. Apart from the obvious explanation (my vision is totally defective!) is this likely to be because of the way the TVs were set up in store? Or should I rely on what I actually saw and buy the one that appeared to me to have the best picture? (I should say that all the TVs were displaying the same thing.) I should be very grateful for any advice - thanks.

You should always ask the store to demonstrate the TV from a live aerial feed on standard definition. Then you will very clearly see the shortcomings of low budget sets. Of course the store will ty to give you numerous reasons why this is not possible.

Purely personal opinion of course, but I would have expected a Sony Bravia to have a better picture than either a Panasonic or LG, much better set.

shandypants5

iniltous wrote: »

The cynic in me might say that the store may 'set up' the models they
want to ' push' excess stock/ manafacturer incentives etc to have the best picture ( use a hd source etc and those that they dont, get a SD source) , but why would two stores have the same over/lack of stock etc ???
Was the one that had a better a picture cheaper than the one you went
to look at ?

The cynic in ME might say that the store may not have a clue as to how to set up any of the products the sell.:rolleyes:

This is a good site for unbiased information about TVs.

I would NEVER trust the opinion of Currys or Comet salesperson.

Pokerlad

I generally find high street stores dont set there TV's up correctly and the picture is usually worse in store then when you set it up at home, so much so I put of getting HD for a while because I didnt see the big fuss in store.

They usually just turn them on out the box. Also the source material makes a big differance.

LCD TV's have a lot more settings then CRT and need a lot of tweaking to get the best picture.

mitchb

Check out the new OLED screens they are apparently much better picture quality and thinner than LCD. Although unfortunatly much more expensive at the moment


http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/Samsung/UE46B7000/589757