bitWrangler

Kupon, almost all DS games should work fine with the DSi (currently in transit, I went for free shipping), so that's really not an issue. My White should be getting here on the 4th. I got bit by the 1 limit thing and was a bit concerned since I needed 2 (the blue was sold out by then). I ended up going to Target and in the end it was actually a better deal as I was able to pick up another White for $169 with a $20 gift card and then another $10 gift card since I was spending > $100, so in the end it was a tad bit cheaper at Target even factoring in the tax. Plus there was no line at all (I got there around 10am) and there was a pile of them (blue and white). Either way I'm just happy I got the two with minimal hassle (needed to go to Target anyway), now just have to get ready to lay down the law with regards to how much time is spent playing the things :)

I've been seeing Fit's everywhere now. At at least one Target, and the local GameStop, they had at least a dozen sitting out on the floor. I just assumed that availability was much easier now?

Shoot, I've been to three Targets now and non of them had these on clearance. Anyone find these, we are looking to purchase several and that represents a huge savings.

AFAIK all the stores in Central TX closed on Dec 31st.

Amazon has Fits available now (3:51 CST)

Fry's in Austin had an entire pallet of them stacked at least 4 ft high as of Sunday. At least two of the local Targets had a display case full of them (bottom shelf). For now anyway, Wii's seem to be plentiful.

The line in Plano started before 8pm 2 years ago. But then again the deal they had on the Olevia's that year was far superior to what they have this year (and what they had last year). The lcd's are Sceptre this time, not Olevia. Personally I think the deals are not that great. $40 off plus $60 MIR for the 32" and 46" (total $100 of what you can buy it right now for). I understand $100 is $100, but I don't know that it's worth standing in line for 12 hours for. The overall deal on the Sony's is better (40" is $1119 right now, $799 during the sale).

OOC, what is a good enough deal at BB to warrant standing in line for 2 days?

FYI, MicroCenter finally has their ad up. Deals on tv's is only so-so. Their house brands are only about $100 off (part instant and part mail-in rebate though) so IMHO not worthy of standing around all night in the cold. They do have some better percentage deals on Sony 40" and 46" 1080P LCDs though ($799/$999 respectively). Looks like I get to sleep in on Fri. slinkster, unfortunately you really have to check the sets out for yourself. For example, I was just at Target comparing the Sony vs Olevia. Standing right in front of the sets and using a critical eye, there were obvious differences. Standing a few feet away and "just watching" (as you would be doing in at home) these differences start to fade (or go away completely). Whether these differences are worthy of the price differential is completely a subjective choice. Watch out for the Westinghouse, very poor track record WRT reliability. Great for a year or so and kaputz. Go for the extended warranty (which of course partially negates the price advantage). _Don't_ move it around too much, many of the problems I've read about (blank stripes appearing towards the edges of the screen) are caused by the very fine connectors from the logic boards to the display panel breaking. Once this happens the tv is toast, this can not be repaired.

Two years ago they had some awesome deals on Olevia LCD's. AAMOF, the deals I've seen this year are barely better than those from two years ago! Personally I'm looking forward to seeing what they have this year (though last year was a bummer). Their ad usually comes out the week of, so don't expect to see anything until Mon. They will have a link to it on their home page once it's available. And yes, their lines get verrrry long.

I have a SD Sony professional series TV (27") and a first generation Sony OTA HD receiver. Connecting the receiver to the monitor via component cables at 480i, no one I've shown can tell that they are not watching on a true HD set. The improvement in color rendering and reduction in noise is simply awesome. Now true, not very folks will have a SD tv that can take component in, but the fact is that a 480i signal can get people 80%+ to HD without the cost of a new tv. If you have a nicer tv and are on a budget, it's worth a try. And for the whole discussion on "replacing your rabbit ears", age has nothing to do with it. It's just like with SOTA, if you're in a place with good reception, your antenna needs will be minimal, if you are not, then you are going to need something more. I pull in 4 of our local HD stations perfectly with a $2.99 antenna I got from Big Lots.

The "i" in 1080i stands for interlaced while the "p" stands for progressive. That means that for every "frame" of image, the "i" signal only receives half of the scan lines (540), while the "p" signal receives all 1080 of them (the nomenclature isn't exact here but simplified). This is similar to the difference between the old NTSC tv signal (interlaced) vs how most all pc's work (progressive). The bottom line is that the 1080p picture will tend to be sharper with fewer artifacts (glitches) than the 1080i picture even though the resolution is the same. Keep in mind that: a) almost all OTA broadcasts are in 1080i unless you have a 40" screen or above, you may be hard pressed to notice the difference between a 1080i vs 1080p picture. As been mentioned, if you can get an equiv. 1080p set for the same/less than a 1080i set, go for it. If the price differential is large, don't sweat it and enjoy your 1080i (or 720p) image and pocket the difference.

Yeah, it's not wonder they're going under. My local one had a Vaio laptop with a busted display. Funny thing is that it has a sticker marked "minor damage" and it is marked down the same amount as all the other laptops. Duh. Other prices are just now getting down to Fry's level. People are lapping the stuff up though.

They've been in "closing up shop" mode for about a month now. At 40% off, their prices are finally getting to around what most other people charge Keep in mind that it's a max of 40% off, they still have items that are like 5% off. Best deals are with the Apple stuff, as it's usually a bit difficult to find them discounted very much.

From a video performance perspective, there is no difference, DVI and HDMI are interchangeable (exact same protocol, think of HDMI and DVI as two different physical implementations of a common standard). HDMI is simply more convenient since A) it's smaller and it also handles audio so you don't need sep DVI + audio connections. Any dealer that tells you that you will get a difference in video quality is full of, well, you know.

Amazon now has it for $129 with free shipping! Also, even if he Dell unit has "Bluetooth", it doesn't mean that it supports the "handsfree" profile. If you look at the description for the Tom Tom XL-S, it has bluetooth, but it looks like it's only used as an alternative to the usb cable (i.e. you can use it to sync/update, but not as a handsfree since the unit does not have a microphone).

Hey guys (and gals), Amazon has the Tom Tom One 3rd Edition right now for $129 with free shipping. Sure beats freezing your gluteous off (and no sales tax to boot). They also have the XL-S for $259 with free super saver shipping.

Hmm, I would venture to guess that this is not it's normal state. Are you sure you weren't looking at a std def signal? Did you ask the sales person to put on another source. One thing I noticed while at Sears is that they had some of their flat panels hooked up to via standard composite inputs! Yikes.

While both 360 and PS3 are capable of doing 1080p, not all games written for them actual do. As a matter of fact, a small minority of games are actually doing 1080p, right now (look on the boxes for the games, they'll state their native HD capabilities). Again, this is right now and you can safely assume that more games will do 1080p in the future, but that requires significantly more system resources than 720p, so software developers will short term (as they have been) focus on getting higher performance from 720p vs the, currently, marginal benefits of moving up to 1080p.

Check the model#, 3 series does not have a tuner, 5 and 7 series do. Again, if you have cable/sat then a tuner is not a necessity for most.

Well, unless that unit has been sitting on the floor for years I'd think that the fact that it is dark is probably indicative of nothing but that fact that the margins on those tv's aren't as good as some of the equiv sized lcds/plasmas. Either that or someone was mucking about with the controls. You did play around with the adjustments didn't you? After all, you wouldn't purchase a car based purely on the dealer driving you around right? So don't be afraid to try tweaking the picture yourself. You should do this with any set, after all, for many you're talking about dropping 4 figures on one of these bad boys, so explore and be sure you're happy with the thing. Like I've mentioned previously, it's not uncommon for tv's on the showroom floor to have their brightness jacked up much higher than you would at home, so unless you want to be replacing your tv every few years, you probably want to turn the brightness down to about 50% (probably no greater than 60%) to see what it looks like. Hopefully this problem will go away (or be greatly diminished) once LED backlights become the norm. BTW, no one claimed that they were "true flat panels", they are rear projectors, and as such will likely always be thicker than their plat panel brethren.

Or you can say that it's the only LCD that you're not paying extra for a tuner that you'll never use. Both my DirecTV and Dish sat receivers have ATSC tuners built in, if my TV had a tuner, it'd just go to waste. Now there might be other reasons for why you may consider them "the crappiest LCD you can ever find", but I'm personally tickled pink with mine (and yes, mine does not have a tuner and I never miss it).

I wouldn't be so absolute with this. DLP's have some nice advantages (great contrast (but in specific situations), high pixel density + optical projection means that compression artifacts of HD signals are less noticeable, significantly lighter esp at larger sizes than LCD and esp vs plasma). The frequency of lamp replacements depends entirely on how much the tv is used and at what brightness levels. At least if your DLP starts going dim, you can spend $300 bucks and replace the bulb. If you LCD starts going dim, you have a very hefty bill (or a very tricky DIY job) to replace the backlights. If your plasma starts going dim, well, cry in silence as your credit card prepares for a new unit. Once again, go out and look at those sets. That is the only way to know if you're getting the deal that you want. If you care about getting the biggest screen for your money and play video games and watch hockey and auto racing, a DLP is probably your hot ticket. DLP is not for everyone, esp if space is an issue or you simply must have a true flat panel, but it shouldn't be ruled out because of some FUD about bulbs. BTW, I personally think that in many situations, the absolute best deal around is front projectors (Sony LCD or others DLP). It's small (flat panel footprint is nice, having a 10 lb unit that you can simply put away is awesome). It's cheap (well ok, flat panel prices are finally getting low enough to make this not as much of an advantage anymore). Depending on wall space, you can have images past 100' in diameter. Heck, even with our LCD, we still watch movies on our ancient 800x600 (which is perfect for native DVD resolution) LCD projector that cost me <$300 four years ago (my living room allows for a max 88" diameter image). When the bulb finally wears out, I'll just buy another used projector, it's awesome. However, it's awesomeness is directly tied to how we use it (primarily for movies and "special" sporting events, and primarily at night), so it's not perfect for everyone (or even the majority of everyones).

True, but remember, taking up gobs of your local salespersons time and benefiting from the fact that they have inventory in stock for you to actually look at the final product and then running off and purchasing online is not conducive to brick and mortar retailers being able to continue to provide you with those services. No one wants to save a few bucks more than me, but it's a balancing act. If you did all your research online and never stepped foot into the store, then hey, go for the online purchase. Don't suck up all your local retailers resources and stiff them in the end. And no, I don't work in retail.

I'd say do your research online on the set and do direct comparisons against other tv's that are similar in size. Be sure to ask the salesman what type of signal it's being fed. You'd be amazed at how many displays are connected to plain old DVD players (and often not even upsampling ones) so a larger set like a 52" won't really shine. Sorry but I usually refrain from direct advice like that unless I either own the set or have done extensive research on it myself (which in this case I haven't).