Reliablity of in-store demos?

manhar

Standard Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2003
Messages
163
Reaction score
2
Points
37
Location
uk
How reliable is an in-store PJ demo?
ie. are there customers who have bought a PJ after a satisfactory an in-store demo but later found that the boxed item they took home was not as good or had problems which they did not notice with the in-store demo model?
 
manhar said:
How reliable is an in-store PJ demo?
ie. are there customers who have bought a PJ after a satisfactory an in-store demo but later found that the boxed item they took home was not as good or had problems which they did not notice with the in-store demo model?

I haven't had an in-store demo yet - maybe this week - but I've heard that some people take along their own DVDs, rather than rely on a store one. Also the store may have a better screen, a darker demo room, carefully chosen demo material, tweaked settings etc.

edit: It would help to know why it's not as good. If you see a demo where they are using an HD source via HDCP, it will look amazing. If you then go home and connect it to a VHS player via composite, it will look rubbish.
 
manhar said:
How reliable is an in-store PJ demo?
ie. are there customers who have bought a PJ after a satisfactory an in-store demo but later found that the boxed item they took home was not as good or had problems which they did not notice with the in-store demo model?

I would imagine that, in most cases, when you get it home it would be better with a proper setup, calibration, tweeking etc. But I suppose it also depends upon where you demo.
 
Well I got a dem at KrishAV in Chiswick on an AE900. I was very surprised that he put the projector that he'd shown straight in its box and gave it to me! Had my own dead-pixel check!

The screen he has there is pretty good - it looks better than my black-out blind!
 
We make quite a bit of effort with our dems, allowing side by side comparison of all PJ's we sell in an uncalibrated state. I think it is important to ask the salesperson to let you view the PJ 'out of the box' standard, and untweaked. It's far to easy to 'weight' a dem in favour of one machine over another just by a bit of messing about in menus. Of course if you know what you are doing and how to tweak a particular model then fine, but it doesn't make for a fair fight.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom