Most people shop for a TV by going to the local appliance store and walking sown a row of dozens of models, comparing the picture quality of a few sets in their price range. They then choose the one with the "best" picture. Such other factors as brand reputation, warranty, and features may also play roles, but the way the set looks in the store is often the overriding attribute.
But the picture quality you see in the store bears little resemblance to the way the set can look when properly calibrated. TV sets' color, contrast, brightness, sharpness, and tint are often deliberately miscalibrated at the factory to be competitive (look more appealing) on the showroom floor. The settings may not be accurate or produce a pleasing picture in the long run, but the miscalibration sells more TVs. In fact, picture quality is in some ways more dependent on proper calibration than on the set's intrinsic quality. That's why it's hard to compare pictures in a showroom to determine which set will provide you with the best picture quality. Smart home-theater enthusiasts learn how to make their sets look better and last longer through calibration.
Marketing studies have shown that consumers buy sets based on a single criterion: how bright the picture is. To make sets stand out when placed next to competing units, their brightness is turned up -- to as much as four to six times the correct light output level. The color balance is shifted toward blue, again to give the impression of greater brightness. It's no coincidence that laundry detergent has a bit of blue dye in it to make clothes look "whiter than white." More important, this excessive brightness shortens a TV set's life.
There's a direct parallel here with the way some loudspeakers are designed. [Some speakers] are designed to exaggerate the bass and treble so that the speaker "jumps out" in side-by-side comparisons with other speakers. Such a product might impress in a brief showroom demonstration, but quickly becomes annoying and fatiguing in daily use.
It's the same with intentionally miscalibrated displays: An overly bright set may look good at first, but is ultimately unnatural-looking. Just as budding audiophiles go through a phase of liking excessive treble and bass in speakers before their taste becomes attuned to a more natural sound, the novice home-theater enthusiast may at first not like the look of a properly calibrated monitor. But if, after a few weeks, the contrast were set back to what it had been, he would find the picture grossly distorted, and wonder how he ever liked the overly bright picture.
