Over the past few years my wife's uncle has done some outstanding exterior home work for us and other family members. He charges us for the wood and paint and does all the labor for no charge. He's worked in construction for years and enjoys little side jobs like these.
To show him some appreciation for all the work he'd done for us, we all decided to pitch in and buy him "surround sound" for his family room, something he's been wanting for awhile. I was assigned the job of picking out the things needed for basic home theatre. He has a DVD player, so I went out yesterday in search of a reciever and speakers or combo system that they sell at most electronics stores. I didn't have any price range in mind, just something that sounded good for as cheap as possible.
First we went to Circuit City yesterday morning. Nobody approached us in the Audio department to even ask if we had any questions. None of the surround packages they had on display had any sort of demo capability... no cd for audio or dvd to hear the surround. So we left and went to Church.
In the afternoon, we went to Best Buy to see what they had to offer. The displays that they had on one aisle in the audio dept only played FM radio for a demo. I went into the sound room and could only get one set of speakers in our price range to work. One entire wall had no audio output and on another none of the sub-units were connected.
So we left and went down the street to some place called Tweeter. I'd never been there before and hardly any cars were in the parking lot. The store was fairly empty - we went into one of the sound rooms and the salesman setting up a new pair of high-end speakers immediately greeted us and asked us if he could help answer questions. I asked him if they had any fairly cheap amp/speaker combos (under $500). He told us they didn't have anything that cheap and that we should check out best buy, but encouraged us to look around the rest of the store to check things out. So we did.
We went over to the DVD players because I've been thinking about getting rid of my hollywood DVD card in favor of one of these. Also in that section was a Yamaha RX-V420 receiver on clearance for $199 (down from $299). The salesman from the audio room came back over and asked if we had any more questions. We asked about the reciever and he went to the back to see if he had any boxed units left. The only one left was the open unit, but he'd sell it "at cost" for $189. While we thought about it, he invited us to another audio room to listen to some of the surround speakers they had.
While listening to boston's and a few others, he said he had a special on some Tivoli speakers for $299. He demoed them with music DVDs (Steely Dan) and clips from Gladiator (the fight against the barbarians). They sounded pretty good and the price was in the budget. He gave us a few minutes to talk about it, and my wife turned to me and said "this is your chance to put your money where your mouth is... you complain about the lousy service and broken demo equipment at other places, and this guy has given you outstanding service since we walked in the door."
She was right. So when he came back, I told him we'd take the speakers, amp, and dvd player. It turned out the price for the speakers was actually $399, but he honored the $299 price. It's nice to get good service, good product, and a good deal all at once. From now on, I will be giving Tweeter first crack at my A/V purchases.
To show him some appreciation for all the work he'd done for us, we all decided to pitch in and buy him "surround sound" for his family room, something he's been wanting for awhile. I was assigned the job of picking out the things needed for basic home theatre. He has a DVD player, so I went out yesterday in search of a reciever and speakers or combo system that they sell at most electronics stores. I didn't have any price range in mind, just something that sounded good for as cheap as possible.
First we went to Circuit City yesterday morning. Nobody approached us in the Audio department to even ask if we had any questions. None of the surround packages they had on display had any sort of demo capability... no cd for audio or dvd to hear the surround. So we left and went to Church.
In the afternoon, we went to Best Buy to see what they had to offer. The displays that they had on one aisle in the audio dept only played FM radio for a demo. I went into the sound room and could only get one set of speakers in our price range to work. One entire wall had no audio output and on another none of the sub-units were connected.
So we left and went down the street to some place called Tweeter. I'd never been there before and hardly any cars were in the parking lot. The store was fairly empty - we went into one of the sound rooms and the salesman setting up a new pair of high-end speakers immediately greeted us and asked us if he could help answer questions. I asked him if they had any fairly cheap amp/speaker combos (under $500). He told us they didn't have anything that cheap and that we should check out best buy, but encouraged us to look around the rest of the store to check things out. So we did.
We went over to the DVD players because I've been thinking about getting rid of my hollywood DVD card in favor of one of these. Also in that section was a Yamaha RX-V420 receiver on clearance for $199 (down from $299). The salesman from the audio room came back over and asked if we had any more questions. We asked about the reciever and he went to the back to see if he had any boxed units left. The only one left was the open unit, but he'd sell it "at cost" for $189. While we thought about it, he invited us to another audio room to listen to some of the surround speakers they had.
While listening to boston's and a few others, he said he had a special on some Tivoli speakers for $299. He demoed them with music DVDs (Steely Dan) and clips from Gladiator (the fight against the barbarians). They sounded pretty good and the price was in the budget. He gave us a few minutes to talk about it, and my wife turned to me and said "this is your chance to put your money where your mouth is... you complain about the lousy service and broken demo equipment at other places, and this guy has given you outstanding service since we walked in the door."
She was right. So when he came back, I told him we'd take the speakers, amp, and dvd player. It turned out the price for the speakers was actually $399, but he honored the $299 price. It's nice to get good service, good product, and a good deal all at once. From now on, I will be giving Tweeter first crack at my A/V purchases.
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