Deal of the Day - 8/30/08

Hello All,

Shutterfly is having a labor day sale on many of their best selling products. The items include 4x6 prints, calendars, posters, cards, and photo books. You can see the entire sale details here.

I prefer Kodak paper, Shutterfly uses Fuji, but Shutterfly's service and products are quite good. They are my second choice behind Kodak, and my first if you strictly look at cost.

Later,

John

Xbox 360 Rumor - Update

Hello All,

Last post for today. It looks as though the 360 price drop is a sure thing. Here are pictures of upcoming ads for Kmart and Radio Shack showing the new prices.

So wait until after September 7th to buy your new 360 and you will save an extra $50 on a great video game system.

For more details on the systems and differences, you can find my original post here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/29/08 - #3

Hello Yet Again,

Circuit City is having a labor day sale this weekend, and they are selling the Toshiba REGZA 42RV530 42" 1080p LCD TV for $999.99. You can find that here. That is a good price on a living room size TV that you can pick up and use this weekend, and it has 4 HDMI inputs, which is crazy. You can find reviews here and here.

This TV is not the best TV by any means, but it is an above average TV, and for the price it is a great TV, and one I would buy myself if our 34" Philips died or the wife would let me. You would have to buy a TV brand that no one really wants, in order to get one this large and new, ie a Polaroid, or Soyo, or some other crap TV. Toshiba makes good products, unlike those other brands. One thing about the reviews, all of the experts seem to find this TV average, but the customers who buy the TV seem to love the TV. Since we are customers, not reviewers, I bet we would all love this TV.

If you want a great deal on this TV sign up for MS Live's Cash Back Program, here, before you buy the TV. You will get an extra 12.5% off, dropping the price to $874.99, which is a great deal on this TV. After you sign up for an account go here and sign in with your new account and then buy the TV, then select in store pick-up to save more money. You should sign up for the Cash Back either way, it is amazing how much money Microsoft will pay you to buy stuff using their search engine. I will have a separate post on this later.

The deal ends Monday, September 1st, so act fast if you want a great deal on the TV. If anybody buys one let me know and I can post the settings for an optimal picture. I might have to try to talk the wife into this deal, for under $900 it is crazy good.

Anybody want a 34" Philips HDTV? Free delivery to the Madison area.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/29/08 - #2 with GPS recommendation

Hello Again,

On my brilliant wife's recommendation, I have switched fonts to... the default font in Blogger. I personally like Times, but she said it was stiff. Being I am young and hip, I switched.

Post two, before the long weekend. I should have posted this earlier, as it might be useful for this weekend. Buy.com is selling refurbished TomTom One 3rd edition GPS units for 99.49 after rebate, with free shipping. You can find them here.

There are a couple of reviews, here and here.

People at Amazon liked the units, you can see that here.

I think this is a fine unit, and one of my friends has one and likes it. I bought the Garmin Nuvi 360 myself, and I would buy it again. You can find it here. I bought the 360 because of these features

1. It has Text-to-speech. In other words it tells you what streets to turn on. Instead of saying turn left in 500 feet, it says turn left on Broadway. This is a huge deal as it allows you to easily drive with the GPS in a location that you do not have to look at it. You can keep you head up and your eyes on the road. For me this is the must have feature.
   
2. It uses Navteq maps, which are better than the Tele Atlas maps that TomTom uses. This is only true for North America, but that is where I live and where I drive. If you plan on going to Eurpoe with your GPS, you might want to check further into this.
3. It can be used with traffic subscriptions. I would need to buy an antenna and subscribe to the Garmin service, but if I move to a larger city, or Madison gets this service I liked the fact that I could upgrade the 360 to make use of these features.
   
4. It has Bluetooth. I can use my phone with the GPS as a hands free device and make calls to places in the phone. This was not a make or break deal, but it was only $25 more dollars so I went for it.

You can see a detailed breakdown of the different Garmin units here. Overall TomTom units are fine units, and their maps updates are cheaper, but I would recommend Garmin if you want to spend double the money. If you are looking for a basic unit and are unsure how much you will use it, this TomTom One is definitely the way to go.

--Update--

I have a third alternative, right in between the two units I mentioned above, the Nuvi 250w. Dell is selling it brand spanking new for $149. You can find it here. I would recommend this one above the TomTom if you have the $50. It is new, it has a bigger screen which is a big deal if you do not have the text to speech, and it uses the Navteq maps. All of those things are better than the TomTom. You can find Amazon reviews here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/29/08

Hello All,

I have kind of slacked off this week, so I will have several posts in a short period of time. Here is the first one it is for a new laptop.

Lenovo, the makers of IBMs Thinkpad line, is having an employee pricing sale until September 3rd of 2008. Discounts vary, but you can get a fast machine for under $600. The Lenovo site is here, and use passcode 536686.

I recommend getting a Core 2 Duo processor, as they are the fastest by far in the laptop processor arena. I also recommend spending the most you can on the processor, as that is next to impossible to upgrade on a laptop. Memory, hard disk, and software can all be updated, but the processor cannot. I would recommend 2Gb of ram for Vista, but I hear it works well enough with 1Gb.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/21/08

Hello All,

If you need a new printer look no further. Newegg has a one day deal on a HP Deskjet F4280 Printer, scanner, copier. You can find the printer here.

It has a 4 star rating at Amazon, which is quite good.

It is $54.99 but drops to $29.99 with promo code EMCAJCBBD, and has free shipping. This does not come with the USB cable to hook it up to the computer, so add this one, for $5.09 in white, or in black to the cart if you do not have one already, those both have free shipping with them. They are a rip off locally, much like TV cables.

That is a one day, or until NewEgg decides deal, so act quickly if you want it.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/18/08

Hello All,

The Philips outlet has a refurbished upconverting DVD player, that supports DivX for $29.99 with free shipping. You can buy it here.

The Philips page has no specs on the unit, you can find the details and reviews here.

Connect this player to that new HDTV you bought via HDMI cables and you will have the best picture you can get with old DVD technology, and as an added bonus be able to play DivX, mp3s, and WMA.

Later,

John

Charter's Madison QAM Channel List - 8/15/08

Hello All,

I have the Westinghouse figured out pretty well and here are the channels you care about in HD.

NBC - 104.2
Fox - 104.4
ABC - 106.1
CBS - 106.3
PBS - 114.6 (only on from 7-12pm)

Fox and ABC hum a bit on my TV for some reason. The other ones, and all of the low def ones do not. Does this happen for anyone else?

Here is the full list.

As a note, they apparently move a little from time to time, so 106.3 might turn into 106.5 or something.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/14/08

Hello All,

If you waited on the last TV deal, for whatever reason, then you can get yourself an even better deal now. For today only woot is selling the same 32" Westinghouse that I just bought, for $11 less than I paid for it, $404 total with shipping. That is a today only, or until they sell out deal, whichever happens first.

We just got our TV yesterday and we like it. 32" is bigger than you think, both the wife and I were surprised by the size of the TV. The case is also better looking than the buy.com picture shows. The woot picture is more accurate, with the bottom piece being graphite as opposed to silver. I will post the optimized settings for this TV as soon as I have time to calibrate the TV.

If Westinghouse is not your brand of choice, there is also a woot off over at sellout.woot.com. That site is a separate woot site that is sponsored by yahoo. Hence the sellout, woot sold out, get it. Anyway they are selling smaller quantities of different TVs all day, vs woot who is just selling the one TV until the stock is gone. You can check out sellout here, and the TV they are selling keeps changing. If the link does not work you can go to shopping.yahoo.com then scroll to the bottom of the page and the deals are on the lower left side.

Later,

John

10 things you need to know about HDTV

Hello All,

There is a general drop in price on HDTVs right now so I want to share some general knowledge about them as they are a different breed of TV than the tube TV we have all been using for the last sixty plus years.

1. What is HD - HD is a 720p, 1080i or 1080p picture source. What does that mean to you, it means you need an antenna, a HD receiver, an Xbox 360, a PS3, a computer, or an upconvert DVD player to see it. 480p is not HD, this is what all older game systems output in, and the wii outputs. This is all just technical nerd stuff, but good to know what you are getting into.
   
   
2. If you are buying a TV smaller than 42 inches skip the 1080p - If the TV is smaller you will not be able to see the difference between 1080p and 720p. If you cannot see the difference you are paying for bragging rights, do not be that person.
   
   
3. 1080 is not always better than 720 - 1080p is the gold standard for picture quality. Right now only Blu-ray players support this, no TV stations support 1080p. Many TV stations broadcast in 1080i some in 720p. 720p is better for motion, 1080i is better for the rest. Sports look better in 720p, sitcoms look better in 1080i. For your video game system 720p is the way to go if you do not have a 1080p TV.
   
   
4. Bigger is not always better - With new technologies and cheap prices you can buy too large of a TV and hurt your viewing experience. To pick the right size TV take the measurement from where your head will be when you watch TV to where the TV will be. Divide that number by 2 and then by 3. Your TV size should fall in between those two numbers.
   
   For example, in our bedroom our heads are 96" from the TV location. 96/2 = 48" 96/3 = 32", so we are at the smallest end of the spectrum with regard to what we can see comfortably. Anything bigger than this rule and it will look bad, i.e. you might need to move you head to see the whole picture, and smaller, you might not be able to see things on the screen.
   
   
5. Standard definition will likely look worse - If you do not hook an HDTV up to a HD source you will think you got ripped off. This is not always the case, but overwhelmingly it is the case. It has to do with resolutions and pixel density. You can recreate what is happening with any YouTube video. Just look at one of them in full screen and that is what the HDTV is doing to low definition content.
   
   
6. You need to change something to get HDTV - There is a stat out on the interweb that only 25% of all HDTVs are hooked up to an HD signal and that the 75% that does not have it hooked up to an HD signal does not even know. Here is a simple test, when you hook the HDTV up and plug it in, unless the picture is like looking through a window, you do not have it hooked to HD. It is a huge difference over low definition, if you do not see a difference or it looks worse, it is not hooked up to HD. Usually all you need to do is get the HD box from your cable or satellite provider and the HD package. Otherwise you can hook a good old rabbit ears to the TV, scan for channels, then watch beautiful HD for free.
   
   
7. You do not need a fancy antenna to get HDTV - Any pair of rabbit ears will work. You may need a better antenna if you live a long way from the towers, but do not drop $50 for a new HDTV antenna before you try one you have or a cheap one first. You can see what channels you can get here before you even leave the house. I have a $20 rca antenna I bought at Best Buy, it works great. I only bought it because it was smaller than the old rabbit ears I had. One caveat with antennas, HDTV works with line of sight, so trees, walls, etc block the signal. The less you have between your antenna and the tower the better. That being said just moving my antenna closer to the window allowed me to pick up all the channels in Madison without sticking anything on the roof.
   
   
8. Do NOT buy your cables from a retailer - The retailers rip you off horribly on cables, it is shameful actually. Cables for your TV are cables for you TV. What that means is this. HDMI is the standard connector for HD devices. These cables run a digital signal between the two devices. As long as the signal goes through, there is no loss. What does this mean to you? It means that unless you have the requirements listed at the end of this bullet point, the $100 monster cables give you the same picture and sound as the $6 cable you get from monoprice.com. Exactly the same. You can see the tests here if you want more details. *Note* If you are running the cables in your walls, or over long distances (30 feet or more), or worried about future 1080p requirements then you should buy HDMI certified cables. If you do not meet any of those three requirements the $6 cable will work great for you. I buy the cheap cables and I am really into HD.
   
   
9. You should calibrate the TV - TV makers change the settings on their TVs in order to get them to sell in the store. So they change brightness and other settings to make the TV "pop" in comparison to the TVs around it, and helping the TV to sell. When you get the TV home and there are not sodium lights shining on it and fifty other TVs within a foot of it, it will not look like real life. In other words the colors will not be an accurate representation of what the real scene looks like. I calibrate the settings on all of my TVs to make the picture more like real life, with less "pop". You do not need to do this, but grass and water for example both look incredible when you do. To calibrate the TV all you need is a DVD player and a Pixar movie. For details on the howto read this. Remember what you think looks good is all that really matters.
   
   
10. There is a lot of hype over new features - 120Mhz for example. Lower ms response time is another one. For 99% of all people neither of those features matter at all. It is like saying but this car will go 200 mph. That is great, but how is it around town, where I actually do my driving. The bottom line on picture quality is that the source makes all of the difference and calibrating a less expensive TV will make the picture look better than buying a more feature laden TV and leaving it in the stock settings. The 120Mhz is advertised to take motion blur away. The source makes difference for this one. There is no motion blur on my 60Mhz TV with video games. When I watch CBS HD football I see motion blur from time to time. Fox HD football does not have it. This is the 1080i vs 720p issue from number 3 above. Same TV, different sources, different results. You can read more on 120Mhz here.

I will add more if I can think of anything, but that is a good primer for HD. If you have any questions let me know.

***Update*** Thanks to my first ever commenter, here is another place for certified HDMI 1.3 cables cheap. Here is more information on HDMI, here and here. And lastly the logo, if a cable has that on the package it is certified.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/11/08

Hello All,

Here is a good deal on SD cards if you want to jump through a hoop or two.

Beach Camera - SanDisk 4 GB Extreme III 20MB/s SDHC Memory Card W/ MicroMate USB 2.0 Reader

Exclusive 5 Day Sale
Model # SDSDRX3-4096-A21
Expires 08-12-08 ( or when they run out )

To get the deal:
(click the deal) -> add the card(s) to your cart -> go through LIVE Search for extra 4% cash back

The rebate and live together makes 3 cards $5.72/each.
($96 - $3.84 (4% live cash back) - $75 (rebate/visa gift card) = $17.16/3 = $5.72

Without using live and saving a small hoop it is still a great deal:

Buy 1 Card @ $32 Less $20 rebate = $12 / 1 = $12.00 A Card
Buy 2 Cards @ $64 Less $45 rebate = $19 / 2 = $9.50 A Card
Buy 3 Cards @ $96 Less $75 rebate = $21 / 3 = $7.00 A Card

You can find the rebate here, it runs through the end of September at stores listed in the rebate:

http://66.223.110.241/rebates/SandiskQ3VisaRebateExp092808-2.pdf

You can check on the rebate here:

www.web-rebates.com or www.web-rebates.com/sandisk

Current Rebate Promo #: 52999

Later,

John

Xbox 360 Rumor

Hello All,

This is not actually a deal of the day post, more of a heads up and wait to buy post. This rumor has been duplicated at several different sites. There will be another Xbox 360 price drop in early September, so hold off on buying a 360 until then. Here is the low down on the price drop.

• Arcade (no hard drive, but comes with a memory card and some games, console is in white)
• Current $279 to $199

• Pro (60GB hard drive, console is in white)
• Current $349 to $299

• Elite (120GB hard drive, console is in black)
• Current $449 to $399

Now you may ask which one should I buy? Tough question. Microsoft has this page to help you with the differences. I bought the elite myself when it came with two games, the current elite bundle does not come with games. The space is nice as Xbox will be updating the 360 this fall to allow you to play games off the hard drive for much faster load times. You can also store pictures and more on the 360. I would buy the elite myself, but the pro is a solid value if you do not mind deleting things and making room on the hard drive.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/7/08

Hello All,

At a party last night a friend of mine said he liked our canon camera. I said it was a great camera and he could pick one up himself for $140 easy. It is now a year old model, but works great and takes great photos. He said there is no way I could find that camera for $140, so I did.

Radio Shack is selling the SD1000 for $139.97.

We paid $240 for ours over a year ago, and it is a great camera. The newer more expensive models have an extra megapixel (8 vs. 7) and optical image stabilization, which is great for indoor shots without the flash, and low light outdoor shots, but not all that useful for most people.

You can find the new camera at Newegg for $205.

That is not a great deal or a bad deal, it is just the cost if you want the newest camera with image stabilization. I would recommend the SD1000 and save the $65 for the next generation of image stabilization cameras.

For bonus reading here is a great article on the MegaPixel Myth, the short version is megapixels do not really matter once you get over 5 or so. Also here are two articles on image stabilization, one from wikipedia and one from canon.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/5/08

Hello All,

I just bought a refurbished 32" LCD TV for the bedroom, you know for the Olympics, NFL football and sponge bob. It is a Westinghouse HDTV. Although not the best TV in the world, for a dark room it will work great. The reason we picked it up is because with the coupon below, it was a whopping $415, free shipping.

The best part of this tv is it has all of the tuners built in (NTSC, ATSC, QAM), 2 HDMI jacks, a VGA (computer input), and s-video, component and all of the rest. You can hook an antenna up to it and watch broadcast HD for free, or hook charter up to it, and watch all of the HD channels they offer for free, without using a box. This does not include ESPN, but all of the broadcast ones are in there, and some other ones I cannot recall off the top of my head.

Here is the $15 off coupon, (You need to open a new buy.com account to use it):
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/buy.com

Here is the TV:
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=208115572&loc=111

Here is the wall mount I bought. I really do not know anything about them, but this TV fits on it, and it got good reviews so I rolled the dice:
http://www.buy.com/prod/levelmount-el31-03-swivel-tilt-wall-mount-for-lcd-tvs-up-to-32-black/q/loc/111/204222741.html

If the TV deal goes away, it will be back in a couple of days, when they get more stock.

As an FYI, I looked back for over a year, and there has not been a 32" TV that I would buy for this cheap. Usually the cheapest 32" TV you can find one is for around $525 or $550. There is a little tweaking required to get this TV to display the picture in the optimal manner, but if you buy one I will email you the settings if you care.

Two more things.

1. If you are upgrading from a square TV to an HD, you need to go one size up to retain the same size TV. So if you buy this TV, it is the same size as an old 27". If you have a 32" now, you need to go to a 37" to retain the same screen size. This will matter less next year when everything is HD, but I am all about full disclosure. You can read about what I am describing here: http://www.screenmath.com/
   
   
2. To figure out what size TV you need you can do all sorts of complex things, but basically it comes down to this. Take the measurement from where your head is to where the TV will be. Divide that number by 2 and then by 3. Your TV size should fall in between those two numbers.
   
   For example, in our bedroom our heads are 96" from the TV location. 96/2 = 48" 96/3 = 32", so we are at the smallest end of the spectrum with regard to what we can see comfortably. Anything bigger than this rule and it will look bad, i.e. you might need to move you head to see the whole picture, and smaller, you might not be able to see things on the screen.

Later,

John

Welcome and Hello

I have a knack of finding good deals on items that people tend to want. I usually find them on electronics and video games, as these are what I am interested in. I often send them to my wife and see what she says, a basic yes or no for big ticket stuff, and to get her thoughts. She started calling these John's deal of the day. One of our friends over heard her making fun of me about this, and said that he thought that was great, and I should start a blog with my deals. Abracadabra, here is the blog. The magic of the interweb is crazy.

I will try to post here regularly, but probably not daily, as there really are not that many good deals to post every day.

Enjoy,

John