Three HT editors don their consumer personas to find out how much the average mass-market salesperson really knows about today's most popular technologies.
You've heard us say time and time again that the specialty retailer is the place to shop if you want personalized attention from a truly knowledgeable sales staff. Still, many of you insist on wiling away the hours at a mass-market retailer conveniently located in a strip mall near you. We can't really blame you. Convenience is a precious commodity in today's world. The question is, can you get a little knowledge and sound advice to accompany that convenience, or are you being led astray? We loaded up three of our editors with an arsenal of questions and sent them off to the Big Three retailers: Best Buy, Circuit City, and relative newcomer Ultimate Electronics. Their mission: Bring us back the goods and the not-so-goods from their buying experience.
Three HT editors don their consumer personas to find out how much the average mass-market salesperson really knows about today's most popular technologies.
You've heard us say time and time again that the specialty retailer is the place to shop if you want personalized attention from a truly knowledgeable sales staff. Still, many of you insist on wiling away the hours at a mass-market retailer conveniently located in a strip mall near you. We can't really blame you. Convenience is a precious commodity in today's world. The question is, can you get a little knowledge and sound advice to accompany that convenience, or are you being led astray? We loaded up three of our editors with an arsenal of questions and sent them off to the Big Three retailers: Best Buy, Circuit City, and relative newcomer Ultimate Electronics. Their mission: Bring us back the goods and the not-so-goods from their buying experience.
No matter the dollar amount involved, it happens to everyone: You get locked on to something new, you watch the glowing reviews and awards pile up, and you consider pulling the trigger when either financial reality or conservatism kicks in. You ultimately think, "If only it were a few hundred (or thousand, or hundred thousand) dollars less." Patience usually pays off, though. That's as clear in the A/V world as it is anywhere, especially in the high end. It's only natural that, when a manufacturer rolls out a new design or line, they start with their best foot forward, which usually ends up being the more-expensive foot. However, most manufacturers will eventually give those of you who are limited to lower price brackets—either by choice or necessity—a taste with lower-priced models. With the legitimate companies, the gap in price between models is almost always significantly greater than the gap in performance.
The DVD-V3800 combines popular technologies from yesterday and today.
Samsung was the first to market with a backwards-compatible, single-box DVD/VHS combi player a few years ago. It's still a hot product as consumers continue to wrestle with the whole VHS-versus-DVD quandary. Most manufacturers keep upping the ante in small ways, adding this output or that performance enhancement on the digital half—there's only so much room for improvement on a standard VHS recorder, after all—without really rocking the multimedia boat. Finally going a step further, Samsung has incorporated a multi-format flash-memory card reader into the top-of-the-line model in their recent wave of value decks.
The Harmony SST-659 universal remote—smart, so you don't have to be.
Programming a universal remote is, to put it mildly, unfun. About 10 more-colorful adjectives came to mind before unfun, but this is a PG-13 magazine—and I'm a lady, after all. If you're financially well endowed, you not only have the luxury of buying one of the higher-end A/V controllers that can control your gear and do your taxes at the same time, but you probably also have a custom installer who can handle the joys of programming that controller all by his or her lonesome.
Just ask anyone who's spent any amount of time watching a high-definition TV - it's addictive. Maybe it's the seductive picture or the cinemalike sound, but the half-dozen HDTV channels I had available until recently were about the only ones I regularly watched - even though there were hundreds of standard-definition channels I could have tuned in.
I'm hearing voices from outer space. Even stranger, I'm hearing different voices in different rooms. Susan Stamberg lectures me in the kitchen, Frank Sinatra croons at me in the bedroom, and Swollen Member is scratching in the den.
