(Credit: TVPredictions.com)

Black Friday is still 11 days away, but for TV manufacturers looking to jump-start sluggish sales in the midst of a recession, it's already here--and will likely continue in spirit right through the holiday season.

Word of current and impending HDTV price drops is spreading rapidly. The HDGuru reports, for example, that Sony, Samsung, and Mitsubishi are rolling out MSRP reductions across the board, with some cuts as high as $500 on expensive models like the Sony KDL-52XBR6. Samsung is offering $200 off rear-projection models like the HL61A750, which was already a solid value to begin with. Looking for hot-selling prices last Friday, the Guru found deals like the 42-inch Panasonic TH-42PX80U plasma for $649 (although when we checked Monday it was back up to $729 online--still a great deal).

Looking for more? The latest Black Friday price watch (PDF) over at TWICE includes advertised price drops that range from 11 percent for the Sony KDL-46Z4100 to a drastic 33 percent for the LG 32LG30--one of the best deals we've seen so far at $549 at Best Buy. When we saw that price, we immediately added the LG to our Best cheap LCD TVs list.

We suspect even better bargains are yet to come. In past years, the best deals were available after Black Friday, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, especially on name-brand TVs.

The combination of the holiday season, nosediving economy and the impending DTV transition may be creating a perfect storm of low HDTV prices, but are people actually buying new TVs as a result? ... more >>

If you like your TVs like you like your, er, partners--slim, stylish, and expensive--then you're a good candidate for the Hitachi UT37X902. At a mere 1.5 inches thick, this thinnest of all LCDs costs a bundle but looks better turned off than just about any TV we've ever reviewed.

No matter how you slice it, the Hitachi UT37X902 is one thin display.

(Credit: CNET)

It's no slouch when turned on either, with decent black levels and color accuracy for the 37-inch LCD breed, but (isn't there always a "but"?) we couldn't help but complain about one important aspect of its design. The UT37X902 is just a "monitor," meaning it has no built-in tuner and, more importantly, includes just two inputs: one HDMI and one analog VGA for PCs. That's fine if you just want to connect a cable or satellite box and forget it, but for other gear, you'll need additional inputs. That's where the optional AV Center, a $300 breakout box, comes in.

So how does the AV Center work? What other juicy details can we provide about the TV's picture quality? And is that 1.5-inch number really accurate?

Read the full review of the Hitachi UT37X902.

... more >>

(Credit: Domino's)

Thanks to a new agreement with pizza giant Domino's, owners of TiVo set-top boxes can now order food from the chain directly through their televisions, and even track delivery time so they know just when the pizza guy will be showing up to bring them a ...

Originally posted at News - Digital Media

Samsung's 61-inch LED-powered DLP TV.

(Credit: Samsung)

Around the holiday season we get a lot of e-mails from readers agonizing over what TV to buy. With the economy the way it is, consumers aren't completely shying away from buying new TVs, but they're on tight budgets

(Credit: Digital Living Network Alliance)

Q: I've finally decided to buy a HDTV, and I was just wondering what your input on DLNA was. Do you know of any good models out there that support this feature (that also allow access to several media servers)? Or should I wait until DLNA becomes more standard in HDTVs? -- Chris, via e-mail.

A: Hi Chris. We've covered in detail what exactly the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is all about before, and reviewed several models (as mentioned below) that support the specification. As for access to several media servers--most DLNA-certified clients (including all the certified HDTVs we reviewed this year) support several media servers at once. You will have to switch between them of course, but it's never been a issue with performance in our experience. The short answer to your other question, however, is DLNA is still in its infancy for being adopted by TV manufacturers. 2008 has been the year where it was introduced and perhaps 2009 will be the year that its more commonplace in HDTVs. As of now, you can expect to pay a hefty premium for the technology, as much as $500 above the average price of a HDTV. Then you have to consider the television's interoperability issues.

Geeks and nerds need not apply, but if you're still one of those facing your 10-year-old analog TV every night, I have some news.

You don't want to have this TV after February 17, 2009.

(Credit: Tech Liberation)

On Tuesday, Best Buy announced that it will host workshops ...

Uniformity across the screen is one thing many flat-panel HDTV owners take for granted. Plasma TVs generally have perfect uniformity: the screen is the same brightness and the same color in all areas, and it looks the same from every angle. Most LCD sets, while less than perfect, have screens that are uniform enough to not distract from the viewing experience. Then there are models like the Haier HL47K.

The Haier HL47K (screen simulated).

(Credit: CNET)

This bargain-priced 47-inch LCD won't wow anybody with its black levels or color accuracy, but for the money those aspects of its image quality are decent enough. Unfortunately, its screen uniformity is not. In our testing this set basically failed every aspect of our uniformity tests, suffering from brightness and color variation, backlight banding and poor-off-angle performance. To top it off, there's even a stuck pixel!

On the plus side, the Haier is really cheap for a 47-inch 1080p HDTV, and its looks and connectivity aren't bad at all. It also outperformed the dismal Honeywell we just reviewed, so that's something.

Check out the full review of the Haier HL47K.

... more >>

Honeywell's Altura MLX, a budget 42-inch LCD TV with a 120Hz refresh rate, looks promising on paper but doesn't quite live up to the promise in person.

The Honeywell Altura MLX

(Credit: CNET)

This is one of the least-expensive TVs with 120Hz, and it even includes the smoothing processing, aka dejudder, that the kids seem to like these days. But we're generally not big fans of the effect, so we like to have the capability to actually turn off dejudder. One problem with the Altura is that it doesn't have that capability. Inexplicably, with this set it's dejudder or bust.

We liked the Honeywell's styling, but couldn't find much to like about its picture quality. Lighter black levels and less-accurate color are big culprits, as is a very dark gamma that makes the whole picture appear too dull regardless of any adjustments we tried. In case you're still interested, there's plenty more detail after the jump.

Check out the full review of the Honeywell Altura MLX.

One of the hottest products in consumer electronics is finally cooling off.

A report released Tuesday confirms that flat-panel television shipments to retailers are beginning to tail off. Specifically, LCD and plasma TV shipment grew just 21 percent, and 20 percent, respectively year over year during the third quarter of ...

(Credit: Federal Communications Commission)

Some cable subscribers may have been "forced" into purchasing a set-top box and a more expensive digital subscription to receive certain basic cable channels, according to a new investigation launched by the Federal Trade Commission.

The FCC sent out letters (PDF) to Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and other major cable companies, requesting a tabular list of information, from the "number of overall subscribers in each affected cable system at the time of the analog-to-digital channel change" to "whether Company permitted subscribers affected by the analog-to-digital channel change to modify their service at no charge for 30 days after receiving notice of such change." Verizon Communications' FIOS network, which isn't explicitly a cable service, is also being investigated. The investigation doesn't affect satellite providers.

The investigation seems to have been initiated by a letter that the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, sent to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, according to Ars Technica.

Switching to digital is good business for cable. The New York Times reported that Time Warner Cable and Cablevision had better than expected profit this quarter. While Time Warner attributed this to phone and Internet subscriptions, it still "lost 31,000 basic video subscribers in the quarter, but added 124,000 digital video subscribers." Cablevision also gained a significant amount of digital cable subscribers.