The dixons group owners of currys, dixons, pc world and more is re-branding and adjusting things around.
There will be no more dixons stores its all online now for the dixons name.
Store wise Currys and dixons is dead and the new name - currys.digital lives and will or has replaced all the store names.
OOOOOOOOOh
Just thought I would say while i posted about the thing I noticed today.
I went into one of the stores and looking at the HD tvs, really good value these days some really BIG screens for not a lot tbh.
One thing though, they are showiung off with labels "HD tv, LCD HERE, ITs UBER!!!" yet i looked at the back of 6 in the middle of the TV area all hd and they only had the composite plugged in, no point showing how good they are when you not showing the consumer just how stunning HD is, is there?
One small 20 inch LCD I saw in a corner was plugged into a sky hd box, Ã,£300 it was only and was dam nice quality I was impressed, cant remeber the brand it was one of those odd ones but was dam good quality for the price.
A 360 was running as well, Out of the 15+ that were HD were playing HD.
Its silly for me, if you want to prove to people that HD is so flipping amazing, I mean you lot and me will know just how good they can look but for the family odd bods, the ones out there that buy a new pc so they can use broadband wont be able to see the difference from normal, it would only be slight with a good hd tv, They look better but they wont understand the true DOgs bolluxness of HD.
I have commented this to friends so many times.
The worst thing in the local currys.digital is showing dvds
huge 50" hdtv lcd and a dvd of star wars that does look good on a 50" screen but it looks awful when you get close up where hdtv wins out over sdtv.
They really need to sort this kinda thing out, but to be fair to them they either need a hd demo box from japan or america, a sky+ box per machine or a 360 with a game on. We dont have enough hd tech available in the uk, this shows why a hdtv really isnt worth it yet.
The expense of a unit to share a single hd signal over alot of machines would cost a fortune. Plus i dont know the signal range of the hd cables, if it is anything like scart it wont be very far, so repeaters would be needed.
I did see something interesting in a local argos, they had a japanese hd-dvd box to show a hdtvs powers. Was tempted ask how much it was, would love to have seen their faces.
Also the large out of town stores are still just plain currys, tis just the old dixons stores that are now currys.digital as they hold most high tech rather than kitchen stuff
Last time I was in a few weeks ago I saw a 40" plasma on special offer, even had a HD ready sticker on the front and as they were using a normal TV channel it didnt look bad from a distance.
Get close up and the actual definition was 420p, yet wide VGA standard and lower than what a good old UK analogue TV can produce :evil:
Stuff like resolution is normally hidden in there and they rarely if ever give a response time (would be refresh rate on a CRT).
UK freeview digital TV is already being broadcast in widescreen and benefits from the extra resolution of 720p or 1366*768. I have the latter and it definitely looks better.
I mean bare minimum the could get a basic pc and dvi it up withe aduel dvi nice graphics card and have hd movie files running at least.
I suppose your right about there just being nothing for them yet
I think though when that apple ITV comes out it will change things
Wirless lijnk to your pc media files and play them from your tv in a really nice menu control - Yes please.
They will show normal DVDs nicely as well as Freeview which as I said is already transmitted in widescreen so for that a 720P would be the minimum now.
Ours also has a link for use with a compy, really nice for some hard fragging... :twisted:
Also an advantage if you have an X box or are getting a PS3.
Bah, we just had HD feed installed to all (80+) TVs in the shop and were a local company. I can plug any HDMI ouput in and squirt it out to all the tellys in the shop. We have a Sky HD box (its nothing special you know) and I have a demo box that Samsung provided (http://www.hometheaterblog.com/hometheater/2005/12/samsung_univers.html) which dont seem to be available anywhere in the world yet and thats loaded up with HD content. The ONLY problem with Currys/Dixons is that the staff havent got a clue.
Splitting HDMI is fairly expensive (the digital amplifiers to split it eight way are about Ã,£400 each), but I reckon it cost a total of ten grand to get it into our shop. Thats not a lot of cash for a branch of a large electrical retailer.
Its not really just Dixons who are guilty of this. Just about any major high street electrical related shop will use something like composite aerial to link all the TVs to one source, ignoring their size, type of screen and the source.
However they usualy do show of their HD screens properly with a HD player or something like a 360 attached at the front of the shop clearly standing out.
To be fair though, it is mighty expensive to be rolling out mass HDMI splitters as Goblin pointed out and sometimes just isnt worth it if your not selling much in the first place for example.
Quote from: CypherIts not really just Dixons who are guilty of this. Just about any major high street electrical related shop will use something like composite aerial to link all the TVs to one source, ignoring their size, type of screen and the source.
However they usualy do show of their HD screens properly with a HD player or something like a 360 attached at the front of the shop clearly standing out.
To be fair though, it is mighty expensive to be rolling out mass HDMI splitters as Goblin pointed out and sometimes just isnt worth it if your not selling much in the first place for example.
Mighty expensive is all relative, and as Goblin said, if you looked at the revenue somewhere like Dixons was generating, Ã,£10k would be peanuts.
In a big store like Currys/Dixons the cost is probably going to be the same as one 20hpw staff member for a year at most and they usually have a dozen or more in each store. Not presenting them properly means people walk in, watch, wonder what the fuss was about and leave without parting with their dosh. A few extra TV sales would quickly pay for the costs.