Stores have become awash with multi-displays on their show floors making it impossible to get a good demo of TVs you’re interested in. With it getting harder and harder to get a demo of any TV, it can be definitely a hard shopping experience for those that actually want a demo before laying out a couple thousand dollars.

TV Shopping Has Changed
You could go to a niche hi-fi hut to get the latest TV, but chances are you want get the best deal or the best bang for your buck. I love the small hi-fi huts, and will always go to them for high-end components and speakers of any level of quality, but TV shopping has simply changed.

Quite simply the demo is essentially gone. The old advice of bringing your favorite DVDs to the store to test out TV picture quality is simply not possible due to the in-store multi-tv setups, and the equipment used to drive them impacting picture quality.

Become an Internet Shopper
Best Buy, Circuit City, and Amazon have great consumer review sections wherein you can read consumer praise, opinions, and condemnations on most any product. The great thing is if you read enough of these individual reviews that you will get a great general idea of whether the TV is of high quality, and has good/great picture quality.

Whether you actually buy the TV in the store or online is up to you, but starting your research online is definitely the way to go.

Magazine Reviews
Magazines about home theater go up and down in the quality of their reviews, and consumer opinions will generally be more blunt since consumers actually live with the product. Consumer reviews are a great resource to alert you of major quality issues with any particular model.

Where magazines come in handy is in the picture quality arena as their trained eyes are a better judge of how any given TV stacks up to the competition and a what price does that picture quality come. Also, since professional reviewers really know the ins-and-outs of the industry they can provide valuable insight, though you may have to “read between the lines” as almost every magazine abhors giving a negative review. They tend to hedge their bets and grey over a few areas, but you will undoubted learn something.

Consumer reviews on picture quality are very subjective. Any given user could think anything widescreen is HD could be telling you the picture is the best they’ve ever seen.

Going In-Store
There still much to be said for seeing the TV in person at the store. Seeing it in person allows you to quickly judge build quality, remote quality, glossy screen issues, and most importantly screen size. It’s hard to image how big a 50-inch screen is in your home, but seeing it in person will quickly educate you. Also if you plan to use the TVs speakers (in a home theater no way, but it’s sometimes needed) in the store you’ll be able to judge the TV’s sound quality as well.

It can be very tempting to purchase a TV on the spot in the store as that beautiful big screen stares back at you all but saying, “Take me home!” Resist the urge, leave your cards or money at home, just do anything it takes to only look.

The idea being that if you research online to find the best price, or wait a few weeks and get a feel for what’s on sale in the Sunday paper flyers, you can save hundreds if not a thousand dollars by shopping around or waiting for the model to go on clearance as new models come in.

Once you’ve made your decision and you found the best price, you can still haggle more with the sales clerk to get even more off the price. I like to shop on weeknights after work when there’s hardly anyone in the store. This helps not only in getting a salesperson to rally pay attention to you, but also gets those annoying other customers out of the way. In fact, I do my first look on busy days so salespeople leave me alone and do my heavy looking / buying on weekdays.

Don’t Fall For the Add-ons
I’ve had friends, family, and co-workers get sucked into this practice. When buying a bigscreen HDTV the only companion piece you should buy is an upconverting DVD player if you don’t already have one. Attempting to buy an entire home theater all at once usually results in compromising heavily, or not making an informed decision about the audio portion.

It’s very common for stores to try to add-on a home theater in a box solution along with way over-priced HDMI cables to any TV purchase. With one friend I had him return $260 in HDMI cables and lead him to monoprice.com where he got all the HDMI cables he needed for $20. (monoprice.com is not a sponsor nor in any way affiliated with HTadvice.com. It’s just where I shop for cables)

If you can, buy any cables you need from monoprice.com or elsewhere ahead of your TV purchase, or just wait to setup your new TV until you can get the cables. You can literally have $1000+ added on to your TV in cables and HTiB add-ons if your not vigilant.  Just say “no!”

Warranties
These can be a personal decision whether you want them or not. If they’re moderately affordable I’ll get them, but overall I just pass on anything longer than a year. Essentially I do it to ward off any lemons that may be out there of which issues will usually surface in the fist year. Some TVs have one-year warranties in which case I just don’t get a warranty.

What’s funny in big box stores the salespeople always praise how great the TV is, then when you get to the register the try to pressure you into a warranty by scaring you with what can wrong with the TV.

I’ve heard funniest statement on warranties regarding Plasma TVs:
Plasma and LCD TVs don’t leak and never need refilling. Yes, some people try to sell warranties with misinformation and sometimes it’s just their own ignorance on display. Knowing you’re going to say “no” upfront makes it all the more easier to say it when they approach you in the store.

Getting Your TV Home
Bringing a new TV home can be and exciting, fun, and possibly harrowing experience. If you planned accordingly, have a place for the TV, and are ready to connect everything when you bring it home the experience can be very pleasant

If you didn’t plan for your new arrival you may run into issues such as the TV not fitting in your existing furniture, or not have enough cables or the proper cables to connect everything.

If you really don’t know your way around the connections you can usually pay about $200-$300 to have the store or someone else come out and get it all connected for you.

The problem with not learning how yourself is that you don’t know if everything is setup correctly. If you have someone do it demand that everything use the best connection possible and HD if possible as well. Some installers will just install your TV with whatever cables you have, be they HD or not.

The best-case scenario is to have a friend who knows about home theater come over during the install or offer a few beers to have them do it instead.

Setup
Bringing a new HDTV home is exciting, especially if it’s your first HDTV. Your first urge is going to be to connect it all and watch a movie as fast as possible.

The best thing to do is turn it on to test all the connections, and then throw in a calibration DVD and get your TV calibrated. Calibration DVDs available for around $40 or can be rented. In a pinch you can use a TXH optimizer found on a few DVDs.

Getting your TV calibrated is the best thing you can do to see the true picture quality your TV has to offer. Most TV default settings are bright and punchy to get your attention in the store, but are absolutely horrendous in a home.

I had a friend who’s family purchased a Plasma HDTV, and after living with it for a week they had their minds set on returning it. On an off-chance hunch, I recommended some quick picture calibration tips to try to get a better picture. For them it was night and day. Through calibration alone their experience went from frustration and remorse to exhilaration with the great picture quality that was offered.

Summary
You can have a great experience when you take the leap to bring a great HDTV home with a little research, pre-planning, avoiding add-ons, getting cables for the right price, and taking the time to calibrate it.