Deal of the Day - 7/25/11

Hello All,

Woot is selling a refurbished Roku HD today.  It is $45 shipped to your door.  You can use it for streaming from Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, and about 300 more channels on top of that.  If you are interested in an AppleTV but do not have any Apple devices already, this is a better way to go.  There is a ton more free content available on the Roku then there is on the AppleTV.  You can find it here.

In other news, the Roku 2 has come out, and you can get a brand new model for $60 shipped to your door.  The main difference is the new one does not have component outputs and is more expensive, but has a more powerful processor that can play games.  You can find the new ones here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 8/27/10

Hello All,

Two deals actually today.  If you need a TV, today is your lucky day.  Woot and Sellout.woot are selling refurbished Philips HDTVs for today only.

At woot you can find a 32" HDTV.  The TV has 3 HDMI jacks and a VGA jack so you can use it as a computer monitor.  The only slight against it is that it does not have a QAM tuner, so if you have cable you will need a box to get your HD channels on it.  It does have a over the air HD tuner, for hooking up an antenna, but it will not pull in the digital channels.  It is $304.99 shipped to your door, a great price for a bedroom TV or a TV used a computer monitor.  You can find it here.

At sellout.woot you will find a 42" HDTV.  This TV also has 3 HDMI jacks, and it will play music and pictures from USB drives. It has a QAM tuner, but does not have a VGA input.  This TV is $504.99 shipped to your door and would be a great TV for your living room.  You can find it here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 6/28/10

Hello All,

Another great deal on a large LCD monitor.  Woot is selling a refurbished HP 23" LCD monitor for $145 shipped to your door.

The only caveat that I see with this monitor is that for the best picture, and for most people, you need to buy a dvi to hdmi adapter.  Monoprice sells them for $5.  You can find that here.  On the plus side, you can use this monitor as a TV.  It would be awesome in a car on a road trip. 

You can find this deal here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #2 - 11/9/09

Hello Again,

Sears has a great deal on a 32" Panasonic TV with iPod dock. It has good ratings on Amazon, and Panasonic makes excellent TVs. The iPod dock is neat, you can play your music, videos and pictures on your iPod on the TV. It also has a SD card slot to play pictures directly on the TV.

All and all a nice TV for a very good price.

Find it here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 3/25/09

Hello All,

Woot is selling a brand new Sony 32" LCD TV for $484.99 shipped to your door.

This is a good price for a Sony 32" and people really like this TV. You can find reviews of the TV here and here.

You can find this deal here.

If you buy the TV, here are the calibrated settings for the best picture.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #2 - 2/19/09

Hello All,

Sellout.woot, Woots! site in association with Yahoo!, is selling a three port HMDI switcher with 3 6ft HDMI cables included for $30 shipped to your door. If you need and extra HDMI port or two this is a great deal, and the fact it comes with cables makes it even better.

You can find this deal here.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #4 - 12/1/08

Hello All,

Fast and Furious from here on out.

New 37" Toshiba HDTV, $609.95 shipped to your door. Find it here.

It has all of the features you want, and none you don't.

For your reading pleasure, here are two articles about HDTVs you should read before you buy one. I like the first one better :-).

1. 10 Things you need to know about HDTVs
   
2. How to buy a HDTV in BF or anyday
   

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #2 - 11/21/08

Hello All,

Meijer is selling a Panasonic 32" TV for $463 shipped to your door. This is a brand new LCD TV with a QAM tuner, and a HD tuner built in. You can use code meijerjhalf to save on shipping. You can find this TV here.

The web site says the deal runs until 12/31/08, but I bet they run out of stock long before then.

You can find reviews here and here. A leading consumer magazine also thinks very highly of this TV, but that magazine will remain nameless, as I don't think they like being named. No one else uses their name anywhere, except newspapers and TV from time to time.

Update: It is sold out already. I will check back to see if it comes back in stock. Amazon has it for $530 if you really want it. A good price, but not a give away like $460.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 11/18/08

Hello All,

Costco has a crazy deal on a Sharp 42" 1080P TV, from now until December 15th, or until supplies run out.

The TV is $799, plus $50 if you do not have a Costco membership. The nice thing about Costco is that they bump the warranty on all TVs they sell out to two years, so you are actually getting something for your money, not just the privilege of shopping there, like other "clubs" offer. You can find this deal here.

Reviews for this TV are few and far between, but a leading consumer magazine found it to be middle of the road. For $799 though, you would be hard pressed to find a better TV for the price.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 10/27/08

Hello All,

Sears is selling a Samsung 40" 1080P LCD TV for $799.99. This is a great price on a brand new 40" TV, from the leading maker of LCD TVs. You can find this deal here. It looks like this deal runs until 11/1/08, but I am not sure on that.

You can find reviews for this TV here, here, and here. I am speculating that this TV is the LN40A550, just with a special model number only for Sears stores.

If you do not want to wait another month until Black Friday, this is great TV deal. TV prices will likely be lower for the Christmas season, but with those prices you have lines, screaming and head aches. Things to keep in mind when making a purchase.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #5 - 10/21/08

Hello Again,

Wal-Mart is again running their PS3 bundle deal, offering one of the only ways to get a deal on a new PS3 that I know of. You get all of the following for $468, plus tax, but it is a limited time offer with no clear end date on the deal.

• 1 - 80GB PS3
• 1 - New PS3 Game of your choice, from a selection
  
• 1 - Blu-ray Movie of your choice, from a selection
  
• 1 - Sony Blu-ray remote
• 1 - $75 Walmart gift card

All of these things usually would cost you $550, so this is a savings of about $80. Not to bad.

You can find the deal here.

One last thing, Best Buy matched this deal in the past, although your mileage may vary on that.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 10/9/08

Hello Again All,

It has been a slow week for good deals. However there are two for today, to try to make up for the long drought.

Woot is selling a brand new Westinghouse 37" 1080p HDTV for $574.99, shipped to your front door. You can find it here. Amazon is selling the same thing for only about $400 more, shipped to your house. The only tiny downside to this TV is that you need a box hooked up to it to get HD. This is not an issue unless you plan on hooking an antenna to it, as you cannot. But for the vast majority of you cable and satellite users who need boxes anyway, this just decreases the price of the TV and removes something you will not use anyway.

***Remember that is for today only, or until they sell out.***

The Canon XSi deal from last week, just got better. Dell is selling the camera for $700, and with a coupon, drops the price to $620, with free shipping, and includes the IS lens. That is cheap. The cheapest I have ever seen that camara. You can find the camera here, and the coupon code is SZT8CS0RVR2HMJ. That coupon is good until October 16th.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 9/23/08

Hello All,

Two TV deals for this morning. One for a 40" one for a 46".

The Sony KDL-40V4100 can be found at buydig.com for $1085 with free shipping. You can find this TV here. You can find a review for this TV here. I used to own an earlier version of this TV and really liked it. I only sold it because we upgraded to a 46" Samsung and the wife made me sell it.

The V series is right in the middle of Sony's offerings. They sell TVs with the following designations M, N, V, W, Z, and XBR. These TVs increase in features from left to right. The W adds a 120Mhz panel, which as I have said before is a gimmick. If you stroll into your local big box store and you can tell a difference between a 60Mhz and 120Mhz, and it is not because the panel is better I would be very surprised. I do not know of any TVs that use the same panel though and offer 120Mhz and 60Mhz in the same TV. Bottom line though, it is the source that matters most, 120Mhz cannot make a really compressed TV feed look any better, or any smoother.

Amazon is selling the Samsung LN46A550 46" LCD TV for $1274.14 with free shipping. You can find that here. The reviews of this TV are good, and Samsung is the leader in LCD TVs. You can find reviewers here and here.

We have the last years model of this TV and really like it. It is a mid range Samsung as well. They show the level of the TV with the first number after the A in the model. This is a 550, the 650, and 750 have more features than this TV. One thing that I really like about our TV, and this TV is the matte screen. The next models up have the glossy screen, but you can get a mirror effect with that screen and I did not like that when I saw it in the store.

These two TVs are more of a mid range TV, and what I bought for our living room. I still stand by the Westinghouse as the best entry level TV on the market. That title would go to Olivia but they just filed for bankruptcy and I would be worried about the availability of parts if they go belly up. Olivia has better panels in there TVs, so if you want to roll the dice on the thing breaking, it is a "better" TV. However if it breaks, you have a really expensive piece of plastic.

Lastly, if you have not read it, this is a good piece to get you started.

Later,

John

More thoughts on TVs

Hello Again all,

I am wordy today. Here are some more HDTV things to think about, as if the situation was not complicated enough :-).

• AVsforum is great. However, they are a bunch of snobs and whiners too
  There is good info in there without question, but you need to temper the bad. If you compare any TV that is under $2000 the best TVs they will look like crap. The question is do you want to spend $5000 or more for a TV. For most people the $1000 TV looks great and they will not notice the differences, or think they are worth the extra $4000 or more for a "better" TV. It is like car reviewers and daily drivers. Of course the Camry is boring and bland. Lets see you get two kids into an Audi R8. Hell lets see you pay for a R8 with a regular job that does not involve selling drugs. AVsforum is great to find problems with a TV. It is great to get calibration settings for a TV. However if you read it long enough you will either be broke, or will never buy anything. Know that and use it for what it is, Do NOT use it as the word of the Lord.
  
  
• There are very promising technologies right around the corner
  LCD is good, but it is not the best ever. The blacks are not very good, the backlights could be better, and they use a bit of power, amongst other things. I am not saying do not buy one, I am just saying that the LCD you bought will not last 20 years like the last tube TV you bought. OLED is out right now, but sell a kidney expensive. It is awesome, but it is not ready for prime time yet. SED looks very promising as well, but has some legal issues and is not yet out. There are other technologies currently available but very pricey including DLP with lasers, and DLP with LEDs and LED backlit LCDs. In the upcoming years all of these technologies will get better and cheaper. Thinking of all of that, I would not buy a high end TV today. I recommend going for a good value TV from a name brand. The 42" Westinghouse will not outperform a Sony XBR, but you can buy a lot of beer for your friends with the extra $1500 you have in your pocket, and it still looks really good. For further reading here is an article on TV technologies.
  
  
• Do not buy into the hype
  There are a lot of features to hype in TVs these days, but most are all hype. 120Hz is all hype - the source matters infinitely more than how fast your TV can show you the picture. The dynamic contrast ratio is all hype - there is no standard for the measurement so anyone can claim anything they want. Focus on things that matter such as the number of HDMI ports (get 2 at the minimum for a main TV, less is ok for the bedroom or kitchen), Picture in Picture (if you want it obviously), size, and tuner capabilities (ATSC and QAM for example).
  
  
• Buy a name brand TV
  What do I mean by this you say, they all have names on them. I mean buy a TV from a company you have heard of before. Sony, Toshiba, JVC, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Philips, etc. The big boys cost a bit more because they have a support network. You can read more about this here. The basic take is that Olivia, Vizio, Polaroid, Insignia, etc are throw away TVs if they break outside of warranty. You cannot get parts, and you would not pay to ship them back to the factory to get them fixed. Westinghouse is kind of a tweener. I had good luck replacing a Westinghouse I bought from Best Buy. There are parts available to Best Buy as well, so you do not have to ship the TV across country at a big hit to your wallet. I bought another Westinghouse if that tells you anything about my worries about their TVs. I would not buy an Olivia, I would not buy a Vizio, and I would not buy a Polaroid.
  

Overall I recommend HDTVs to anyone. They are much clearer than what you are using now. It is like color vs black and white, there is that big a difference.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #6 - 9/11/08

Hello Again,

Ok, seriously it will stop relatively soon. Buy.com has a new Westinghouse 37" 1080P TV for $599. You can find the TV here. That is the cheapest I have ever seen a 1080P 37" TV. You will likely not notice the difference between it and 720P unless you sit on the TV, but that is beside the point. It is a 37" for the price of a 32", and that makes it a deal. I could not find any reviews, but old models seemed to have some issues with HDMI handshakes. The Buy.com post says these were fixed with this model.

The only down side to this TV is that it does not have a tuner built in. If you have cable or satellite this does not matter at all, but I wanted you to know anyway.

Later,

John

Deal of the Day #2 - 9/11/08

Hello Again,

BestBuy is selling a brand new Westinghouse 42" TV for $749.99. The TV is 1080P, has all of the tuners, and is a solid TV, great for the money. You can find a few reviews here, here, and here. If you were not sold just on that, you also get a free portable DVD player when you buy this TV. You can see that here.

For the nerdiest of the nerdy info on TVs I love avsforum. They have everything on every TV out there. For this TV you can find the thread here. As a warning, there are only 174 pages to read through :-).

Later,

John

Deal of the Day - 9/1/08 - #2

Hello All,

BestBuy is selling a nice Toshiba 46" 46RV530U LCD TV, today only, for $1299. This is a good deal, however Circuit City is price matching the TV, and you can use MS Live to get 12.5% back, dropping the price of the TV to $1138. You can see this here.

That is an incredible price for a really nice TV. You can read reviews here, and here. This is the larger brother of the 42" Toshiba listed a couple of posts below.

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

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