A Dim View

At my last visit to Best Buy I found myself looking at some of the larger, older- style rear projection sets. One of them, a Mitsubishi I believe, looked like quite a good deal for a very large screen. After watching for a while, I realized that the overhead lights were off only in this part of the store. Across the way, in an adjacent, lighted area, I could see the newer, slimmer rear projection sets. They were amazingly brighter than what I was watching. I asked a salesman to adjust the brightness on this set. I have to give them credit...the Best Buy salesman was right upfront about the limits of this type of set. "Only good for a darkened room," he told me. "Try to make it brighter and you wash out the colors." Looking across the store again, I just could not see spending the $1500 for a dim view.