Monday, November 24, 2008

Shopping fo HD

When of course I should be shopping for a new computer, or to be precise a laptop, same sites in some cases so meh. Anyway doing so has pinged a memory so:

I'd poked my head quickly into Currys and Comet on Saturday specifically to see the Panasonic 32LZD85 (damn my brain for just knowing that model number). Currys just had the 80, but Comet had the 85 in all its shiny glory.

Okay maybe not as it was being fed from an aerial connection (not even component, it's the equivalent of filling an F1 car with the same stuff you use for your lawnmower). I had a play with the remote - easy enough and the menu was well-laid out. Turned the overscan on and off and on to see the difference and I seriously recommend everyone do this just to see how much of the picture you can lose - it can be scary. Then I started poking around the back of it and as if by magic a store assistant appeared asking if I was okay.

"Well I like the overscan, but your source is off - see the white line at the top; now if you could run an HD source it could be better"
"It is HD"
"No it's running through the aerial, is there any way I can see it with an HD source?"
"Oh um no you can't have it with an HD source"
"You mean you haven't got a portable Blu-ray player you can hook up"
"Um the 42" and those on the back wall have HD sources"
"Well yeah but none of these [I wave at the majority on the floor area] do. Don't you find it odd that you're selling HD televisions - that people are wandering around comparing the pictures and that's not what they're going to be seeing?"
"Most people aren't connecting up to HD sources"
"... okay, it's supposed to have an SD card slot I can't seem to find it"
"I don't think the 32" has one just the 37""
"That's Odd, the spec from Panasonic says it has one"
"Nope can't see one"
"Ah well. See I was looking for two, if I could have seen it in HD and checked for SD I'd probably have taken them now"

Then I turned and left. I mean seriously, as Orphi's said too, they don't know and don't seem to want to know, but they've just lost a sale for £1,500.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm. You would think a shop assistant would care about a £1,500 sale opportunity lost. But who knows!

I had a look online and saw some nice prices, but prices in real-world shops don't seem comparable. Plus all the shops I was in seemed to have the units fed with pretty low-quality signals, making it nearly impossible to judge how good the display actually is. *sigh*

Any recommendations for a cheap but decent-quality TV at around 20–30 inches?

Anonymous said...

FlipC: The assistant in question is probably too embarrassed (or afraid of being bawled out) to tell anyone with the power to change the situation, so perhaps it is time for a letter to the manager, CC'ing head office of course. A customer who already knows what product they want and its specs should make for an easy sale.

FlipC said...

She was a jacket so I would assume in the higher echelons of power in the store. Besides I was told last year that stores would be expanding their HD sources to all the televisions now they've ditched the CRT. You're right though a letter may well be in order.