While business on the internet continue to boom, most people contemplating buying a high definition TV would rather go to a high street retailer than purchase it through a web retailer. This is perfectly understandable, as you have the luxury of seeing the high definition television yourself, or getting advice from a salesperson before parting with your hard-earned money.

But things may not be what they seem... here I'm going to give you a few reasons why your judgment of a HD TV in showrooms might be flawed.

Firstly, most HDTVs on display are configured in "dynamic mode". By this I mean that contrast is artificially boosted and the colors are deliberately over-saturated on the high definition TV, as these has been shown in research to generate sales.

A HDTV that is displaying in "dynamic mode" gives the impression of "brightness" and "vividness", wrongly perceived as the signs of a good TV even though the picture is — in fact — wildly inaccurate. Usually it is only when you bring the TV back to your house that you realize that everything has a blue hue and the skin tone doesn't look realistic at all.

Furthermore, in an average showroom with quite a few HD TVs on show, the signal is distributed among all these TVs. As a result each high definition TV receives a weaker signal, causing a lot of artifacts like lines and sparkles, and perhaps ghosting and detail loss.

To aggravate the problem, most shops will most probably use inferior connection cables (as these are much cheaper, and the shops likely have a lot lying around over time) to pass on the signal. In an ideal situation you should use a HDMI, component, VGA or DVI connection as these offer the best quality, and can realize all the promise of the high definition TV for you to make an accurate assessment... but we rarely see these employed in normal demos unless asked for.

Another issue with your normal high street shop is the excessive amount of surrounding light, not only from internal fluorescent lamps and maybe the sun, but also from competing high definition TV unitson display. This will lead to reflection (especially on glass screen TVs) and reduce the picture contrast on the high definition television you're viewing, resulting in a dull picture. Most HDTVs perform better in your own home where there's stricter ambient light control.

All I'm saying is there are certain limitations when assessing high definition TV in a showroom — you're viewing uncalibrated display sets with weak signals in an overly bright environment. For correct assessment of a high definition TV's capabilities, you can either go to a specialist showroom with the proper setup designed to eliminate these problems, listen to the experience of owners on public forums, or read reviews that are conducted professionally in a well-designed environment.

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