Pnambic

When my sons were younger, I bought some $10 computer speakers and installed them in the head side bolsters of their carseat. Plug them into the headphone jack of the DVD player and waalaa, they can listen to whatever movie they want to and I don't have to hear it or worry about the headphones falling off their head. Perhaps if your dad has a favorite seat (lazyboy), you can mount some small speakers to it and accomplish something similar. ...I wonder if this idea has been copyrighted... With today's technology, a Bluetooth speaker attached to the rear of the seat (mounted upside down to get proper left/right panning of the sound) may get the job done...I wonder what that would sound like. May have to try it.

You're gonna love that Onkyo receiver. They make good quality stuff. I've had two over the years and they'd both probably still be working if one of them hadn't been damaged in a move. I replaced it with a Denon and have regretted it - it's been in the shop twice and needs it again, but is out of warranty. Going back to Onkyo next time. So....friend....I'm looking to score the Disney Infinity 2.0 Marvel set for the WiiU....

No one is forced to shop on Thanksgiving. It's a choice. Your family and friends won't actually die if they don't receive that pile of expensive toys under the tree Christmas morning. In fact, a lean Christmas might even build some character for kids these days....something this generation (and the last) sorely needs in my opinion. And employees are "forced to work" just about every other day of the year as well. I don't hear people complaining about being forced to work the third Tuesday of June every year. You want a paycheck? You gotta show up to work when you're scheduled. I'm pretty sure all jobs these days offer vacation days. If you want the day off, use a vacation day. If you don't have the seniority to do so, believe me, I know it sucks, but you either find a new job or work it and climb that seniority ladder as best you can. I had to work my share of holidays before I was able to get into salaried positions doing data crunching. And even still, I've had to cancel a vacation here and there due to the demands of work. And I can't remember ever having a vacation in the last 10 years that I didn't have to log in remotely at least a couple days to take care of business. In most things, this included, I fall back on a free market preference. If the store wants to be open, fine. If the employees don't want to work for the company because they're open on Thanksgiving, then that's OK too - they can quit. There are many employees who rely on that holiday pay to pay for things that are more important than presents. If the customer doesn't want to shop on Thanksgiving, then they can choose not to. But let's be perfectly honest here. The stores are only open because the people line up to spend their money. If people stayed home, the stores wouldn't bother being open. It costs a lot of money to pay all those wages and the electricity and everything else for a store to be open and if the revenue wasn't there to support it, then the store wouldn't be open. Blaming the stores is misdirected. If you want to blame anyone, blame the throngs of people who are all too willing to bail on their "precious" family time and fight the mobs for "deals".

BTW, a soundbar is not what I would consider surround sound. It will probably be an improvement over the TV's internal speakers, but inexpensive soundbars in particular are really just that. They most likely won't have the ability to intelligently adjust the delay for the rear channels and bounce the sound off side and rear walls to mimic the effect of surround sound.

What kind of TV are your using right now? If you're watching DVD's via a DVD player on a HDTV, then the HDTV is currently handling the upconversion from the DVD player. If the HDTV is a good quality unit, it may be doing a fine job of upconverting, but this depends entirely on the unit. Replacing the DVD player with a BluRay player, even a cheap one, shouldn't make things worse. At least, if it does, you should be able to read the manual on the BluRay player and find the option to just continue to push the unconverted DVD signal to the HDTV just like the old DVD player did and continue to let the HDTV to the upconversion. But it's possible that the BluRay has a better upconversion capability and you may realize a better picture right out of the box. That would be nice. Either way though, using the BluRay player grants you the ability to now enjoy BluRay's. And you will most definitely notice an improvement in image quality when watching BluRays! Not to mention the improvement in sound as well.

Excellent tablet. Got one for my wife this past April.

Have you tried this site? http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/ Since I haven't had time to game for the last 5 yrs or so, I haven't spent much time keeping up to date on this... It's unfortunate that manufacturers aren't more up front about this little bit of info.

Might check here. Not sure how complete the list is. http://www.lowes.com/Black-Friday-Deals/_/N-1z0y3sq/pl#! http://www.lowes.com/Black-Friday-Deals/Appliances/Washers-Dryers/_/N-1z0y3sqZ1z11pml/pl?Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1#! <-- specific list of washers and dryers

Looks like a good deal on a solid laptop.Might be large for a 10 year old to tote around though.

The Klipsch deal at HH Gregg is blowing my mind. Wish I had it in the budget. Although my current Klipsch system sounds awesome still, even if it is 20 years old.

Chaos reigns supreme In the stores on Black Friday So I shop online Ordered from ten sites Shipping's all over the place Hope I don't miss one Ah, Black Friday's here Stores fight to boost revenue Wait, they start when now? Once upon a time Stores saved their sales for one day Now it lasts all week. Carving the turkey Friends and family are here Deals will have to wait

We're getting closer... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoNQrxG_8M

I tried getting smart and bought a programmable remote with a touch screen for both my parents and my inlaws a few years ago. I programmed one button to turn on all the devices (receiver/DirecTV/BlurRay/HDTV). But the receivers had a separate "on" vs. "off" signal, so I had to program a separate button to turn all the devices off. Remote controls have been around for what, a solid 30 years now? At least? Is it really a hard concept to remember that the remote needs to be pointed at least roughly at the devices in order to turn them on or off? Invariable, since the remote has a screen, the user wants to look at and watch the screen (which doesn't do anything but show you the name of the button) when they press it. It has a screen - it must be watched. Therefore, the remote was more often than not pointed at the ceiling when the button was pushed meaning the devices were always getting out of sync. I fought with them both for about 6 months before I just took the remotes away and told them to go back to using their stack of remotes. You would have thought I was trying to teach them to speak a new sign language that uses only their feet or something. But the remote works fine for me. And now I have 2 backups...

http://www.woot.com/offers/klipsch-kmc-1-portable-bluetooth-speaker-2?utm_source=woot&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=wootapp Looks like a pretty good deal here.

Yep, no clue. Apparently my use of many words confused or angered you. Sorry. I'll try to keep this short. You can picture me patting you politely on the head if that helps. I guess we'll agree to disagree then. On you hand, you've reproduced a very fine bit of marketing media designed to sell more 1080P with no actual science. [sarcasm]That's some nice research there.[/sarcasm] On the other, I've used science and physics. Here's some references for the truly interested. Or you can be sheep, eat up the hype like good little boys and girls and overspend like the manufacturers want you to. Your choice. - http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/720p-vs-1080p-can-you-tell-the-difference-between-hdtv-resolutions/ - http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/ - http://gamerblurbs.com/2014/05/12/the-truth-about-1080p-vs-720p/ I'll leave it to the readers to decide.

I so get where you're coming from...

I'm sorry Riven, but I've done plenty of research, thanks. I know the difference between 720P and 1080P quite well. Whereas your "research" is actually some clever detective work and a bit of guessing, here's some real research: At the screen sizes we're talking about here, the human eye (with 20/20 vision) cannot even begin to tell the difference between 1080P and 720P unless they're sitting closer than 6-7ft away from the TV. And technically, you'd need to be sitting just a touch over 4ft away to really be able to see the benefit of a 1080P TV. This is science. Do you sit 4ft away from your TV?At the screen sizes we're talking about here, the human eye CAN very easily tell the difference between a 32" screen and a 29" screen. The difference in screen area between a 32" screen and a 29" screen, assuming a normal 16:9 aspect ratio on both, is actually more than 20%. Meaning the 32" TV has more than 20% more screen area than the 29" screen. (A 29" screen is 14.2 x 25.23 = 358.3 in^2 while the 32" screen is 15.7 x 27.9 = 438 in^2. 358.3 + 22% = @438). This again, is science.There is NO broadcast material in 1080P, nor is there likely to ever be. This is the state of things as they really are. The only native 1080P material available is on some (but not all) BluRay disks and some video games. All other broadcast material is either 720P (ABC, ESPN, FOX, etc.) or 1080i (NBC, CBS, etc.) and is sometimes "upscaled" at either your cable box or TV and the quality of that depends on the scaler used. This can vary.While your guesswork might in fact be correct for some, maybe even a majority of cases, the ad itself specifically warns that "Brands may vary by store". You might have seen that if you had "bothered to read the ad" I suppose... So sit back and chill a moment Riven. I didn't call you or your mom any names. But I am interjecting real, researched, qualified and valid information to the conversation. You are welcome to disagree and present opposing opinions or provide additional evidence to qualify your position. But getting all huffy about it doesn't actually help the conversation. Maybe it's worth saving $20 to you to give up 20% in screen size. That's a valid opinion. Maybe you sit 4ft away from your TV. It's possible. But the best advice (to anyone still reading this) is to go and lay your own eyes on the TVs and do your best to view them from the distance you'd actually do so from in your own home. The quality of the screens can vary a great deal from one manufacturer to another and even one line to another in the same manufacturer's catalog. And that variance can have a much larger impact on viewing pleasure than the marketing media driven 720P vs. 1080P argument. (big theatrical sigh for effect) Oh, one more thing. When I looked on Walmart's website. I found 5 different 32" LCD's listed for $169 (none for $168 as the ad would suggest). One of them reportedly has 3 HDMI ports, the others reportedly have 2 HDMI ports. This is one of those not very hard research type things, right?

Without the make model posted of the TVs, I'm not sure how you're getting the HDMI data? Maybe I'm just missing it. But separate of that, the Walmart one is a 32 inch and the Target one is a 29. That is a huge difference. Regarding the resolution, please see the chart on the first page of the official HDTV thread to see that you'd have to be viewing the TV from less than 6ft away to tell the difference at those sizes and that's assuming you actually had 1080p material in the first place - a lot more rare than you probably think. Without seeing them side by side, I'd say the Walmart one has some major benefits.

Does she have wifi?

JBL has been making quality speakers for a real long time. If I didn't have the opportunity to listen to them first, I'd trust the JBL over the Jawbone. But nothing beats listening to them directly. See if you can find them both at Best Buy or something and give them a listen.

I don't think I've seen a CDMA (Verizon network enabled) Samsung Galaxy Tab sold outside a Verizon store.

The trouble is more likely the 3M Internet than the router. If you have ANY other devices on the network at the same time, then your bandwidth is decimated. Roku's own site says 3M for streaming audio or SD (non-HD) material. They want 6M for HD material. And these speeds are just for the Roku, not the Roku sharing with the iPad that's playing Words with Friends and the laptop that's checking email, etc.

Or, with a proper home theater setup, your receiver has all the inputs and your TV only needs one.

Well, many tablets have mini HDMI ports as well. I know my sons' Nabi and Nabi 2 both do. And my wife's off brand tablet did last year....before I dropped it and broke it... The Samsung tablets generally don't have the HDMI ports for some reason, but like I said, you can pair just about any tablet with a Chromecast and stream Netflix to your (HDMI input equipped) TV. And the nice thing about the Chromecast is that once the tablet has told it what source to use, it goes and gets it directly instead of having the tablet get it and then try and send it to the Chromecast. So even a cheap door-buster tablet should be able to get the job done. But if you want a laptop, it's difficult to determine from the limited information given in the ads many times whether or not the device has an HDMI port, unless the ad gives a model number to reference. Walmart has a deal for a $159 laptop Thursday evening, but I'm not clear on whether it has an HDMI out.

Yea, lots of questions to be answered. - How far do you need your network to reach? Through many walls? Concrete ones? Lead ones? - How many devices? - What is your current Internet bandwidth? - What is your level of general geekiness? Feel like flashing the firmware on a router? In my personal experience, Netgear and D-Link work fine until they don't, about a year or two into your ownership. Linksys (the old stuff anyway) will last beyond the technology they're based on. But I think Linksys may have changed hands at least once in the last few years, so I'm not sure where they are anymore. If all you need is G network capabilities, then the classic Linksys WRT54GL is my all time favorite and go-to router. Just check out those reviews at NewEgg. If you need N network capabilities, I don't have any particular brand or model to suggest.