- Sep 26, 2000
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The Mysterious Shrinking TV
By Matt RichtelPick up a Sunday circular for Best Buy, Circuit City or some other electronics store, turn to the TV section, read the fine print, and discover that the TV you?re considering buying ?- or the one you already own ?- is smaller than you think.
A considerable number of TVs are smaller by as much as a half inch than what the big print in their ads says.
Take, for instance, a Toshiba listed in a recent Best Buy circular. The TV is advertised in bold, black font as ?32? Class.? The fine print reads: 31.5? measured diagonally.
Or the Sharp advertised as ?19? Class?. The fine print: 18.9? measured diagonally.
Or the Sony. The big print reads ?32? Class,? while the fine print tells you that it?s actually ?31.5 measured diagonally.?
What gives?
There has emerged a new class (no pun intended) of advertising aimed at disclosing the actual size of televisions. But just when and why this trend emerged has been difficult for me to pin down.
Over the last three weeks, I?ve repeatedly pinged the retailers and TV manufacturers to try to find out when they started disclosing the actual size of their flat-panel sets. I?ve gotten incomplete answers, and, in some cases, no answers at all.
Sony and Best Buy have been the most forthcoming. Best Buy said that six months ago it changed its advertising in two respects. It started to point out that TV screens are measured diagonally, and:
?We also started using the word ?Class? to describe the size of the television if the screen size was not, in fact, exactly the size at which that television is classified,? a company spokesman, Brian Lucas wrote in an e-mail message.
I wondered about this myself, when I started seeing "class" in the t.v. ads.
The Mysterious Shrinking TV
By Matt RichtelPick up a Sunday circular for Best Buy, Circuit City or some other electronics store, turn to the TV section, read the fine print, and discover that the TV you?re considering buying ?- or the one you already own ?- is smaller than you think.
A considerable number of TVs are smaller by as much as a half inch than what the big print in their ads says.
Take, for instance, a Toshiba listed in a recent Best Buy circular. The TV is advertised in bold, black font as ?32? Class.? The fine print reads: 31.5? measured diagonally.
Or the Sharp advertised as ?19? Class?. The fine print: 18.9? measured diagonally.
Or the Sony. The big print reads ?32? Class,? while the fine print tells you that it?s actually ?31.5 measured diagonally.?
What gives?
There has emerged a new class (no pun intended) of advertising aimed at disclosing the actual size of televisions. But just when and why this trend emerged has been difficult for me to pin down.
Over the last three weeks, I?ve repeatedly pinged the retailers and TV manufacturers to try to find out when they started disclosing the actual size of their flat-panel sets. I?ve gotten incomplete answers, and, in some cases, no answers at all.
Sony and Best Buy have been the most forthcoming. Best Buy said that six months ago it changed its advertising in two respects. It started to point out that TV screens are measured diagonally, and:
?We also started using the word ?Class? to describe the size of the television if the screen size was not, in fact, exactly the size at which that television is classified,? a company spokesman, Brian Lucas wrote in an e-mail message.
I wondered about this myself, when I started seeing "class" in the t.v. ads.
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