With the football season opener fast approaching, I finally decided this past weekend that the time was right to jump into the world of HDTV. After doing months of research online, going to numerous stores to check selection and prices, and reading every review I could get my hands on, I felt like I knew what I was doing and ready to make the jump.

Boy, was I wrong. After doing a final check through a couple stores and having a specific LCD model in mind to purchase, I negotiated the price a bit, slapped down my credit card, threw (gently) the TV into my car, and sped home to set it up…

…and was flabbergasted by how bad the picture looked. I mean, I somewhat expected regular TV to look worse, so okay, but then I put in a few DVDs, and whoa, baby, this was not looking good. In a mild state of panic, I managed to calm down a bit until my wife, the former professional photo color corrector got home. Maybe she’d be able to fix it.

And wrong again. Even the simplest of changes, like getting rid of the red push I knew was prevalent in these models threw other colors off. As an example, the main fish in Finding Nemo, which everybody knows are orange clown fish, were red. Not orange, red. And getting them to a dim red rather than a neon red pushed other colors out of the normal viewing range. Not to mention that the picture just looked bad in other ways; too processed, too sharp (even with sharpness settings down), and very, very blocky in dark scenes. So back in the box it went and back to the store I went. And big props to my wife for being nice to me when my hope for HDTV seemingly died as I taped up the box.

Now, here’s the not-so-slight catch: in order to get the price I wanted, I had done some comparison pricing online and went to a store that I thought would then be able to compete with that price. And I was right, and I got the same price as I would have if I had bought it online– and thank GOD I did not buy online, as the return process would have been a huge hassle. But the store at which I purchased the TV did not offer a refund once the box was open except in case of defect– unlike some major chains, which will give a refund, but charge you a fakey 15% “restocking” fee– but would instead issue a store credit and help you find another TV. And while I tried to convince the sales guy that it was in fact “defective” ’cause it looked like utter crap, we both knew that it was really just the way the TV worked.

But here’s the thing, and yes, it was just salesmanship, and yes, I felt burned, so was truly suspicious, but Orlando, the guy at Video Only (which I’ll name now since I’m about to say nice things about them), actually helped me find something that worked. When I complained about the way the LCD TV made my DVDs look, he unplugged a similar model and plugged it into a TV he was recommending so I could get a good look at what the actual picture was, rather than just the feed going into all the TVs in the store that can make comparisons totally moot. He let me play with the remote to see that the color/contrast/brightness settings were much more subtle and varied and able to be changed so that you could get decent skin tone and color. And, though the second TV I took home was listed as more than what I paid for the first one, he exchanged it for the same price.

And when I got it home and hooked it up, it was immediately apparent how much better everything looked: DVDs were great, HD was even better, and even the regular channels were/are completely watchable. And now that I have (mostly) got over my fear of burn-in in the first 100 hours, I’m settling in for some primo football and movie viewing.

As a final word of wisdom if you are in the market for a new TV: Research is great, but there’s nothing like going to a store and seeing how the damn things actually display. And since most channels are still in the process of moving to HD, the way regular channels and DVDs look is pretty important on the new TV, so I would advise– insist — that you take a DVD or two with which you’re pretty familiar to make them play at the store on the TV of your choice. If they won’t do it for you, don’t buy the damn thing. Video Only will do so, but if you’re going to shop there, be sure you know, really know, what you want, ’cause you are not getting your money back.