Pnambic

If you can suggest a specific reliable router, I'm in. What make/model Kanyon?

I'm in the market as well. Looking to edumacate myself on all this new fangled router terminology. Thanks for the info Kanyon. I miss my trusty old WRT54G... My Western Digital dual band I got refurbed from NewEgg earlier this year has been acting really flakey.

Hmm....post ni the wrong thread here by accident? Mods, think we can move this to the Video Game thread?

OK, since you asked... Do you know how many channels are broadcast in 1080P right now? None. Not one. Not ABC or CBS or NBC or FOX or HBO or CNN or, or, or... None. Not over the air or via DirecTV or cable. And 1080P has been the de-facto standard of choice for how long now? At least 6 years, right? True, you can get some PPV at 1080P, but most if not all reports indicate that even that 1080P PPV has been compressed, lowering the quality below native 1080P. The only widely available 1080P media is BluRay and some games and some streaming. So while we may expect 4K to be the HD standard of the future, it will likely not be widely adopted for broadcast, at least not for quite a while, because of the biggest strike against it - you have to be viewing a 50 inch screen from closer than 5 feet away to even begin to tell the difference between 1080P and 4K. Heck, you can tell the difference between 1080P and 720P from 6 - 8 feet away and still, the broadcasters didn't think that was good enough to upgrade all their equipment. Why on earth would they do it for an even smaller distance? Only if it makes them money. And right now, there doesn't appear to be any way to make money by upgrading to 4K broadcasting equipment - certainly not enough to make up for the cost of upgrading all the cameras at all their stations - so no one will do it. Ten years ago, they were already using 30 year old camera technology, and the difference from ANY seating distance was pretty shocking, so it was a no-brainer. These days, not so much. And as I mentioned in one of my first posts, 4K isn't even a hard standard yet. There are several competing HDR technologies in play at the moment, just like the BluRay/HD-DVD fight years ago. How do you think all those people that bought HD-DVD players and HD-DVD disks felt when Toshiba raised the white flag and surrendered to Sony and BluRay? They were trying to be future-proof. Didn't work out so well. Remember VHS and BETA? Fact is, until there's an overwhelming majority of media being produced in a particular format, trying to be future proof in media if very risky. So to answer your question, no, by going to 4K now, you're not necessarily preparing yourself for what's coming in the future - you're taking a risk and likely not a very good one - that you'll be able to enjoy 4K media in the future. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But even if you can, it's likely that you won't be able to "fully" enjoy it as the 4K that media finally settles on is unlikely to be what we have available to us right now.

I agree with Len entirely. The Fire Stick has been really great in the month or so I've been playing with it. I intend to purchase a few more for the other TVs in the house.

BTW, the Microsoft store will likely have Black Friday prices too. Currently: - $99/year or $9.99/mo to run it on 5 devices. - $69/year or $6.99/mo to run it on 1 device. The Staples deal for $99 appears to be a discounted Microsoft for Home & Student version that does not include the following applications that are included in 365: - Outlook - Publisher - Access - OneDrive - Skype http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/categoryID.69403900 I wouldn't be surprised to see a 20% discount direct from Microsoft on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

The self-balancing aspect of these is not as good as we've seen on Segways. I saw these all over SEMA last week and watched 4 different people fall off of them at different times. If you're good on a skateboard or on roller blades, you'll likely have no problem. But if you're not, you may want to get a helmet and pads. Just saying. The falls I saw were painful. As mentioned above, the wheels are small enough to be hindered by cracks on pavement and rocks and even transitions from tile/linoleum to carpet or through doorways.

By the way, you can still use regular old HDMI cables with a 4K TV, but it just won't be able to transmit 4K signals to the 4K TV. But since there pretty much ARE NO 4K signals to send really, you'll most likely never notice - not for a while anyway. I know that 99% of people shopping for TV's will eat up the marketing junk like it's the best stuff ever. People are so amazingly easy to manipulate. But for the 1% who prefer logic and reason to marketing bs, I have seen zero valid reasons presented to me to buy a 4K TV. We have all seen how the prices of TV's drop every year, right? Why not wait until there actually IS 4K media available (if ever) before buying that 4K TV? All of these 4K TV's will be a couple hundred dollars cheaper to buy next year, and a couple hundred dollars cheaper still the year after that. There, I've said my piece. I promise not to comment on it any more. If you want to waste your money, then by all means, it is your money to waste. You earned it, do with it what you will. But if that money is burning a hole in your pocket so much, could I persuade you to consider buying the 1080P TV instead, save a couple hundred bucks and donate it to a charity of your choice? There are so many great ones out there. Then every time you watch TV, you'll get that warm fuzzy feeling in your heart that you actually made a positive difference in someone's life. How awesome would that be?

Hey bribri, click here: http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/250503-official-black-friday-tvs-hdtv-4k-discussion-thread/?p=1303044

A very good question that depend on each TV out there. I've seen as few on 1, I've seen as many as 4. Many people who set up home theaters, will use a separate home theater receiver that all of their components plug in to and then one HMDI cable goes to the TV. So many TV manufacturers don't worry about putting that many ports on the TV's directly anymore. I wonder if it would make sense adding this to the HDTV comparison charts this year... Or was it already there last year?

Hey Len, you're a glass-half-full kinda guy, aren't you? You know I love you, right? Hahaha But maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I stand by my comments. If you can find a 4K TV that can do everything a 120/240hz 1080P TV can do, at least as well, or even better, for the same price or less, please post a link, as I would be interested in the TV for all NON-4K reasons. But spending more on a 4K at this point just doesn't make any sense to me. Even if the geometry is more friendly in upconverting from 1080P to 4K, you are by necessity introducing at least one more layer of complexity. And for what? So you can have 4 identical pixels instead of the one from before? Where's the benefit? Don't get me wrong, I love Rube Goldberg machines, but not for my TV. But the real crux here is that you still would have to be viewing the TV from a silly-close distance to see any difference. - Even if 4K upcoversion was perfect and didn't cause any other motion blur issues - Even if 4K was more than 60hz (which its not) - Even if 4K material was all over the place - Even if all of your existing tech could support 4K without you upgrading them as well --> You'd still need to be sitting ridiculously close to the set to be able to actually tell the difference. If I stuck a 4K sticker on the side of a 1080P TV (maybe even a 720P set), I bet more than 90% of people would say it was the better image. The power of suggestion is powerful indeed. By the way, I'm not a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty guy. I'm a glass-is-twice-as-big-as-it-needs-to-be guy. (...and a terribly disappointed that Plasma is gone guy too...)

Sure Len, but for all practical purposes 4K should not be a deciding factor for anyone shopping for TV's this year. If you look really really hard, you might be able to find someone's home movies that were recorded in 4K to watch, but that's pretty much it right now. And even then, you're probably getting it compressed anyway, so is compressed 4K better than uncompressed 1080P (from BluRay)? Heck, even 1080P is compressed if it's via satellite or cable. We'd have to look to see, but that most likely hinges on many other non-standardized dependencies at this point to say with any certainty. Uncompressed 4K requires what, 25MBit/s bandwidth? The infrastructure is barely there right now. If you're the only person in your household streaming it, then you might be OK, but if you have a couple kids, you can forget about it. This goes back to that realization back when HD first came out that SD (standard definition) media looks worse on an HDTV than it does on an old regular SDTV. I would expect the same to hold true (to a lesser degree probably) with 1080P material on a 4K TV. You're introducing unnecessary complexity to the process of displaying the pixels (up-converting/scaling) with very little if any upside. I still don't think it's worth spending an extra dime on at this point. If you can get a 120Hz (or better) 1080P HDTV for the same price as a 60Hz 4K TV, I'd go 1080P all day long. (Of course there are other deciding factors here like contrast and darkness and so forth...but you get my point, right?)

That used to be THE problem, but it was somewhat offset by the reliability of the OS and hardware due to those constraints. But anymore, they have just as many, if not more bugs in each new release of iOS as any other phone or tablet OS. (Can't speak to MAC OS.) So now the problem with Apple products is the constraints and controls AND the shoddy development/QA work done before software releases.

Last year, the 24" HDTV's were advertised between $120 and $150. But there were a few door busters for 32" HDTV's for $100.

Sounds like a pretty decent deal. My two oldest sons have been beating on Samsung Galaxy Tab2's for two years now. And they were refurbs when I bought them. One got a cracked screen in a school lunch room incident, but that was a year ago and it still works fine. Black Friday and the days around it will likely have a few better deals, but you're going to have to fight for those most times, or stay up all night hitting refresh or something. I scored a Nabi Dreampad last Black Friday for $99 direct from Nabi. It's geared to younger kids, but has a better than 1080P HD screen, quad core processor, 2GB of RAM and a huge battery. Awesome buy. But it was a last minute announcement from Nabi - not widely publicized, and you had to be logged in to their website at like midnight Pacific time to try and snag one. I don't know how many they sold but they were gone in minutes.

I've heard that same lore. HAHAHA I wonder if it's true. But I think what broke HDDVD is that in the intervening years between Beta and BluRay, Sony accumulated one of if not the largest libraries of movie media (Sony Pictures). And they flatly refused to release any of it on HDDVD. Once they convinced Disney and Warner Brothers to do the same, game over.

+1 Content is king. Content won the VHS vs Betamax war Content won the BluRay vs HDDVD war (Sony learned their lesson well with the Beta failure) NFL ticket (content) has kept DirecTV afloat for a decade or more now Content put Netflix on the map - we'll see where their new content direction takes them... Content has been the battleground between Prime and Netflix There are just SO many players in content these days, its a tough place to compete. There are so many content owners/creators out there. But if ANYONE has the reserves to buy up the content, it IS Apple. But I just don't understand why Apple hasn't moved on this sooner. They've had the capability and the technology to do it for a long time - just seems like they don't really have the interest.

It's really a lot of work for retailers to police their pricing these days with pricing data going to brick n mortar stores and online sometimes being different, and with pricing in different regions of the country being different, let alone internationally. Mistakes will be made. Especially in the havoc that is Black Friday. It just so happens the company I work for is a pretty big player in that space, trying to eliminate those mistakes as much as possible. Circuit City honored their mistakes - perhaps a little too well. Or maybe just too many mistakes to be honored. Kohls has been good about honoring prices that may have been accidental. Sears did for me once too. Lowes did once for me and didn't a different time. Speaking of food though, Kroger does a good job of honoring (possibly incorrectly) marked prices.

Whats the consensus best Kodi sports (NFL live games) option?

Amen preacher! I hate it when people buy an item dirt cheap that never claimed to have a particular feature and then complain about it not having the feature... Read the box. Know what the acronyms mean. Be an informed buyer. You're just not likely to be able to go out and buy a Ferrari for Focus prices, even on Black Friday. These companies aren't in the business of giving nice stuff away (Circuit City tried it and it didn't end well for them...), they're trying their darnedest to lure you into the store with some really good prices and hoping you'll buy some other things while you're there. BTW, several of us geeks here love discussing all those crazy acronyms, so if you want to know more, please ask.

Good call. Well, good news is the prices generally get better and better each year on these things.

The Walmart add I saw has: - a 32" Samsung 1080P Smart TV for $248. - a 32" Unknown Brand 720P for $98 Also of note: - a 50" Unknown Brand 1080P for $218 - a 50" Vizio UHD Smart TV for $698 Not a valid 2015 Walmart Black Friday ad.

Almost certainly. I expect to see cheap ones for $50 - $100 without subs (that probably aren't much better than the TV speakers), mid-range ones from $200 - $250, and then some mild discounts on the nicer ones above $300. There's a Walmart ad already floating around. Don't know if its real or not yet...seems pretty early.

Yeah, I'm lucky I guess in that all my travel always has me home for the weekends.

Keep talking Jay