IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

• April 16, 2018

The question of our era: filtered tip or non-filtered tip ?
Sorry, wrong era. Been watching too much “Mad Men”.
Nah, the question is: flat or curved screen ?
FLAT.
That’s the answer. See you next time.
OK, a little more discussion. Monitor and TV screens are completely in the “eye of the beholder”, literally. Have five people look at a screen and you will get six opinions. And that’s my point: never buy one unless you can get a look at it yourself.
And don’t just take the store’s display at face value. They will adjust settings to be non-optimal if there is a hidden agenda. Their job is to sell what they have too many of, or what the salesperson gets the biggest bonus for.

Have you noticed they never have a live stream going ? Visit on a Saturday or Sunday during football season, and they still have a high quality digital stream going that shows off the TV in the store. You still have no idea how the different models would compare, if in your home.

Got a laptop or other device which can attach to a monitor / TV ? Bring it – and the cable – to the place (might have to arrange in advance), and see how it looks on their screen. They want you to spend thousands on a device. If they won’t let you try a real-world experiment, you need to buy from another place.

For another experiment, invest in a portable antenna. What’s an antenna that costs less than $100, to check out a $5,000 TV ? Time your visit. Tune into the game, PBS, whatever you like to watch. Find out what it really looks like on the screen. To be fair, you should try this at home first so you know what to expect. We were promised a lot of things with over-the-air-digital. Let’s just say I’ve been disappointed. You can get a ton of ‘snow’ and artifacts with OTA-digital, even though we were told that