Best Buy's strange, strange deal...

[ADWyatt]

For my exercise room I decided to purchase a 40" TV to watch movies while I biked, and for Wii exercise videos. I didn't need a fancy, expensive LED set, but I didn't want a cheap TV with a 'soft' picture either.
While shopping at Best Buy, I noticed the Sony KDL-40VE5. From what I could see, it had a great picture, and it was on sale for $850. With the $150 Sony blu-ray player, the price would hit $1,000, which was just a tad more money than I was comfortable in paying, so I passed it up.
When I arrived home, I went to BB's site to have a closer look at the TV's specs, and saw something interesting. If I bundled the TV together with the BD player I was also going to buy, I could get the outfit for a lower price. That total came to $800. In other words, if I bought off the internet, BB would give me a free Sony blu-ray player, and then knock $50 off the sale price of the TV.
I called our local store to see if I had read that right. I had indeed, and what's more, I could just go down to the store and pick it up for that same price. I did, and I'm happy. Now of course, Samsung's 40" LED displays the best picture of 40" TVs currently available, but the Sony VE5 is anything but shabby, to say the least. Without yet calibrating, and on its Home Standard mode, the picture is fantastic, and the TV's ability to upscale standard DVDs is amazing. As well, perhaps because I have the TV angled into a corner of the room, the audio is first-rate for both treble and bass.
Perhaps foolishly, I decided to take the risk of not buying an extended $150 warranty, although I could have afforded it. In the 32 years that I've owned Sony products, not once have any of them needed the slightest repair. (You might find this amusing. A BB salesman told me that a similar warranty for Samsung would have cost $250, because their products break down so much.)

I was both happy with the final sale price, and a little irritated that the store salesman didn't initially tell me about the deal. I only saved $200 out of pure luck. But to get to the point, how could Best Buy offer such a radically-lower internet price for this combo? Are they relying on the ignorance of walk-in customers to pay an inflated difference in price, or do they prey on consumer impatience?
I suspect that BB had a big sales margin for profit on the model that I bought, as it was probably a close-out 2009 TV. I know that their big sale on the Samsung 6000 LED was because they were making room for the new 2010 units. (The diffence in price between the Sammy and Sony TV/BD combos? I would have absolutely needed the 4-year warranty for the Sammy, along with $100 Monster cables, bringing the final price difference between them to $738.30. LED is great, but not that great.) Because these were undoubtedly close-outs, I have to wonder how big the profit margin on these items really is.

I do know one thing for sure now. Whenever I'm interested in buying a hardware electronics item, I will of course first hunt for it at places like Amazon and OneCall, and then check BB's internet site before blindly buying at the local store. It's almost as if there are two different Best Buys.