NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Business

Top 5 'gotchas' for unwary TV buyers

By Pat Pilcher
Herald online·
13 Dec, 2012 11:15 PM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Photo / Thinkstock

Photo / Thinkstock

There's some bold claims being made about TVs in your local store, says tech writer Pat Pilcher.

While most sales people are decent honest and hard-working folk who've taken the time to learn about the products they're selling, there are a very small number who'll simply fake it till they make it. Trouble is that when it comes to a buying big ticket item such as that new flat screen telly you've been lusting after, sales pork pies can result in you paying over the odds for an utter dog of a product.

Further complicating matters is the sheer amount of misinformation around about TVs which not only acts to further confuse already bewildered buyers, but also provides less than scrupulous sales people with plenty of ammo to fire at unknowing buyers.

This was bought home to me the other day when on my lunch break I popped into a well-known appliance retail chain and overheard a sales person talking up the benefits of million-to-one contrast ratios on an LCD TV they were trying to sell some bewildered buyers.

The BS was bold, and I have to admit that I was morbidly fascinated, (In much the same way that someone would be watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion) Because of this I decided to hang around and see which piece of snake oil TV was going to be touted next.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

1: Contrast Ratios

For the purposes of accuracy, contrast ratio is the measurement of the difference between the whitest white a screen can display and the deepest darkest black able to be shown. The higher the ratio, the more contrast and this in theory should help with depth and definition, so a higher contrast ratio is usually better.

Trouble is even though some manufacturer's specs talk up several million to one ratios, the contrast ratio number is at best only ever going to be a broad guideline of what a TV screen can actually display. Manufacturing variances make it next to impossible to give an exact contrast ratio spec to any given TV screen yet sadly both sales people and buyers take this number as fact.

With Contrast ratios remember this; plasmas TVs may have better contrast ratios than LCD TVs but recent improvements to LCD display technologies such as LED backlighting (which can be selectively brightened or dimmed to improve contrast ratio specs) are rapidly narrowing the gap.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Further complicating matters, most TVs on display in the store are set by default to what is usually called "Vivid" mode which maxes out contrast levels and ups colour saturation to make the picture stand out from a competitors TV located nearby. If you're considering a particular TV, ask the sales person for its remote and have a play at tweaking its colour, contrast and brightness settings to get a feel for what the TV is capable of. Don't forget to take how usable the remote and the TVs onscreen picture setting menus into account too.

2: Extended warranties

Having baffled the poor buyers with TV spec mumbo-jumbo, it appeared that the deal was about to be closed and the sales person moved their hapless customers towards the checkout saying "oh and you'll need an extended warranty, we get faulty flatscreen TVs coming back in for repair all the time"

Up-selling gullible customers into an extended warranty could be optimistically called showing sales initiative, but more realistically should be called a total crock. Of course sales people see TVs coming in for repair - they work at a TV store. The real issue is what proportion of the total number of TVs sold are returned for repair. Needless to say, this is most likely to be a very tiny number indeed.

Discover more

Entertainment

Freeview in more than half of NZ homes

28 Feb 12:55 AM

Aside from the fact that most big brand flatscreen tellys are pretty reliable, New Zealand also has really good consumer protection law in the form of the consumers guarantee act.

Should your TV fail to perform as advertised after you've purchased it, there is a good chance that you could be entitled to a replacement, repair or even a refund (see here for more info on the consumers guarantee act. This is of course several bazillion times less expensive than an extended warranty that you're probably never going to use, even though you'd end up paying a fortune for it.

3: LED TVs

This is another bug bear of mine. Fortunately this myth is only perpetuated by badly informed sales people, as well as misinformed buyers. There is no such thing as an LED TV - they simply don't exist.

In reality, what happens is that Most buyers simply get confused with the backlight technology used by most LCD TVs. Earlier LCD TVs used a fluorescent tube backlight which made getting consistent and even backlighting across the entirety of the TVs screen a real challenge. Getting around this saw many manufacturers migrating to LEDS for backlighting.

Not only was it possible to get even backlighting across the entire screen and more accurate colour reproduction, but LEDs also turned out to be more energy efficient and were able to be selectively dimmed or brightened to improve picture contrast levels.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

4: HDMI

Even though many wouldn't fall for it, the great HDMI cable scam remains a persistent con, catching out the unwary. With both audio and video delivered over an HDMI connection as a digital signal, there is absolutely no discernible difference in picture or sound quality between an el-cheapo 1metre $40 HDMI cable and its $299 counterpart. Yet bizarrely buyers seem all too prepared to part with huge amounts of money for supposedly superior HDMI cables.

About the only time a more expensive HDMI cable would ever deliver the AV goods is when it is longer than say 8-12 metres, when they may work. Longer HDMI cable runs will most often need an HDMI switcher/booster rather than gold plated oxygen free schiesteristic HDMI cable pixie dust to work.

5: Audio

Having taken the poor customers money for the TV and an extended warranty, the sales person concluded the deal by talking up the audio on the TV. As tempted as I was to intervene, I didn't. Which is a real shame as the sad fact of the matter is that most flatscreen TVs don't have anything approaching remotely decent audio output capabilities. For most TV brands, their wafer thin design means that only tiny speaker drivers are used as manufacturers are reluctant to add big bass speaker drivers and the bulk that this would entail. Unfortunately Small speaker drivers generate tinny thin audio which probably doesn't mesh very well that cinematic experience the buyer is probably seeking.

Unless you are already the proud owner of a kick ass home theatre setup, factor in audio into your TV buying budget, it'll make a huge difference. Ideally you should aim for a good home theatre amp plus front, rear, centre and sub-woofer speakers plus cables. This said, Even a budget home theatre kit or sound bar will usually deliver superior audio to what most flatscreen TVs are capable of. With Freeview and sky broadcasting surround sound audio, even an el-cheapo 5.1 surround sound home theatre kit will help bring movies and TVs shows to life.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Business

Business

'Terrific outcome': 189 staff from New World destroyed by fire learn of new job options

09 Jul 06:43 AM
Premium
Shares

Market close: NZ sharemarket dips as Reserve Bank holds OCR steady

09 Jul 06:28 AM
Premium
Official Cash Rate

Rates on hold: What the Reserve Bank's decision means for Kiwis

09 Jul 06:00 AM

Audi offers a sporty spin on city driving with the A3 Sportback and S3 Sportback

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Business

'Terrific outcome': 189 staff from New World destroyed by fire learn of new job options

'Terrific outcome': 189 staff from New World destroyed by fire learn of new job options

09 Jul 06:43 AM

New World at Auckland's Victoria Park burned down on June 17. All its stock was ruined.

Premium
Market close: NZ sharemarket dips as Reserve Bank holds OCR steady

Market close: NZ sharemarket dips as Reserve Bank holds OCR steady

09 Jul 06:28 AM
Premium
Rates on hold: What the Reserve Bank's decision means for Kiwis

Rates on hold: What the Reserve Bank's decision means for Kiwis

09 Jul 06:00 AM
Premium
British, Asian, Kiwis inquire about buying Cardrona Hotel

British, Asian, Kiwis inquire about buying Cardrona Hotel

09 Jul 05:00 AM
Gold demand soars amid global turmoil
sponsored

Gold demand soars amid global turmoil

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP