Ok, so we go into Best Buy today just doing a little looksey at computers, and my dad goes over to the TV section. I've been trying to convice him to get a 16:9 HDTV for a while, but recently I figured to just wait till 1080p and FED get here, because when he buys one he won't upgrade till that one dies. I'm trying to explain to him about resolution and how important it is. I don't even think he knows what a pixel is. While I was standing there I asked one of the guys in the department if the signal being fed to the TVs was HD or not. He said nah it's just a DVD plyer linked to all the TVs, just a 480p signal, but the HDTV do help it look a little better. That just blew my mind, how can you sell HDTV's to people and not being showing them HDTV content? Didn't make any sense. Anyways the other TV guy was standing there listening and was like well resolution is not really the best thing to judge it on. You won't really be able to notice the difference between 720p and 1080p really, he's like let me show you. We go over to the TV's and they have one 1080p signal in the whole store, it's a Samsung LCD HDTV, and it's $7000. The guy said now look at that, and this $2500 Panasonic plasma EDTV with an 8??x6?? something resolution, which picture looks better. Strangely enough the EDTV looked better than the 1080p. Compared to all the other TVs right close by, the panasonic looked better. There was some text that I did notice looked better on the samsung, but the scenery wasn't quite as sharp. The picture was sharper, and the blacks where much better on the panasonic. I knew plasma's had a better black levels than LCDs, and the guy was like year your right, but the overal picture is much better still. I was like well your not sending them both a true HDTV signal. He was like yeah we are, we have a special HD DVD player that you can't get and we send them all 1080i. Right there I was like...yeah sure...ok, the other guy just told me 480p, which is it? The samsung is a 1080p TV and will look it's best at 1080p. The panasonic is an EDTV and I have good hunch that the signal sent was just plain 480p like the other guy said, and since it's closer to it's native resolution, that's why it looked much better. I almost **** a brick when my dad was like $7000 for a TV with bad picture quality is crazy. If I was going to get a new TV, and I was willing to spend $2500 on it, well I'd get the panasonic cause it looks better. I was freaking out. I was like you just have to wait till 1080p comes out because that's full HDTV, and it'll be a really long while till you'll need to upgrade, and the guy was like yeah, but they keep coming up with new stuff all the time and it'll be obsolete soon. All I gotta say is WTF? Why did the EDTV look better, why was the salesman trying to talk him into that TV, and why are they selling HDTVs with only 480p signals being sent to them? How can you compare?
Oh yeah btw, at the end one of the other guys working there was like we could really use someone with all your knowledge working here. I don't think I'd grace them with my presence (Magnolia Hi-Fi however, I'd work in that section.)
