Actually her system was more "normal" than yours or mine, most likely. Diane, like most "regular people" bought her system over time, some new, some from hand-me-downs from friends. Most of her audio/video gear is 5 to 7 years old, but the TV was new as was the HD cable box. Because she got a new TV and cable box, she needed to connect everything all over again, hence the call to Geek Squad.

I never said her receiver was Integra (which is pretty high-end gear). I used the Integra's set-up menu screen shot as a graphical depiction of what a set-up menu looks like. Her DVD player is a Sony. Her receiver is a Sony. Nothing obscure about that. PRetty vanilla stuff. Her subwoofer/satellite speakers are Cambridge Audio, hand-me-downs from an audiophile friend (not me, I have Martin-Logans and I'm not handing those down to anyone... not just yet anyway). No "IDIOT" recommended she buy this system. It's what she's built up over time, and actually, when set up correctly, it doesn't sound half bad.

Have a nice day.

OK, I asked Diane to double-check her bill and she has two charges from almost the exact same date from Best Buy. One was $325.11, the other is $216.74 so it's *possible* that she paid $199.99 plus tax (for home theater set-up) not the $325.11 she originally stated. She's going to try to find the itemized receipt for the service because AMEX online doesn't provide enough details to tell the difference between these two charges. I will update the article accordingly once I have confirmation. Thanks for the heads-up on that. You may have just saved Best Buy $108 in AMEX chargeback.

-CB

I can't comment on engadget's "spin" but the original article includes Best Buy's response and it also clearly states: "I'd like to think that Diane's experience with the Geek Squad was isolated and not indicative of their usual performance. I can't imagine that the operation would be as extensive and successful as it is, inhabiting Best Buy locations all across the country, if every Geek were as unskilled (OK, "clueless") as the one who made this particular service call."

And then:

"If you don't like the results of your local Geek, or any other home theater or HDTV installer for that matter, then escalate the situation immediately or take it up with your credit card company and refuse to pay until everything looks and sounds the way it should."

So much for generalizations...

Diane paid $199.99 for home theater hookup and $99.99 for TV/video set-up. $299.98 + tax=$325.11.

A.) The customer doesn't need to be "smart" about HDTV or home theater technology. They just need to have the money to pay the "smart" people from Geek Squad. She paid the $325 and got inferior service.
B.) The only cable she was lacking was a component video cable for the DVD player which she got for $20 at Radio Shack. As for "digital audio cables being expensive" - I used a plain old RCA-tipped video cable for the coax digital connection between DVD player and receiver (less than $5) - worked like a charm because it's the exact same thing.
C.) Actually I don't know what the Geek Squad home theater guys wear because I wasn't there when this guy did the "work" - I *assumed* they wear the same outfits as the regular Geek Squad guys but what he was wearing has no bearing on the quality of their service (piss poor).

Actually most DVD players (including Diane's) output a mixed down Dolby Pro Logic-encoded stereo track over the 2-channel analog audio outputs. When the receiver gets this matrix-encoded soundtrack, it goes into DPL decoding mode and steers any information present in both channels to the center channel and it steers the encoded surround information to the rear speakers. It's not a discrete surround mix, but it is a form of surround sound, albeit degraded. Because of this she was getting *some* dialog "leaking" into the left and right speakers but at an extremely low level. If they had connected the DVD player properly (via the fiberoptic or coax digital connection), then the dialog would have been completely absent and the problem would have been even more evident.