I was in Memphis, Tennessee last week , and, of course,  I couldn’t resist visiting some Best Buy outlets, as they will soon be here in the UK.

My next Knightline column in ERT Weekly will detail the excellence of staff and the very professional layout of the stores.

One of the things that amazed me was the way Best Buy sell remote controls.  The have very simple “Universal” units that sell for about £6 but they stock a huge range of remotes that get more and more sophisticated.

Imagine my surprise to see a Wireless device that sells for £500!
This unusual device has a built in 4” LCD colour display and even has its own speaker.  The unit can control up to 255 different devices by simply touching Windows-like icons on the screen.

When I asked how easy it was to program I received a got a smile and a rather surprising answer: “We would recommend you let our Geek Squad do that for you. Our expert can visit your home and set up 8 devices for 155 dollars – it goes up if you have more devices”.   When I said, “That sounds like I would need to spend 5,000 dollars to get it programmed to its full 255 device capability” – we both dissolved into laughter.

However it is a lesson to us all. Best Buy sells lots of things that are completely unavailable over here. Check out Knightline in the next issue of ERT Weekly for further details.