Best Buy plans to open nine UK stores next year – which should concentrate minds at Currys/Dixons and Comet.

I was in the USA last week on a fact-finding snoop and checked out a Best Buy.

The BB shed was huge and decidedly more upmarket than the British competition. One entire wall of the store had been turned into a wall of HDTVs, all screening very high quality video. The Direct TV satellite service is now promising 200 HD channels.

But outside in the real world, all the TVs I saw in bars, restaurants and motels were showing standard-definition pictures, piped in by a local cable station or received with the $50 off-air down-conversion receivers that viewers got free with coupons given away by the US government to oil the wheels of digital switchover in June.

One eatery had a huge 1080p Philips set, fed from a Dish Network satellite HD-PVR and was showing horribly poor-quality sports pictures. US customers must be very confused about HD.
Most hire cars now have satellite radio, very likely with no FM aerial on the roof.

The Sirius XM programming (for which Americans cheerfully pay a subscription as well as enduring the adverts) comes in themed channels – country, Elvis, ‘real jazz’, Beatles rock, opera and so on.

The only themed DAB channel in the UK is for traffic. Time for a rethink perhaps? I would never now dare drive in the USA without satnav.

It’s just too easy to get lost, especially with the spaghetti junctions near airports, between freeways and those unsigned country roads.

I carry my own trusted Tom Tom. But with Best Buy now selling a US Tom for $100, it may be as cheap to buy a US device as to buy a US map for a European device.

The only snag is that you will need a satnav to find a Best Buy.

Meanwhile, Samsung is cheerfully promoting its LED TVs, because the ASA stop-it ruling does not extend beyond Dover.

Tri-band European cellphones now work almost anywhere in the USA – up mountains, on remote islands and in the desert. GSM has proved a hugely successful export.

Doubtless this is what encouraged the new US push on European Dect cordless handsets. But GAP compatibility is a joke, making it absurdly difficult to mix and match different makes of handset and base station.

A colleague in New York found it easier to use his old analogue cordless than learn the mysteries of Dect registration.

For the record, I flew British Airways, because I usually do. As some dealers will now be planning trips to Las Vegas for CES, I pass on the warning that BA cabin crew are obviously on a go-slow as part of their dispute with management’s cost cutting.

On both the outward and inbound flights, the cabin crew served the meals and then hid behind curtains at the rear of the plane.

Coffee was self-service. Booze was like hens’ teeth and the headphone jack socket in the armrest was faulty.  This is because BA has still not learnt not to use flimsy plugs that are wrenched sideways when the passenger gets up.

Let's hope the engines are more regularly serviced.

The only way to pick a seat now with BA is online 24 hours before the flight, which is no use if you are holidaying on a beach or busy with CES meetings.

Gatwick doesn’t help much, either. The Express train is absurdly overpriced and on one leg crawled more slowly than the much cheaper and almost-as-fast Southern south-coast service that also stops at Gatwick.

Gatwick’s rapid monorail between terminals has been replaced by buses that take the slow scenic route. The signs to lifts and trains are also confusing. What must foreign visitors think when they land here now?

Meanwhile, in the USA, Virgin is providing free wi-fi at selected airports and promising free broadband on the plane.

Bye-bye, BA.

Barry Fox