More TV Woes

My wife wanted to buy her mother a Blu-Ray player that was both wi-fi capable and had a USB port, so she could share with her mother movies and other files from our very large collection. Seems simple enough, right?

Wrong.

My MIL has some very nice, but older, technology in her house. Also, her house is old enough not to be wired for internet. Hence the desire to have the player by wi-fi enabled. Her 36" CRT TV is a rugged, nice machine, but it is old enough not to have current, modern connectors. She doesn't have a receiver through which she runs everything.

Knowing/discovering all of these facts as we pursued this avenue, we stumbled on the need to get an HDMI to RCA converter in order to plug the Blu-ray machine into her TV. This is because we could not find a Blu-ray player that has RCA jacks AND wi-fi AND a USB port; if they have wi-fi, they pretty much all have only an HDMI port.

After our trying and not finding the device, or eschewing going to some places because we were sure they wouldn't have such a device, we headed to The Source, a primarily electronics seller in this city (kind of Radio Shack). There were two people working there, a male about early-20s, 5'6", with dark hair and a female about the same age and height and with blond hair.

I asked if they sold any HDMI to RCA cables. They both gave us very quizzical looks. The girl started to say, "I don't think they make those," while the male said no and started smiling and laughing and generally got "attitude" and, well, snotty. He asked if I was sure such a thing existed. Since I was sure (I had looked it up online and they are readily available for $40 and lower, depending on make/type) and was starting to dislike his attitude, I said, "I'm absolutely sure. So sure that I will bet you any sum of money you'd like to wager on it."

I've worked retail. Was pretty good at it, actually. And, when you run across a customer who is asking for specific things and is showing intelligence, confidence, and competence about what he/she wants, you should trust that customer and work with him/her to your mutual benefit. This guy didn't understand that concept. Instead, he started talking very negatively about the ramifications of doing this conversion, how the picture would be "horrible," and how we really should get a new TV. To which my wife replied, "Are you going to buy us a new TV?" She was getting steamed at this yokel, basically, laughing at us.

I was getting irritated too. This guy, at various parts of our conversation, laughed openly at us, ducked his head and continued laughing, and generally was unpleasant. He spoke so negatively about the device we wanted to purchase, and then had the gall to say, "I'm not trying to be negative about it or stop you from buying it, but it's not going to work for you." Really? Are you sure. Because I've seen the reviews of these devices online and, for the most part, people are pretty pleased with being able to buy a $100 Blu-ray and a $10 connector, rather than spending $800 on a new TV, $100 on a new Blu-ray, and $20 on the HDMI cord required.

His attitude toward us was getting to us both, but I started to step forward when my wife grabbed my arm and said she wanted to go. She was done talking to this ass-hat and didn't want me getting into it with him. Over my shoulder as we left, I made some disparaging comment about the store and that guy (to which I heard a, "What... what did he just say?" from the male to the female employee).

The somewhat ironic conclusion to this story is that we went home, looked online at the plethora of such converters and cables, and tried to decide which would work best for us. My wife found that The Source store we had visited had one such converter in stock and for sale (albeit, it was for HDMI to Composite, not HDMI to RCA which is what we specifically asked for). Had the ass-hat male employee bothered to look, he would have found that. He would have then known:

1. Such a thing does exist.
2. Not to be a jerk to us, because we actually knew what we were talking about.
3. To check his computer for relevant other devices and discover if The Source carried the specific item we needed and could order it in for us.

Instead, this employee felt entitled to laugh at us to our face, sardonically suggest we buy a new TV, and felt it was appropo to show gross negativity toward what his customer needed. Out of the half-dozen or so better ways he could have expressed his negatively that would have been helpful and left us with options, he instead convinced us never to shop there again.

In the end, we're probably going to chip in and help my MIL buy a new TV sooner, rather than later. Once she has a new TV, she'll have the ports she needs and we can consider getting her a Blu-ray.