CEX have a PS3...

[IanE]

...plugged into a HDTV, with Ridge Racer 7...


...IN ****ING COMPOSITE!

Christ on a bike.

[Stoise]

typical

I thought they stopped doing imports?

[IanE]

It's 'Not For Sale', just in the window, with the box to the right hand side (in Northampton fact fans), and the boxes of Resistance and Ridge Racer 7 in front of the TV and PS3.

I might just go and give them a spare HDMI cable, to save my eyes.

[wehrwulf]

absolutely clueless as usual - i suppose they were charging ?900 if you wanted to buy it

[importaku]

Seeing as they are not allowed to sell either sony or nintendo imports. Its just a cheap ploy to get people into the shop ony to realise theres **** all worth buying from that ****heap.

[stainboy]

...plugged into a HDTV, with Ridge Racer 7...

...IN ****ING COMPOSITE!

Every HDTV display I've seen in any shop has looked ****e. It angers me muchly, the first thing I'd do is make sure they were displayed probably. Don't people actually want to sell things?

[dave heats]

Im still using scart here people so easy now! Surpised that PS3 hasnt been stolen by a chav bastard.

[wonderboy]

funny...

It is really a shame not to see something cool, in high def. Curry's
open here last week. Went in, only to see 20+ HDTV's with Emmerdale
on them...!

[IanE]

Every HDTV display I've seen in any shop has looked ****e. It angers me muchly, the first thing I'd do is make sure they were displayed probably. Don't people actually want to sell things?

Every single one? I'd love to contest that.

The Sony Centre has them all hooked up lovingly with Sky and BBC HD, CEX usually has component with 720p GRAW/PES6 through it, so it's not too bad. But the composite just made my friend go "What the **** is that? My PS2 looks better" when looking at RR7. For shame.

[stainboy]

Every single one? I'd love to contest that.

The Sony Centre has them all hooked up lovingly with Sky and BBC HD, CEX usually has component with 720p GRAW/PES6 through it, so it's not too bad. But the composite just made my friend go "What the **** is that? My PS2 looks better" when looking at RR7. For shame.

Now I think about it yes I reckon it is every single one. I haven't been in a Sony Centre for years, the most recent were Argos and PC World so it's not too hard a statement to claim. Most of the PC World tellys were playing Nemo and had colours bleeding all over the place (Nemo was a blurry red blob on one of them) and Argos were showing Cash in the Attic or Flog It at various random aspect ratios.

[RLench]

lol! It's pathetic that shops like this spend so much money and invest in such expensive equipment...and then destroy the whole thing by not setting it up properly

I went in Asda earlier and they had 15-20 TVs all playing Pirates Of The Carribean 2...via composite. From a ?15 DVD player. It's hard to check for certain, but it's a safe bet that there wasn't even a single TV set up even remotely correctly. Each one looked dreadful! It was also pretty funny that their two biggest plasma screens had been set to 4:3 Letterbox as well I looked at them, smiled to myself and just walked away

Totally OT but Asda are selling POTC 2 for ?9.70 this week

[stainboy]

lol! It's pathetic that shops like this spend so much money and invest in such expensive equipment...and then destroy the whole thing by not setting it up properly

It's painful to see! I should stop going over to those sections of shops I think. When I eventually hop aboard the HDTV bandwagon I'll have to buy it online incase seeing it in the shop puts me off.

Totally OT but Asda are selling POTC 2 for ?9.70 this week

What happened to selling everything at ?x.97 like they used to?!

[RLench]

What you described almost happened to me! I'd gone shopping with my Dad for a new TV one day. We were in Comet and he saw the Toshiba 37WLT66. He thought it looked great, I thought it looked awful because it was an aerial signal distributed amongst another 50 TVs.

I did my best to talk him out of buying the 32" version but he was adamant that he would buy it. So he did. We got it home and I set it up. It loooked so awfully bad that I KNEW he had wasted close to ?900 on this TV that didn't look half as good as a ?80 portable CRT. Less than 30 minutes later of tweaking the picture, and then playing some decent source material (HD from my Xbox360 and DVDs @ 480p via my Denon 1720) and...it looked stunning. It was so good that I decided to buy one for myself at once I could afford it. I did, and it was the best purchase I could have made. But it was only because it had been set up properly. If I had made my decision based on what I'd seen in Comet, there was NO chance that I would have ever bought one

To be fair to Comet/Currys they are improving slightly. They now have 5-6 TVs running a HD feed via a HDMI distribution box with a few more running DVDs via component or even HDMI. I've even seen a Samsung DLP connected to a Media Centre PC in Currys. Though it's blatantly obvious that some sets (usually Sony, probably due to Sony's large presence in the shop and their SkyHD promotion) are calibrated and other sets are not

[charlesr]

John Lewis peeps are normally quite savvy with connecting the sets up properly, so it's a good place to go and view. It's also pretty quiet, so you might be able to persuade them to plug your own gear in to test.

[Concept]

The Comet in Bury seem to be using Scart or poorly calibrated VGA that avoids 1:1 pixel mapping (or as close as each television can get to its native resolution) for their display units. I use various AV forums on the net, and general website reviews/feedback to determine what to look out for and what not to look out for, but if I didn't know what I had in mind and wasn't clued up about televisions, then I wouldn't be impressed by the hype around HDTVs based on the highstreet.

That's the baffling thing. You have chains trying to sell new television technology they show off in an unflattering light compared to standard CRTs and SD LCDs which are so much more cheaper. Kind of defeats the point.