I took a friend and former client TV shopping this weekend at their request: people have gotten the idea that I keep up with audio/video stuff or something.

Anyway, at a certain local TV/Home Theater shop I walked in and confirmed my opinion that the Sony SXRD rear projection TVs have a fantastic picture and are very reasonably priced for a 1080p TV.  Of course as we walked around and discussed different things we were seeing on the unavoidable sales guy encounter happened.  The sales guy tried to give me a lecture on the TV including several horribly incorrect facts including "SXRD is Sony's image processing enhancements" and such.  My response that SXRD stands for Silicon Xtal Reflective Display and that it is Sony's proprietery implementation of the Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) idea and that it didn't include any "picture processing" that I was aware of was met with momentary disorientation and then more arguments on his part. 

I can understand that most consumers are dumb and the industry hasn't made the adoption of HD related technologies easy and its probably safe to start out with the assumption of an uneducated buyer, but when someone clearly knows what they are talking about the salesperson's role switches from "educating about the product" mode to relationship building or "here's why you should buy this from us instead of somewhere else" mode.  The salesperson saw me getting ready to attack and left us alone before I could ask if this particular model had HDMI 1.3 support. 

Shut up TV man, see if I bring another potential customer to your store any time soon.  I almost never meet a salesperson who knows more than I do or is more up to date (than you RSS) on audio/video than I am.  I don't mean that to be an arrogant challenge, because really its somewhat disappointing.  If I had more time selling home theater stuff would be a fun part time job, or perhaps I should get into contract Crestron programming to get an employee discount at one of these shops to subsidise my frequent upgrading habit.