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Tips for checking out TV's in Showrooms

A

altairauditore

Member
Let's just say I'm waling into a TV showroom.

What's the best way to check out TV Quality?
Like Gamut, Saturation, Brightness etc.? Like a set of images that I can carry and play on the TV's to compare them?
 
Honestly, I think the best way to check out a TV is online forums. Read up on the different models and user experience.
In the store, they have bright lights and usually have the TVs cranked up to compensate for it.
Some stores have separate rooms for demos, that helps.
One thing I've run into is they hide the remotes and you have to ask for them to try different setting on the TV.
 
altairauditore said:
What's the best way to check out TV Quality?
Click to expand...

Read CNET and AV Forms before you make a purchase and get informed with advice from professionals that see many models and calibrate them with proper equipment.

Buying a TV off a showroom floor is a sure way to get a model that your wife likes the look of the bezels but the picture looks like crap when you watch a dark show like True Detective with the lights off.
 
altairauditore said:
What if the model in the store is not one that has much online exposure?
Click to expand...

A) You wait.
B) You pick the models online that do have exposure.

You're looking at it backwards. You don't look in the showroom, then research it online. You research online, then look at it in a showroom if possible.

Edit: It's going to be EXTREMELY rare that you happened to find a great model HDTV that no one has planned on getting/heard of in a showroom. 99% of the time, if a model is good, we've been waiting for it's release and know tons of information about the HDTV before it's been released.

Example: Vizio P Series. Tons of info before it and the week of it's release 100+ pages of posts about it over on AVSForum.

Edit2: Also, you'll want to use the calibration numbers that people post in the owners threads as a reference point to help you get accurate colors. Unless you just don't remotely care about things like that (lots of average users don't), but for me, I bought my HDTV and used stock settings and was always frustrated til I remembered that I had actually bookmarked the calibration settings on AVSForum (Dunno how I forgot....). Helped immensely.
 
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tential is right. If it really is a great set, some great deal, then someone on AV Forums beat you to it and there is a thread on there.

I have not bought a TV in the store that I didn't read about on the internet first in over five years. Unlike computers where the tech just gets better every year, often with TVs there will be weird regressions year-to-year which force you to judge each set independent of all the others. The problem with showroom buying is that often flaws are not apparent in that environment, as the bright lights can hide a lot.

Heck those bright Best Buy lights basically killed plasma, which in many cases was the real best buy year after year. Research is the answer.
 
JackBurton said:
Then it's most likely a shitty TV.
Click to expand...

Or a bad price to performance ratio HDTV that is beatout by a ton of other HDTVs.
This is the information age, there isn't a single HDTV released that we haven't known 99% of the information before its release.
 
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