len_mullen

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.

no. the model with the voice remote is $35... link

At my house, we keep track of the savings. Half of it can be reinvested in our infrastructure and half goes to other stuff -- like a family vacation. We toasted Comcast who sponsored our trip to Disney a couple years ago. Comcast paid for our 60" 1080p plasma television and a lot of the beer that is consumed in front of it. On Sundays, we like to say that The Beer's On Comcast!

My oldest and I were discussing this on the ride home from the in-laws last night. He is a kid who does not go out on BF and has a good job with an office that closes for a two day holiday. Yet he does not think stores should open on Thanksgiving. I told him that a lot of the people who work that holiday are probably very happy to get double time or even eight hours of work on that day and that a lot of the people who camp out in front of a store are probably hoping to turn a good Christmas into a great Christmas for their families. Who are we to stop all of that? The fact is that stores will close on Thursday when sales and costs do not yield a profit. We should just let the market take care of the problem. It looks like the market may have heard me.

Worse I KNEW it was one stream -- I have complained about this a lot. Netflix and Prime are two streams. Just a brain fart and I am glad you posted the correction.

As the mayor, you can and should be involved. It's called keeping the peace and your policemen are known as peace keepers. Simply posting officers near the front of long lines will discourage cutting.

from Reuters via Yahoo... "We believe Thanksgiving shopping was a bust," analysts at Suntrust Robinson Humphrey said in a research note. "Members of our team who went to the malls first had no problem finding parking or navigating stores."In early trading, shares of Target Corp were down 0.2 percent, while Macy's, Best Buy and J.C. Penney all lost more than 1 percent. Wal-Mart was also lower, while Amazon.com Inc traded up slightly.Shoppers in the United States spent more than $1 billion online, 22-percent more than last year, between midnight and 5 pm ET on Thursday, according to the Adobe Digital Index, which tracked 100 million visits to 4,500 U.S. retail sites.Shoppers are expected to be cautious with their spending again this year. The National Retail Federation is expecting holiday sales to rise 3.7 percent, slower than last year's 4.1 percent growth rate, due to stagnant wages and sluggish job growth.from CNBC... Steve Barr, with PricewaterhouseCoopers, said early indications are that in-store sales will be flat, with the big winners being online stores and shoppers.Macy's estimates at least 15,000 people were waiting outside its flagship Herald Square store ahead of its 6 p.m. Thanksgiving opening, roughly in line with last year.According to data from NPD Group and CivicScience, 57 percent of consumers hadn't even started their holiday shopping as of Sunday.[Third-quarter] revenues have risen just 2.3 percent, according to Retail Metrics. "Forward guidance has been very cautious and predominantly negative"GameStop, Tiffany, Burlington,DollarTree, Fred's, Signet and Calares...all projected either their fourth-quarter or full-year earnings below consensus forecasts.Data from Adobe show that between Nov. 1 and 24, digital sales increased 8.5 percent compared with last year — shy of 11 percent increase that's anticipated for the whole season. That compares with 12 percent growth last November and December.As of Thursday evening, Adobe said more than $1 billion had already been spent online, representing growth of 22 percent from last year.

I once advised a woman to buy her own cable modem. She asked if she should get an extended warranty. I shrugged my shoulder. Her $100 modem was lost to a power surge ten minutes out of warranty. And, of course, you saw that I was wrong about concurrent Sling TV users, right? So, the warranty is one year and you credit card may have doubled that to two. That's plenty of time for problems to reveal themselves. There are no moving parts -- no fans, no disk in the box -- and the power supply is outside the box. I really do not expect these things to fail...ever. Visited my in-laws yesterday. They have one of the launch DVR+s (from December of 2013). It is not connected to anything and has never been updated. Other than scanning for new channels, cleaning up recordings off their 1t seagate disk, and cancelling some unwanted series recordings, everything was fine.

That is great news. My feeling was that traffic and discussion was less the last couple years. I enjoy the social aspect more that the information gathering. That said, when I want to see what is available at what price, GottaDeal's BF scans, lists, and discussion top any other resource. Need to figure out how to replicate posts from all venues on the others so everyone benefits from all discussion in their preferred app. For next year, you need to begin thinking about leveraging mobile communications -- my lists, find nearby, where I am kind of stuff. That would be a lot of fun. Heat maps of where DG'ers are shopping. Out-of-stock alerts.

What time did you have to get in line? Where is your Best Buy?

Correct! Thank you.

Tigger, I have found a guy who may have done this... http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=91019(in case you want to follow along) Frankly, I would suggest that you buy the DVR and Roku locally and return them if you cannot record what you want.

That was the trick, wasn't it? LOL. I had alerts set up for xbox and my mailbox was full this morning. I really wanted the Master Chiefs Bundle, but I can add the game for what I saved at the MS store. The $60 gift code is like throwing in Battlefront -- which is why we are buying an Xbox One. Sunset Overdrive looks amazing. Gears of War is a great split screen shooter. Ori and the Blind forest is one of those games players like more than critics (who liked it a lot), and Rare Replay...well, Replay is a throw in. Still the $50 premium over the GoW Ultimate gets you the 1t disk, Ori, and Replay. My second choice was the Fallout 4 Bundle. It was close except that FO4 did not include Sunset Overdrive as a free game option. I would have been happy with either.

BTW, if you want more controllers or games, head over to amazon.com. Best four person games for the xbox one are Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (FPS), Minecraft (adventure), and Rayman Legends (Platformer). Controllers are $39 for the new version, Rayman Legends is $23.99, Minecraft is $16.37, and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection is $24.99. Happy Thanksgiving!

that's how it worked last year.

I ended up at the MS store too. A bundle for everyone, right? Xbox One 1TB Holiday Bundle Unit price: $399.00$60 Microsoft Store gift code Unit price: $60.00Sunset Overdrive for Xbox One: Unit price: $29.99Xbox One Limited Edition Halo 5: Guardians Wireless Controller: Unit price: $69.99 Discount: $169.99Subtotal: $388.99Sales tax: $0.00 Total: $388.99 Plus (hopefully) 5% cashback from Discover.

Yeah. Great choice. Great price. I may grab a couple myself. I was looking at the pile of disks next to the DVR in my bedroom. All are Western Digital Passports, but there are 1t, 2t, ultras, mac, pc...I think I mostly shopped on price. They all work. No need to worry about the software (mobile device backup) as the DVR will format the disk before use.

Thank you! I think the answer is no. The AVS forums say this DVR respects macrovision and Roku has implemented macrovision, so I suspect recording some, if not all, content will result in a very poor picture. Checkout PlayOn/PlayLater to see if it will work for your needs. It records in HD and the files are unprotected except for a screen at the front and back that says who (name, email, IP address) recorded the file. The files are 720p and you can stream from the server to a Roku.

Please post a page or a model or something