TV & Home Theater

[kgm32]

What is the purpose of having tvs on display in stores that only show the pre-recorded content from the vendor? Yes the look great but I don't sit at home watching 4k videos of frogs and waterfalls tweaked to show the advantage of the specific set. I want to see how the TV's look with everyday content from DirecTV or Xfinity, hopefully with the ability to see the exact content on multiple TV's so a real life
comparison can be made. I honestly have no idea how QLED, nano cell and OLED actually look in real life.

[jdogg836]

The intent is to show the tv at its best and allow you to compare all sets with that level of image quality. You can get content that looks that good on UHD Blu-Ray, Roku Ultra, AppleTV, or within the televisions 4K enabled smart apps. There is plenty of high quality 4K and HDR content out there, unfortunately DirecTV and Comcast Xfinity aren’t the pinnacle of video sources.

When it comes to the low res, bit-starved content delivered by all cable and satellite providers nationwide, the content will essentially look the same whether you’re buying the value television or the top end sets. You would not see the benefit of the higher end sets if we displayed them in that fashion.

[kgm32]

So every 4 k tv upscales "low res, bit-starved content" exactly the same ? Or is it that it actually looks worse when upscaled compared to sets that are naturally 1080p and manufacturers are afraid to show that (as I was told they not Best Buy control the in store display.) I have no way to tell.

I am not arguing that done right 4 k content is superior to 1080p and showing a sets potential is great but as the vast majority of content is still not 4k, even if it's from Roku, etc. , it would be nice to see what I am actually going to be viewing on a daily basis not tjust the occasional 4k content I may watch. The Best Buy I went to could not switch the content so I could make that determination. Heck, it would even be helpful if all sets were at least showing the same content so I can compare them and decide which picture I think is best not which company prepackaged their content to make their tv look the best.

[jdogg836]

The term we used to use is “trash in, trash out” to describe traditional tv signal artifacts. A native 1080p display will display 1080i/p with about the same noise level and mpeg artifacting as the original source, however a 4K can only display 4K images. In order to do that, it scales up the 1080i video by adding extra information. That’s basically doubling the horizontal resolution x2 and the vertical resolution x2 resulting in those artifacts appearing up to 4x the size of their original source.

With the exception of the vendor pads (easily identified by large brand logos above the displays), the rest of the TVs are set up to display the exact same content on them, all served by Best Buy. Unfortunately most locations will not have access to any cable/satellite sources due to the broadcast licensing issues associated with it. However, if you have any Best Buy locations with a Magnolia Design Center in them, they should also have access to DirecTV as one of their sources. There are also Magnolia Home Theater locations that used to also have the same, but as it’s been 5 years since our store converted to a Design Center I cannot guarantee that’s still available in Magnolia Home Theater locations.

When it comes to scaling modern HDTV cable/sat to 4K, it’s a lot better than old HDTV scaling Standard Definition cable up to HD. Video processing has gotten better, and almost all cable companies have fully switched to digital broadcasts at this point. The pinnacle of video processing within a TV is with the Sony televisions. They have continuously outdone themselves every year by improving their X1 chip. In fact, it caused the other big names like LG and Samsung to start investing in the video processing chips they put into their TVs. Any tv from 2018+ from these makers will also fair very well. It has even encouraged the value brands like Vizio and TCL to look at it as well.

Did you have a budget/size/feature set in mind? I could make some recommendations to check out. By narrowing the lack, the in store process should be shorter. You can partner with your local store for some content you would find suitable. We recently had a gentleman who brought in his basic DVD player and some older DVD titles he used to compare. Obviously this is a little more time consuming, but if it’s at a slower time of day they could spend a little more time for this sort of thing. I know our store is the busiest in the entire district, yet we definitely have times where the store has slowed to a crawl and there is time to spend on ensuring our most selective customers have all the details necessary to make a well-informed decision.

Let me know if I can help in any way.

[SeanM-BBY Retired: Social Media Specialist]

Good afternoon, kgm32,

Welcome back to our forums!  I know there are quite a few places to shop for TVs these days, and it’s great to hear you’re interested in picking up a new TV with us.  We always try to make sure our customers have a great experience when shopping in our stores, and part of that includes showing off what the TVs we carry can do.

It looks like jdogg836 has offered some fantastic information here regarding the display capabilities offered in our stores, and I do hope you find their information useful.  There’s a lot to consider when shopping for a new TV, and as someone who’s been thinking of upgrading my TV myself, I completely understand why you’d want to make sure you’re exploring all options available to you.

While the displays we have in our stores are a useful tool to see what your potential new TV can offer, there are a few other options you may be able to utilize in order to help you make your decision.  If you haven’t done so yet, I’d recommend checking out our TV Buying Guide, as it’s a great way to help narrow your search for your perfect TV, and hopefully make your search much easier.

I hope this helps, but if you have any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to visit our Support Forums again.

Cheers,

[bobberuchi]

I believe also part of the issue may be copyright infrindment.  

Often you will see a disclaimer stating that this or that content is the property of this or that organization and may not be used for this or that. 

You hear it multiple times during football games. When I worked electronics we had a memo come down that we were no longer allowed to put football games on the TV's.  We had to use pre- approved content.  

What @jdogg836 is very true.  Stores want to  put forth the best possible content.  Stores would not want to rely on the quality of cable content.  When you do see real movies such content I am thinking it is somethng pushed and approved by the manufacturer. 

I noticed that some Sony TV's were playing movies.  They were all Sony Studios movies. 

Truthfully though.  One of the best things a store could display to compare quality of TV's for side by side comparison would be the test pattern.