that's sick. like disgustingly amoral sick. and they might just get a slap on the wrist unless another good electronics store comes out to give people an alternative.

Calibration, is not only done by Best Buy, its done through out the home theater community. Best Buy sends a technician to go through specific training to become what is called ISF certified. Only TV's that are ISF capable can be calibrated. The purpose of a calibration is to set the tv to certain color temperatures and lighting for whatever room it set up in. By doing so, it not only creates a more lifelike picture quality, but it also extends the life of the tv by lowering the amount of power that the TV actually uses. When a television is bought and set up out of the box, the TV's are set to either a vivid mode or standard mode in which the brightness is set to an extremely high level. So it is not a scam to have your tv be calibrated. When they set up their calibration displays, they are suppose to calibrate one tv, and leave the other one uncalibrated and use an HDMI splitter that is coming from the same exact source so that they can show you the difference a calibration makes to the experience of watching tv. If you want more information about calibration, please check out this website. http://www.imagingscience.com/ccc/. Also, Best Buy is utilizing the fact that the manufacturers of the televisions are making them ISF capable, so that they can be calibrated. Get your facts straight.

I second Mr. Hammers comment, and wish to add that if you're suddenly going to accuse a major corporation of scamming customers you should really fact check first. And plus, people that don't see a reason to calibrate can just pass, or use free sites to get calibration settings that have been used by others.
Screen calibration is a big thing. Don't try to pass it off as a scam.

This is irresponsible journalism. You are unprofessional and I would be shocked if you aren't breaking some kind a law for liable or slander. At least there are some consumers like Hammer and Barn who actually do research on these topics! Im so tired of seeing these idiots post about what companies are going out of business when they have probably never even read let alone understand a financial statement or pay attention to the stocks. If you go into a store most of their sales people show you the entire display HDMI cables and all not component. The calibration has documented proof it does what the best Buy people say it does. And if you cant see the difference you have to be blind!

Calibration is indeed a useful thing to do to that shiny new HD TV, and will improve picture quality. That aspect is not a scam.

However, if Best Buy is indeed using a display in-store that compares HMDI to component, that's a scam.

Finally, charging $300 for it is certainly a ripoff. It is not that time consuming a task, and is disproportionately expensive compared to the cost of the TVs in the first place.

Best Buy stooges are misleading us here (see their comments above). They're blowing smoke to mask the story -- a store setting up a phony before-and-after demo to convince customers that they can't do something they always do for themselves.

Also, callibration? For $300? Most people are fully capable of adjusting their TVs to their liking, but when they see Best Buy's fraudulent comparison, they might have second thoughts.

To the anonymous gentlemen. Please do some research and take a look at the equipment required to do the calibration. What part of it is blowing smoke? You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Most calibrations are $400+ just for the type of technology the TV is. I challenge anyone to do research on ISF certified installs and still say that they are something a consumer can do themselves without the sencore equipment needed to do it.

I work at the best buy in NY and we were ISF certified to do this too (its $350, we may go higher depending on the suc...uh..situation). TV calibration = raising both the brightness and contrast "temperatures" (a term we throw in to make it sound gawdy). Thats ALL we do 90% of the time, the sensors do ziltch. Rich people suck and deserve to get every penny sucked out of them. Hey if you're lucky we'll hit up your old lady in the next room while you enjoy $350 worth of contrasted brightness. If you're a dick about it I keep a tube of silicone, which is like slow-killing rat poison for electronics.

OMG Fan Boys.... Yes, if an HDTV is not properly calibrated by the factory then you do indeed have to get it calibrated by a technician. In this case, when it is a new set with no obvious issues, sorry NO it does not need to be calibrated. Simply changing the user settings on the unit when you get it in the room you are going to watch it in is more than ample "Calibration." Offering this service is not really a scam, though it is WAY too costly. The scam, or rather the idiot who hooked those sets up, are at fault here by not using HDMI on both sets. By the way fan boys, I bet you bought the $80 HDMI cable Best Buy was selling you too!

Its not a scam if youre given a choice. If you don't want to pay for it, then DON'T PAY FOR IT...

Good call DVICE, as for all these haters defending those crooks at WorstBuy, YOU SUCK!

After all of the research I have done on cables, isn't it true that the diference between HDMI and Component the source?

I have seen HD devices that look better on either depending on the source(TV, Game Console).

So, to make a blanket "lower-quality HD over analog component cables" statement is kinda misleading.

Am I wrong?

Would anyone really trust BB to do IFC level calibration? I'm always amazed that BB and CC are still around.

Finally! I was waiting for someone else to notice what a f****ng scam this is.

To you jerks who are defening BB's calibration: keep drinking the kool-aid. You have no idea how ignorant you are. You are the same out-of-touch liars who tell me that a DIGITAL signal can look differently on an expensive HDMI cable.

Then again, you do have a computer science degree... oh wait, that's ME!

Finally, BB fanboys, I hope you take a good look at yourself, and realize how pathetic your life has become. Please reflect on all the mistakes you've made leading up to this point.

Have to agree with Adam on this one - you people aren't reading what the accusation is. It's not that HDTV's can't be calibrated, what he's saying is that BB is falsely comparing systems to make it look like a consumer needs their system calibrated, and that's fraud plain and simple.

As far as the calibration goes, sure, you can pay for a fancy cal with all the equipment, blah blah. But in the end, the only one that can really notice the difference (unless the system is really screwed up) is the equipment and the tech who calibrated it anyway.

Adam hits it on the head - most people believe that expensive cables give you a better picture. Hell, even Sony is honest enough to tell you (on their website no less) NOT to buy an expensive HDMI cable. They tell you point blank to buy the cheapest you can find.

While there may be differences in materials, in some applications and installations those fancy materials actually lead to faster degradation. The only real performance improvement seen with them is in a person's head and in a lab.

Just like HDTV Calibration.

It's a scam- since LG, Samsung, Panasonic and Sony all promote it...

Sounds like some mom and pop shop pissing their pants in this economic slump

I used to work at Best Buy in the Home Theater Department and the information in this article is completely WRONG!
First of all, it's definitely not a scam!
Manufacturers set the internal settings of TVs to what I call "torch settings" to make them look good on a sales floor...They set the brightness and contrast up ridiculously high to give you an unrealistic picture. Obviously, your home isn't a sales floor and the lighting situations vary from home to home and room to room, so what a Calibration is designed to do is adjust the color levels to the room your tv is in, and to maximize the picture quality. It also does save energy and life of the TV because your TV isn't working so hard to produce a picture.
And the reason why it's so much is because they send an ISF-Certified Installer to your home with the proper equipment (which is a little device they stick to your screen connected to a computer) and they then read the black levels, white levels, brightnes, etc. and adjust them properly. What they do though is access a different menu that's not typically available to consumers (because the wrong move could ruin your TV); you need a certain code based on the manufacturer and it gives you many more in-depth options that your normal TV menu doesn't.
It's a wonderful service and as far as I know they lowered the price from $300 to $150 (although it may be just a special when you purchase it with the TV)...and Circuit City offers the same exact thing from FireDog and I'm pretty sure it's the same price!
And the Calibrated TV's you see in the store are ACTUALLY Calibrated by Geek Squad! It's not one TV showing HD and one showing SD; that and Calibration are two totally different things!
I know at the store I worked at (#1141 in Bradenton, FL) we had the two TV's set up with the same feed so there were no tricks!

Do your research before you make such statements!

LOLZ at geek squad...i work tech support and you know how many times we hear they set up something then screw it up....then to fix it again they charge them! the tv cali is bull and one that is decent with electronics knows how to adjust a tv..and also with the hdmi cables unless your going beyond 6ft you dont need the expensive ones...i got mine off ebay (8bucks) and my hdmi looks better than most i see instore! i have an olevia 32" and a ps3 and a hd-digitial box.. I wouldn't let geek squad change a light bulb!!!

Scams are for the uniformed and lazy. Always do your homework before purchasing. Never blatantly trust anyone, even if it's a large corporation. Remember, the actions of these corporations always stem from a small group of folks in a board room, whose goal is to make money. The bottom line. Therefore, make your goal the same: to save money.

This is all very, very sad. As a broadcast engineer, (over 20 years of working with manufactures, producers, networks and broadcasters) this article is an exercise in dysfunctional journalism. It also exposes the new reality of the blogosphere: Most posters and/or the masses not having one iota of understanding on a subject, but proclaiming expertise and then reporting it as scam. It’s just plain depressing to me.
The good news is that are a few post here that are actually correct – just a few.
The goal of a properly engineered quality television is to do one thing – accurately reproduce what the camera captures. In the broadcast world we take enormous strides to calibrate to standards co-developed and established by both us engineers and the government. (SMPTE, NTSC and ATSC)
TV manufactures need to sell TV’s in the less than optimum viewing conditions of the Best Buy’s, Wal-Mart’s and a Costco’s of the world. As a result they all feel obligated to grossly deviate from these known standards. Many manufactures just look the other way purposely because the product is incapable of performing correctly to these standards to begin with. The other very relevant issue is that proper calibration takes into account the environment where the display device resides and no manufacture can predict that.
The ONLY way to see what we transmit, in the exact way we capture and produce it, is to have the TV professionally calibrated to these standards – just like we do every day in our studios and production centers. To properly calibrate a TV to these standards, it takes from $7,500 to $100,000 worth of test gear and a KNOWLEDABLE technician that knows how to use the equipment.
Every reputable TV reviewer in the press understands the Calibration Process and performs one before critically evaluating a display device. Most of them have the equipment and training necessary to perform a proper calibration. On the consumer side there’s a group of engineers that formed a certifying group call ISF ( Imaging Science Foundation ) http://www.imagingscience.com They are well known among not only manufactures but reviewers and quality installers alike. Many TV manufacture’s like Pioneer Elite, LG, Panasonic, Runco, Optima and InFocus have ISF licensed features that facilitate professional calibration integrated into the products.

This article prompted me to call a local Best Buy store. I spoke to the gentleman that runs their so called “Geek Squad” in that particular store. He actually was reasonably informed about calibration and explained to me that they in-fact have the proper equipment - as when I asked what they had he replied “Sencore CT-5000 and VP-403’s.” I was SHOCKED. That actually is decent equipment that sells for about $10,000. He also stated that the technicians that actually perform the calibrations were ISF trained and certified. Frankly – I was surprised that he knew about ISF and was shocked that he had a reasonable understand of the process. I was also amazed that they do indeed offer that service to their customers and on top of that, for what seems to be a very reasonable fee. Do they actually do a good job? – I have no way of knowing. But my first impression with the Geek Squad manager was positive indeed and would tend to think that from the way he spoke about the subject matter that they would do a reasonable job.
In this day and age it’s easy to jump to the wrong conclusion not know who to believe. In this case a great disservice has been perpetrated to anyone who just wants the best picture his TV is capable of. If you are one of those – get your TV calibrated, just like we do.
On the HDMI controversy, poster “delanooch” just above has the right answer. There is no easy answer to this controversy, but suffice it to say – that compared to a calibration – it simply doesn’t matter. On an absolute level, go HDMI when you can, but be prepared for the possibility of a plethora of compatibility issues and keep the cables as short as possible. Cable quality starts to matter real fast as length goes up and it’s just not always as simples as “it either works or doesn’t work.” Under 2 meters of length – almost any quality cable – not necessary expensive – should work well.

While i agree with most of the comments, i would have to disagree with the whole. Calibration is process that uses dedicated equipment to measure light, contrast and other characteristics of your sets and surrounding environ in order to create the idea picture. This can go farther than the simple settings that you can control through the menus.
The calibration, while effective if you have a HD set, HD cables and signal, is not always worth it. As stated before, most of the time you can get excellent results by using the standard settings in the menu. But for those with money to waste and have a extremely sharp eye, then go ahead.
And unless you have a signal booster, try to keep the cables as short as possible, the longer the cord the more the signal degrades due to ambient electromagnetic interference picked up by the wires, and the low amount of power that is absorbed by the metal due to resistance.
In most cases without the proper signal quality, HDMI and component will look very similar. But if you have a extreme HD signal, 1080+ then you will notice a difference.
While calibration can make a difference, most of the time it is useless, as the sets become more advance and give you more options to adjust. Dont spend the money on calibration until you cant get what you want from your set.
In about 6 cases ive seen working as a electrician and electronics repair, i have only seen an average contrast change of 5%, brightness 10%, response time 0%, and overall picture quality increase of 8%. This is based on pixel density of the picture, the flux of a pure white picture, and the difference of black and white on the screen while next to each other(uses the flux of white compared to black and the increase/decrease is calculated to %).

SPEED DEMON, When you learned how to be a broadcast engineer, every connection was analog, so cable length and quality mattered. But back in "ought three" us whipper-snappers started using this thing called HDMI. To keep this post short, let's save time and just say that it works using magic. This magic cable will show images of the same quality on a 10-fathom cable that's $20 and a 10-fathom cable that's $800. Naturally, Best Buy will tell you that the expensive, high-quality cable will present a better picture.

ADAM, Unless the laws of physics have changed in the 20 years Speed Demon has been a broadcast engineer, his point about keep your HDMI cables short is valid. A HDMI cable does not work using 'magic', it is a normal loom, composed of 4 pairs of balanced twisted cables. These cables are subject to the same signal losses as any other copper cable. The 'magic' digital HDMI squarewave signal of 1's and 0's does not look anything like that practically. Due to various reasons, such as a perfect squarewave signal requiring inifinite transmission bandwidth, cable manufacturing imperfections and crosstalk/noise; the signal looks more like a heavily clipped sinusiodal waveform. As the cable length increases, the signal is attenuated, the peaks of the signal (the 1's and 0s bit) reduce in magnitude and the signal starts to resemble a set of rolling mountains, with smooth transitions between the two limits.

Now over short distances, the clipped sinusoidal type waveform does not present a problem. The '1's and 0's' limits are still pretty well defined and the receiving device can work out what is supposed to be a 1 and what is supposed to be a 0. However, as the cable length increases, and the shape of the signal changes, the voltage difference between the '1' and the '0', steadily reduces. This coupled with increasing SNR means past a certain length, the receiver will no longer be able to accurately work out what is supposed to be a '1' and what is supposed to be a '0'. This is when you start having problems. The actual design of the cable (using balanced twisted pair) also does not help as the signal shape is altered at shorter lengths than would be using other cable design (eg Co-ax). At longer lengths, better constructed cable, not neccesarily more expensive, is imporant. Thicker cables have a greater cross sectional area and so have less resistance to the signal being transmitted. The use of better shielding between the cable pairs reduces crosstalk and a thicker outer shield reduces interference. All these help to maintain the original 'squarewavish' shape of the signal over longer distances.
Obviously, this is an extremely simplified explanation but I hope it helps people understand that HDMI and indeed any digital signal transmitted over copper cable is not 'bulletproof' and will fail after a certain length. Now transmitted optically....that's a different story...

Any store that sells a cable that actually costs $5 for over $30 is a rip-off. you figure the rest from that. Everything I see at bestbuy is highly marked up and bloated in price. and on top of that they are always behind in technology, they don't have the latest and top of the line since they wanna stick it to the poor people who don't keep up.

As far as calibration goes, yes you can calibrate a display. However, the average consumer is going to watch movies and tv with it not sit there and do graphic design on it. And the only time the eye can tell a difference is when you have another display at home to compare. so set your contrast and brightness and set your color temperature to your liking and you are good to go.
Word to the idiots who think calibrations can extend the life of the tv: you're all idiots. A tv does not "work hard" to do what it's designed to do. it will however display how you adjust it to display.
Best Buy is a big corporation targeted toward the consumer with absolutely no basic knowledge of technology which unfortunately in this country is most people. And they have nothing in mind but to give the illusion of providing good service to people who can't even wipe their own ass and take their money.

Best Buy is a scam and rip off store. there is no doubt about it. I have never once walked into that store and been actually helped by someone who knows what they are selling. I ask for a computer microphone and we were standing in fron of them when the sales associate said they didnt sell them. Then when I showed them to hime he said "oh, is that what you meant? I thought you meant, nevermind. Oh yea! They're right here."
Next time, I walked into a Best Buy store and ask if they had the HP Touchsmart PC. The sales rep. who nothing again said "Yea it s around here somewhere." He browses through the computers touching Gateways and Sonys hoping one of them to be the Touchsmart. I just said HP you idiot!
I went to Best Buy testerday and they were showing tvs that supposedly needed to be calibrated that were hooked up to bad tv signals. These tvs in store are normally hooked up through a broadcast that is internal. You will not see regular programming. They are automatically HD so you see them at their best. But, with the so called needed calibrated models they are hooked up differently. They use poor quality hookups not through the HDMI Input. How convenient. They will tell you anything to get you to buy and once you do there is not much you can do from there barring a 10 percent restocking fee. Then they already made a 100 bucks on a 1000.00 tv.
What do the manufacturers think of them using their products to look bad? They never show an Insignia, which is the Best Buy off brand, looking bad. Wonder why? Maybe they were looking through those 3 D glasses when they put the tv out.....Or maybe consumers just stop buying tvs until this crap stops!