When we get ready to buy a Sony BRAVIA XBR, or any other HDTV, all of us want to watch one in the store before we buy one. If you are like me, you go to the stores and watch different models in order to compare them. At home later, you get on the Internet and look around for the best price.

Even when we plan to buy a HDTV online, we all still like to head out and see one first to evaluate the picture quality, viewing angle, and bunches of other stuff. We all expect the television to perform the same way when we get it to our house. Yet how many times have you gotten a TV home and noticed the quality was much different?

Viewing a television in the store may not be as straight forward as you think it is. There are several things to keep in mind when looking at TVs in stores.

Which models are selling well?

One fact of any store is that there are some models the store wishes to sell more than others. This could be because they are overstocked on a certain model. The store might get an incentive from the company for each TV they sell. It could be a promotion for a new model. Whatever the reason, retailers will often have reasons to try to one particular model.

This means these sets will be set to be the brightest and have the most brilliant colors. They will look the most appealing. You know which ones I am talking about. These are the ones that make you take notice and begin imagining it in your house. All the while the other HDTVs are set up to with poorer displays.

Using Dynamic Mode

Many times stores will set 32 inch LCD TVs to dynamic mode. This adds even more to the attractiveness of the TVs. This mode makes the television really bright and colorful. While this mode looks great in a store, it almost always looks horrible in your home. I can almost guarantee you that you will turn this mode off.

In Store Lighting

It is a pretty good guess that the lighting in your home and the lightning in a store are very different. It stands to reason that a television set will look different under these two conditions. For example, in the bright light of a department store a LCD looks bright while a plasma will not look as good. In the dimmer light of your house the performance reverses. A plasma TV looks really good with black blacks, while a LCD's performance suffers.

Before you go to the store to look at a 32 inch LCD TV, get online and find the recommended settings for viewing the TV. At the store ask for the remote and play with the setting to see how the performance changes.

Of course even then the lighting is so different that it will still not look exactly the same at your house. You best bet is to read as many reviews as you can about the models you are interested in. Look to see comments about the picture quality and performance.