I had a lot of fun reviewing Amazon’s new Kindles in my Times column this week. (Yes, I had a Times column this week — it’s just that it appeared on Monday, a few days earlier than its usual Thursday spot, thanks to Amazon’s release schedule.)

Paul Taggart/Bloomberg News



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During the week that the world’s tech critics were preparing their Kindle Fire reviews, Barnes & Noble representatives went into pre-emptive attack mode. They gave us private briefings to make sure we knew that they, too, had a new line of e-book readers coming out.

One of them, the Nook Color Tablet, is meant to go head to head with the Kindle Fire. It costs $50 more than the Fire ($250 versus $200), but it contains twice the memory and has a memory-card slot. (I’m not sure what you’d use the memory card for, considering that Barnes & Noble doesn’t even have a downloadable-movie store. But whatever.)

Anyway, I’ve always been a little bothered by the way the Nook is advertised, or at least suspicious. Last year, I caught Barnes & Noble misreporting the Nook’s weight. That’s right. The company advertised that the Nook weighed 7.4 percent less than it really did — a rather important fib in a product that you have to hold in your hand for hours at a time.



As I wrote then:

There’s no doubt at all that we, the overworked members of the tech-reviewers’ union, have always accepted manufacturers’ benchmarks as accurate. In the Nook’s case, for example, every single major reviewer–Wall Street Journal, USA Today, PC World, CNET, Engadget–wound up parroting the company’s weight claim. Including me. It’s just never occurred to anyone that these companies might lie about this stuff.

So what does this mean? Are we now supposed to quintuple our workload by re-testing every gadget we’re sent? I mean, for all I know, some phone I reviewed might be 4.5 inches tall instead of 4.4. Maybe the laptop battery that’s supposedly good for 500 charges over its lifetime would actually conk out after 350. Maybe the guts of a plasma TV aren’t nearly as recyclable as the company claims. How the heck would anyone know? Some of these things require a lab to test; others require a time machine.

Well, guess what? Barnes & Noble is at it again.

The new Nook Tablet’s tag line is, “The best in HD entertainment.” On the Nook Web site, the very first bullet point is, “HD movies and TV shows.”

Then, on the “Learn More” page, there are nine more references to the Nook Tablet’s ability to play high-definition video. “HD videos stream smoothly.” “Enjoy HD Video.” “The best in HD entertainment.” “Netflix and Hulu Plus pre-loaded to instantly watch HD movies.” “Streaming HD videos and more.” “Supports HD content up to 1080p.” And so on.

Hmm. Well, I don’t know about you. But if I read all of this, I might come away with the impression that the Nook Tablet can show high-definition video!

Well, guess what? It can’t.

Its screen resolution is 1024 by 600 pixels. That’s not even close to high definition.

The lowest-quality format for HD video is known as 720p. That means that its picture is composed of 1,280 by 720 rows and lines of pixels (tiny dots). The Nook Tablet simply doesn’t have enough pixels to show that. It doesn’t have enough dots in either direction. It shows you, at best, about two-thirds of 720p resolution.

The other HD standard is called 1080p, which requires 1,920 by 1,080. Barnes & Noble expressly says, “Supports HD content up to 1080p.” But that’s patently false. The Color Tablet can show only 30 percent of that resolution!

When I asked a Barnes & Noble representative to explain the company’s position, this was her response:

Nook Tablet is capable of decoding up to 1080p video and 720p Flash encoded video and rendering at Nook Tablet’s display resolution, which is 1024 x 600. This HD content renders at a higher quality than non-HD content, and is of much higher quality than devices that cannot play back higher bit-rate content. Nook Tablet is one of the first tablets which integrates high security silicon and meets all the security and DRM requirements of HD video content providers and movie studios. Nook Tablet customers are able to enjoy content encoded in HD from Netflix, while almost all other tablets (including Kindle Fire) support only standard definition Netflix streaming content, which is usually capped at 480p.

Amazon concedes that Barnes & Noble’s Netflix streams start out with more resolution than the Kindle Fire does, but says that, in the world of streamed movies, there’s more to quality than resolution. (Amazon also points out that all of this pertains only to Netflix. Hulu’s source resolution, for example, is identical on both tablets: 480p.)

But all sides can agree on one thing: the Nook Tablet cannot, in fact, display full high definition. It can receive HD videos. But then it throws away 70 percent of the picture quality, and shows you what’s left.

So it’s a ridiculous sales point. Who cares what quality the video would have had? Who cares what it would have on an actual hi-def display? We’re talking about the Nook Tablet, aren’t we?

It’s like saying that the iPod earbuds have 7-channel surround sound and an astonishing 20 Hz to 20 kHz flat frequency response — just because they can play back the same album as a set of $50,000 speakers.

And it would be lying.

Look, Barnes. Listen, Noble. These spec lies only make you look shifty and insecure. You don’t have to skulk around like some kind of after-curfew teenager, coming up with far-fetched excuses to tell your parents.

You have a perfectly good product. You don’t have to stretch the truth to sell it.

Stand tall. Be proud of what you’ve actually achieved, and quit trying to take credit for things you haven’t.