Jeff, I have experienced the same thing myself, especially in large electronic stores, that most of the TVs on display look like crap except one or two, why's that?
Those TVs nicely calibrated with a fantastic High Definition picture show, those TVs are the ones the store wants to sell in large quantity why? Because they have a larger markup on them, they make a lot more money selling them than other TVs on display, or maybe the store has a fantastic promotion deal on them directly from the distribuitor or manufacture.
Some electronic stores go to the extend of advertising a particular TV for a ridiculously low price as a bait to attract people to go to the store and that particular super low price TV is always on back order because they ran out of it. Saddly it's correct to say that some vendors play all kinds of disonest tricks in order to sell their merchandise.