A few interesting developments in the visual technology wars give one a warm glow of self righteousness and provide corroboration for why a consumer should deal with a rugged independant specialist store such as our selves rather than falling into the corrupted representations of the souless chains ...sorry ...

We note that in the last few days as has been well documented elsewhere that HD DVD is relinquishing its toehold in the market place; that Sony is now going to buy its large screen panels from Sharp rather than Samsung; and that Pioneer are beginning to retract from their Plasma panels and also buy panels from Sharp.

Those of you who know us will recognise that we been promoting Sharp LCD against all other pretenders and have refused the short term blandishments of HD DVD suppliers in favour of the long term interests of our clients.

Sadly the chain stores and other retail suppliers who only think in terms of weekly sales figure have never been shown to be able to properly steer their clients reliably through this very volatile high technology CE marketplace. Rather they happily regurgitate schpiel firmly based not in their technical and marketplace knowledge but in the size of the "spiv" that is being offered by a manufacturer to ice cake the incumbent salesman's commission. Thus the clients interest in these establishments is entirely subsumed to the organisations short term fiscal interest.

In a business such as Carlton Audio Visual the ethos governing our client interactions is very different. Rather than being forced to push through stock that a purchasing department has contracted to procure; we possess the technical and enthusiast background to properly recognise a products true long term value and attributes and then reccomend it accordingly to an appropriate customer and then only with that clients best interest in mind. Thus we are able to ensure long term satisfaction and value retention for our customers and build relationships rather than taking the money and running...