why do the pictures in plasma/lcd TV's on display suck?

[chicken10der]

I check them out from time to time at the local Best Buy. It's almost always some repeating clip from ESPNHD or a scene from The Matrix. They look pixelated, and there seem to be shadows during much motion. The only exceptions are the ones that are $4k+. Is this a marketing thing? Does the video source they use suck? Are the TV's not calibrated? Are plasma/lcd's just not that great?

I've never owned one myself, and nobody I know has one for me to watch it 'in action'. Any ideas? Do they look okay with just regular cable?

[Boredom]

Have you ever had a conversation with a Best Buy employee?

[soko]

You need a HD TV and a HD source and it will be amazing quality, I was literally amazed when I saw a side by side comparison of a standard LCD TV next to a HD LCD TV

[Stagger_Lee]

Have a look at a HD CRT and you will see a really good picture.

[edfurlong]

Consider standing more than a foot away as well.

[paperboyNC]

High definition TV is way way better than standard TV. Particularly if you have true HD (1080i).

[Nielsio]

Because they suck. Try a DLP projection tv or standalone DLP projector. 20 times better.

[deepdowntruth]

My guess is that the strength of the source signal is attenuated due to its being split off many times to multiple TVs, causing things like pixelation, weak color, and flickering.

In order to overcome this, many shops use signal amplifiers which also, ironically, can make the signal so strong as to distort the picture (e.g. shadows and 'ghosting'.)

Ideally, they'd have one video source for each TV, but that just isn't economical.

[tagtastic]

Best Buy's TVs are:

a) abused (stuff like burn-in occurs often at BB)
b) have terrible settings
c) have terrible sources

With some work and a decent source setup properly, connected to your TV in the best possible way, HDTV can be awesome. The workers at Best Buy pretty much use the price tags to tell them which TVs are better than others and then read off the info card in front of the TV when a customer asks them for details about a set.

www.avsforum.com if you really wanna learn about this kinda stuff. Be prepared to put in alot of time reading before you become even semi-knowledgable.

If you wanna see some nice HDTV setups, find a smaller (and usually extremely expensive) electronics shop that looks very high end (not a chain, or at least not a big chain). These places will likely have the TVs setup closer to properly.

[jjp]

Yes, stores do screw up the pictures on the cheaper tv's so you will see the difference in the more expensive TVs.