Hint for when buying a TV

When you go into a store and you see that the cheapest TV has the worst picture quality, the moderate priced TVs have better picture quality and the most expensive TVs have the best picture quality, before you make your decision about which to buy, first fiddle with the brightness, sharpness and contrast controls until each picture is as good as you can make it and you will probably find that you won't be able to see any difference between the quality of the pictues.

Two factors explain this:

1. The owner of the store and salespeople on comission want you to buy the most expensive TVs and they tune the TVs to make sure the most expensive have the best picture quality.

2. It is very difficult to make a bad picture tube.

Very rarely will a picture tube manufacturer set out with the goal of making a low quality image picture tube. If they did they would probably go out of business. They would probably also have trouble with worker motivation.

BOSS: I don't pay you much, but that's because I expect you to do a crap job! Now I want you to go out there and produce a mediocre to poor product, because we're number one hundred and twenty-eight! What are we?

LISTLESS WORKERS: (Mumbling) We're number one hundred and twenty-eight...

It's a lot easier to make a decent picture tube and charge less for putting it in a cheap plastic case with an el cheapo remote control which refuses to change channels after a couple of years and to charge more for the same picture tube that comes in a stylish looking case with an ergonomic and reliable remote control.

Oh, and nowadays there are TVs that don't have picture tubes, but the basic principle is probably the same.