| Editorial July 2003
Time for a Change
It’s high time for consumers to demand better
demonstration facilities from their home-theater dealers. I have the usual suspects in my
hometown, such as Circuit City and Best Buy, and the way they display gear is the same as
the way Golden Corral serves food at their buffet on family night. The food, err,
home-theater equipment is lined up on shelves not connected to much of anything, with an
endless supply of cardboard boxes sitting below the display model. When someone takes a
box, another automatically slides into place. Just like the line at the dessert bar -- the
folks line up and take their turn, without ever hearing or testing the equipment
they’re purchasing. But why?
I would imagine it’s because that’s what
they’re used to. Most people have never been in a store with rooms arranged like real
rooms, with real chairs, furniture, and carpeting. This type of environment
approximates the way people live with their home theaters in everyday life. You’d
think it was a novel concept -- actually using the equipment at the store as you would at
home. We don’t accept this with automobiles, though -- everyone I know test-drives
potential candidates before purchasing. Why do we accept it with home-theater gear?
Perhaps it’s because home theaters are thought of more
like the food at McDonald's than a car at the local Lexus dealership. It’s time for a
change.
I had high hopes for one of the better dealers in my town.
The chap was building a new store and bringing in some higher-end product lines. From the
look of the shell as it was being constructed, it appeared to be about four times as large
as his previous place. But when he was finally ready to open and I burst in looking for
the large, comfy demonstration rooms, I was disappointed. About 75 percent of the store
was open floor space with racks of spooled wire, cable ties, and gadgets of all sorts.
There was one functional home-theater system in a narrow room that could not
accommodate comparisons because there was literally not enough room to bring in more
components without removing the ones that were already there. That’s embarrassing ---
for him!
The room where the majority of his equipment was displayed
consisted of one wall with shelves full of gear, and speakers set up on opposite sides of
the room. The only way to listen to the speakers was standing, with the left and right
speakers on opposite walls and the listener in-between. What’s wrong with that? Well,
forget trying to listen to stereo, and actually you were lucky if they could get them
playing at all! The salesman assured you, though, "They sound real good."
Okie-dokie.
There are lots of good dealers out there that do display
their home theaters properly. These are generally the higher-end stores that have a clue.
It’s time that changed: real rooms designed to do justice to the experience needs to
become de rigueur. We must demand it of them. If not, why not just buy mail-order?
But that’s another editorial altogether.
...Jeff Fritz
editor@hometheatersound.com |
