TV Reviewing Tweaks
I enjoy your magazine and have been an avid reader for many years. Just about all of my A/V purchases are based on your product reviews. It is your method of TV reviewing that I would hope you all might slightly revise. I watch as much 4K/ultra HD programming as one can through Directv, and of course Netflix and Amazon. That being said, at least 90 percent of what I watch is still regular HD content.
When looking to buy the latest and greatest set, I want to know which one handles sports like football, baseball, and basketball the best. Also, which one gives the best picture for regular programming like Modern Family or Blue Bloods, and which one takes the Hd-quality HBO picture and best upscales it to 4K.
Instead, it often seems like your reviewer wants to impress me with his movie knowledge. It is always a disc, be it Blu-ray or Ultra HD, that already has a better picture than what Directtv or Spectrum can offer. That same reviewer then takes two scenes from said disc and goes on to talk about one particular scene and the effect of that scene. If he wants to do that, fine, but please add to the review the abilities of each new set to handle and improve what most of us are watching 90 percent of the time. Thanks in advance for listening.
Doug Snyder / via email
Al Griffin responds: It’s true that our main TV reviewer, Thomas J. Norton, does know a lot about movies, though I wouldn’t agree that
he makes a show of it. The main reason why Tom, and other reviewers as well, use familiar reference discs for subjective evaluation is that they allow for quick, easy, and reliable assessment of a product’s performance. Unlike streaming, cable, and satellite, a disc-based source also provides consistent visual quality— something that’s necessary for comparative testing. The last point I’d like to make is that if a TV performs well with a trusted reference movie disc, it will almost certainly perform well when displaying TV shows, sports, and other programs that most people watch 90 percent of the time. Thanks for reading.