New TVs

I find that the whole process of buying a TV can be a very time wasting exercise if your not too careful. The problem seems to be that before you get too far in you find yourself looking at piles of specs telling you about all kinds of features that sound important, but are probably totally irrelevant or unnoticable to anyone but a complete techo-nerd.

I knew the size of TV I wanted and I, like most people, have experience of a few TV manufacturers, some good, some not so good, but I would always stay clear of the very cheap brands. Most of them look cheap too, so unless looks are not at all important or relevant, and to me they are, they're out.

Anyway just as we were getting drawn further and further into the never ending web we made a quick trip into John Lewis in Southampton, and looked for TVs that met the following criteria:

1. It looks good when turned off - it's now just an expensive ornament.
2. It looks even better when turned on - it's now a TV.
3. It doesn't cost much more than the average for its size - why pay more than necessary.

It seems pretty apparent to me that once a 40-42" TV costs much more than about £700 that the law of diminishing returns kicks in. And in a big way. Small extra features start costing a lot extra and are barely noticeable probably to anyone other than a real enthusiast.

So unless you want, or even need, a TV that's not much thicker than a CD case, and I didn't, I say stick to the ones that have sensible prices.

Anyway what we ended up with was a Samsung LE26B450 for the kitchen and a Toshiba 42XV635DB for the living room. The old Toshiba 37WLT66 is now in the bedroom and the 15 inch LCD cheapy is in the spare bedroom.

Don't shop in Comet - they're idiots!

I went into two Southampton area Comet stores today hoping to buy a 42" LCD TV. On both occasions their sales team refused to show me the TVs I was interested in displaying an HD (Sky or Blu-Ray) feed. I noticed in one of the two stores that the only TVs that did have HD feeds were the most expensive Samsung LED TVs, and in the second store HD feeds were only being delivered to TVs costing over £1200. So - strange they can manage HD feeds for those expensive TVs but not the cheaper ones. John Lewis stores can provide HD feeds for all their TVs without question - and typically they have a heck of a lot more TVs on display.

On both occasions I was told by Comet sales staff that their customers don't understand the difference between SD and HD so that's why they don't put HD signals through all TVs! So, either the company is patronising it's customers, or their sales team are incapable of explaining the difference between SD and HD. Either way Comet must be the only company I can think of that choose to not show the products they sell in the best possible light. That's has to be a pretty odd selling technique.

I may have been fully prepared to buy and carry home a new TV from either of these Comet stores today but after this episode I will avoid shopping with them at all costs, as they are a company that is clearly being run by a bunch of complete idiots.