When Buying A HD TV, Don't Believe What You See In Stores

While ecommerce on the web continue to boom, most people thinking about buying a HDTV would rather visit a high street store than purchase it through a web seller. This is very understandable, as you get the opportunity of seeing the high definition television yourself, or receiving advice from a salesperson before parting with your hard-earned money.

But be alert... here I will tell you why your assessment of a HDTV in shops may be inaccurate.

First of all, most high definition televisions that are sent directly from manufacturers to stores are configured in what is labeled in the AV industry as "dynamic mode". By this I mean that contrast is artificially enhanced and the colors are purposely over-saturated on the high definition television, as these has been shown in research to generate sales.

A HDTV that is displaying in "dynamic mode" gives an impression of "attractiveness" and "vividness", wrongly perceived as the signs of a good TV although the image is wildly inaccurate. Unfortunately it's only when you bring the TV back to your house that you realize the image is wrong.

In addition, in an average shop with quite a few HDTVs on display, the video signal is divided among all these televisions. As a consequence each high definition television receives a much weaker video signal, contributing to a lot of artifacts like lines and sparkles, and maybe blurriness and detail loss.

To make matters worse, most showrooms will very likely use inferior connection cables (as these are much cheaper, and the showrooms perhaps have a lot lying around over time) to pass on the video signal. In a perfect world one should use a VGA, DVI, component or HDMI connection as these suffer from the least signal degradation, and can unleash the full potential of the high definition television for you to make a proper judgment... but you rarely see these used in demonstrations unless requested.

Another issue with your average high street store is the excessive amount of surrounding light, not only from internal lights and the sun, but also from other high definition TV setson show. This will result in reflection (especially on glass screen televisions) and drastically reduce the image contrast on the HDTV you're watching, contributing to a washed out picture. Most HDTVs perform better in your own home where there's stricter ambient light control.

In conclusion, there are some shortfalls when judging HD TVs in a shop — you're watching uncalibrated display units with weak feeds in an overly bright condition. To assess the full capabilities of a HD TV, you can either visit a specialist shop correctly set up to eliminate these problems, read the views of owners on forums, or read reviews that are conducted professionally under strict conditions.

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Vincent Teoh writes for HDTVTest, an online magazine which conducts in-depth HDTV review. For further info please visit his website.