len_mullen

My mother's cable company provides an integrated router/modem with voip. It's inexpensive enough to not be worth replacing. Last time I suggested buying a cable modem, they were pretty expensive. We did the math,my friend went for it, and a month later she lost her investment to a power surge. Then there is the support end of things and dealing with obsolence.

This explains SO much.

I was hoping Channel Master or Antennas Direct would buy the company stores and promote OTA/OTT. With OTA especially, seeing is believing.

As the Christmas shopping season winds down, I am surprised at the lack of reporting on retail sales and cash register receipts. Expectations were tamped as early as September... Pundits are blaming consumer spending numbers on lower gas prices and warm weather. I found this amusing since they were blaming bad weather and high gas prices for the same thing lest year. I'm going to see Star Wars Sunday. Between dinner and the movie, I will be in the malls for the first time since summer. It will be interesting to see how enthusiastic last minute shoppers are just five days before Christmas. You may want to stroll through a Sears (same-store sales drop of 13.9%), K-mart (same-store sales drop of 6.9%), or a Radioshack this holiday season, because I don't think we will waiting for their Black Friday ads next year.

Now I want one

That's OK. As soon as my Kohls order comes in, I'm going to cancel my Walmart order -- live by the sword, die by the sword!

Curved screens are a bizarre marketing scam. No one watches television that way. Even Samsung concedes that the experience maxes out four feet away from the television. What is the curved screen supposed to be accomplishing? which I kind of get

Mission accomplished.

Sure, but a lot of us are looking forward with great anticipation to Black Ops 111

I did not plan on purchasing a console this year. I got interested after seeing an Xbox One on a 70" television. We were probably going to get Battlefront on some platform. It seemed like a good time to get a new console. My kids have gaming PCs, so my focus was on multiplayer, single screen games. I feel like $650 (not including $110 in unspent gift/promo codes) for this system was a bargain... XBox One 1TB console (Microsoft Store $388.99 w/$60 gift code)Four wireless controllers (new model with phone jack; two with bundle, two from Amazon @$39 ea)Battlefront (Dell Home with $25 promo code @ $59.99)Call of Duty Black OPs III (Dell Home with $25 promo code @ $59.99)Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (with bundle)Minecraft ($16.37 from Amazon)Sunset Overdrive (with Bundle)Ori and the Blind Forest (with bundle)Rare Replay (with bundle)Rayman Legends ($23.99 from Amazon)Borderlands: The Handsome Collection ($24.99 from Amazon)Xbox 360 Gears of War Collection (with bundle)12 Month Xbox Live Gold ($27.89 from CD Keys.com)In the end, I chose the Xbox One for ME. The games the kids will play are on both platforms. I build a bundle that I would like to play on with them and chose games the whole family would enjoy playing together.

Early numbers show Sony winning the BF console sales contest. Did you get a console? Which one? Where did you get it and how much did it cost? How did you decide? I'm not very experienced at polls. You have to choose one option in each question.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/sites/default/files/public/1103_NextTV_Chart.jpg I do not know a single person who bought a 4k television. I do not know a single person who is shopping for one. It's hard to search these forums for posts containing 4k, tv, uhd, etc., but I don't see any 4k sets in the 'what i got' thread. I would love to hear from people who actually bought a 4k tv or are actively shopping for one. If you bought one, post a link to the tv you bought and tell us who you bought it for, why you bought it, where you bought it, and how much you paid.

Here are some recent quotes on [anticipated] drone sales... As many as one million drones could be sold during this year’s holiday season, FAA official Rich Swayze has told ATW Online.The market for commercial/civilian drones will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19% between 2015 and 2020, compared with 5% growth on the military side.Roughly 700,000 drones are expected to ship in the United States in 2015, a 63 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. About 7 percent of consumers surveyed plan to purchase a drone as a gift this year, a "pretty significant" portion, said Steve Koenig, director of industry analysis at the CEA.With prices now below $100, wildly varying estimates predict Americans will buy hundreds of thousands – maybe more than a million – drones for ChristmasI do not know a single person who bought a drone. I do not know a single person who is shopping for one. Searching this forum for 'drone' yielded only a couple posts -- only one in the 'what i got' thread. I would love to hear from people who actually bought a drone or are actively shopping for one. If you bought one, post a link to the drone you bought and tell us who you bought it for, why you bought it, where you bought it, and how much you paid.

Everything except the $. I have a feeling Kohls owns a chunk of the lost $1,000,000,000

I had planned to go to Walmart Thursday on the way home from my in-laws, but I got what I wanted Thursday morning. What I didn't get Thursday, I got over the weekend.

Almost makes me wish I wasn't a shoe in for the iPad

from http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HOLIDAY_SHOPPING_WEEKEND_SALES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-11-29-19-41-49 Looks like I'm carrying these guys on my back. Information I am getting locally is that there was no shortage of merchandise and that the stores were not too crowded. Who knows, maybe it will be fun to go out again. I like shopping in the stores if I have a fighting chance of getting the promised bargains.

I got a couple games for my Xbox One. The games were full freight, but came with a $25 gift card and I got 10% Discover Cash Back.

Sorry. Responded to the title and first couple lines without reading to the end. I have never really gotten excited about voice control of anything. I've only used Siri a couple times -- just to see if it worked like the commercials (it doesn't). I have never used the voice remote that came with my two FTVs. I am going to take a closer look at the voice remote when Amazon updates the FTV, though, as Alexa is coming and I want to play with that... http://lovemyecho.com/2015/10/16/alexa-on-echo-vs-fire-tv/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&linkId=EDSBT2AVKQMZTKEJ&nodeId=201859020&qid=1448732968&sr=1-1&tag=lovemyecho-20&linkId=2NVKI2Q6DMYS7I35 Play music in your library by song, artist, album, or playlist.Start and stop music playback (repeat, resume, previous/next track) by voice.Play streaming radio from Prime Stations, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn.Purchase the currently playing song or album from the Amazon Digital Music Store.Add Prime Music tracks to your library.Listen to your audiobooks from Audible.Pause and resume audiobook playback.Hear pre-recorded news updates from popular broadcasters, the latest headlines from The Associated Press, and local weather.Check local weather and traffic conditions.Get answers to questions or have Alexa tell you a joke.Ask Alexa to find and read information from Wikipedia.Keep track of your Shopping and To-do Lists.Get sports scores and information.Calendar - Get information from your synced Google Calendar account. Set up your account in the Amazon Alexa App.Local Search - Find information about nearby restaurants, shops, and other businesses. Alexa uses the ZIP code in your Fire TV settings ( Settings > System > Location) for local search.Connected Home Devices - Use Alexa to control compatible home devices, like lights and switches, connected through a hub service (e.g. Wink, SmartThings, or Insteon). Might be worth $10 to play with all this.

There are several models that do different things. https://www.fitbit.com/compare The Charge and Charge HB are very capable and can be had for $90/$119. These have a clock -- if you are going to wear something on your wrist, I think it ought to tell time -- and automatically detect sleep. They also have caller ID for your paired phone. For another $30, the HR tracks your heart rate which allows it to automatically detect exercise. The iPhone app is pretty slick. This device will not make you lose weight, but trying to achieve a step count goal might get you to take a walk after dinner and understanding your heart rate is the best way to notice when something is wrong.

Very lazy Black Friday for me. I had planned on getting the one hour guarantee Xbox One and a tire card at Walmart, but I decided the tires were not the right ones for me (thank you focusfanatics.com) and ended up buying an Xbox online Thursday morning. On Friday, I made a few small purchases... XBox One 1TB Holiday Bundle w/wireless controller, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Rare Replay, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Xbox 360 Gears of War collection plus a second controller, Sunset Overdrive, and a $60 gift card for $388.99 with 5% Discover Card cash back from the Microsoft Store.Two more Xbox One Wireless Controllers, Rayman Legends, Minecraft, and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection plus a $50 gift card with $10 credit for $191.48 from Amazon.Kaspersky Internet Security for Windows, two Fire TV sticks for $10.00 from Staples.On Saturday, I got XBox Live... 12 Month Xbox Live Gold Membership from cdkeys.com for $27.89.This morning I got a couple games...Battlefront and Call of Duty Black Ops III for Xbox One plus $50 in gift/promo cards and 10% Discover Cash Back for $120 from Dell Home. Kind of a theme there. I plan to use some the $60 from MS and the $60 from Amazon to purchase Battlefront and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. This is the first time I've seen all the numbers. $600 548.34 for a game console is probably a bit expensive, but I feel like $600 for this system was a bargain... XBox One 1TB consoleFour wireless controllersBattlefrontCall of Duty Black OPs IIIGears of War: Ultimate EditionMinecraftOri and the Blind ForestRare ReplayRayman LegendsBorderlands: The Handsome CollectionXbox 360 Gears of War Collection12 Month Xbox Live GoldAt Staples, I was simply laundering expiring rewards. Kaspersky is free after easy rebate. I used $25 Fire TV Sticks as fillers ;-) The rest of my shopping will be boring stuff (likely delegated to my wife).

I think you won Black Friday. Great spree.

Pop history tells us that Cyber Monday was created because people did not have internet access at home so they waited until Monday, at work, to shop online. Of course, by 2006, most of us had pretty good high speed internet at home and most of us worked at jobs where you could not just sit at a computer and shop all day. In reality, Cyber Monday was the first day after Black Friday that consumers could not go to a store to shop because they had to work. Online shopping was the best way to extend the weekend's shopping spree. It was kind of a 'me too' from fledgling online only merchants like Amazon.

The worst thing I bought on Black Friday was a digital picture frame. Never got much use. Best thing I 'bought' on Black Friday was a phone plan. Last BF, I switched from Verizon to AT&T. With Verizon we had two text phones and a data phone with 2g of data for $130/month. With AT&T, we went to three smart phones and 15g of data for $10 more per month. Plus we got rollover. We did pay full freight for the phones, but we got $150/phone to switch and amortized the cost of the phones over 30 months interest free. The recipients of the phones were delighted and continue to be delighted.

No terrorist acts on BF. Know it's not for lack of desire. Kudos to those guys in the shadows who keep us safe.